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How to Answer "Can We Build Here?" Before Anyone Else Does

Using ZoneAI and SiteAI together to underwrite a site in real time — while you're still on the call.

Written by Mikaila McLane

The old workflow for underwriting a new site looked like this: find a parcel, call a planner, wait two days, get a partial answer, call again, pull the municipal code yourself, send it to civil engineering, wait a week for a yield estimate. By then someone else has the deal.

Prophetic collapses that timeline to minutes.

ZoneAI — Instant zoning intelligence

Click any parcel and ZoneAI reads and interprets that jurisdiction's municipal code automatically. In seconds you get:

  • Permitted uses — what can actually be built on this parcel

  • Density allowances — max units or lots per acre

  • Minimum lot size, setbacks, height limits, and parking requirements

  • Maximum lot coverage and FAR for commercial and industrial parcels

No planner callback. No pulling the municipal code yourself. No waiting.

If the zoning shows it can support what you build, you move to the next question: how many lots?

SiteAI — Yield study while you're on the phone

Select the parcel — or an assemblage of adjacent parcels — and launch SiteAI. It walks you through a brief configuration:

  • Development type and home model dimensions

  • Minimum lot size and target density

  • Zoning rules (auto-populated from ZoneAI)

  • Environmental constraints like wetlands and flood zones

  • Road entry points and open space requirements

The output is a full site plan with a calculated yield — total lots, density, road area, net developable acreage — in the time it used to take to get a planner on the phone.

The compounding advantage

The team that can answer "can we build here, and how many lots?" during a live landowner conversation closes more deals than the team that calls back two days later. ZoneAI and SiteAI together make that possible on any parcel, in any market, in any state.

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