Core concepts

The parcel

Everything attaches to a parcel: the legal lot, not the address and not the pin. An address is resolved to its parcel first, and every geocoder answer is checked against what you typed, because a geocoder will answer for a different house. A resolved parcel gets a durable id (it starts pl-), and everything you do to it hangs off that id: saves, reports, documents, certificates.

Buildability never draws a lot outline of its own. You see the recorded outline from the county or the parcel record, or a pin when there isn’t one.

The Score and the report

The Scorefree

A 0–100 number for how buildable the land is, with every factor, its source, and the hazard evidence behind it. Free on any US address, with or without an account.

The report$99

The full parcel record: owner, APN, zoning standards, the envelope fitted to the lot, value and comparable sales, incentives. Bought once per parcel. It never expires, and re-running it is free.

Buildability uses these two nouns exactly: the Score is free, the report is paid. Your balance is counted in reports, and one report always licenses one parcel. See Pricing & billing.

Receipts

Every number carries its receipt: the source it came from and the date it was read. A value with no source isn’t shown. A source that has nothing for this parcel is shown as “not on record”, and a source that failed is shown as a failed read. Neither one is shown as a zero or a pass. See Data sources & receipts.

Landmines

A landmine is a condition on record that caps the Score no matter how good the rest is: a floodway, a wetland, a steep slope, shallow bedrock, no community water. The published Score is the lower of the composite and every cap. See Landmine caps.

The Zoning Atlas

Zoning standards (height, setbacks, lot minimums, coverage, density) are read from the ordinance itself. Every value is stored with the verbatim sentence it came from and its section. A number whose quote can’t be found in the source is never stored. See The Zoning Atlas.

Certificates

A certificate is a one-page, printable record of a parcel’s Score, with an id like BC-3F9A21-74 and a QR code. Anyone can check it at /verify, which recomputes the Score from the stored record under the methodology the certificate was issued with. See Documents & certificates.