Before you make the offer, price the job, or draw a line — find out what the property will actually allow. Zoning and building code, for one specific address, each answer cited to the subsection it came from. In a few minutes, not a few weeks.
Jurisdiction, zoning district and adopted code editions are free for any address. The full report is $99 — no subscription, no account needed to buy.
Even an architect gets the front end of a project back. Everyone else skips paying one just to find out where they stand.
Whether to make the offer. What to tell the client. Whether the project is worth starting, and what it will really take. That’s what this is for.
The addition, the shop, the unit out back — the reason you want this particular property. We pull what the jurisdiction has published for that address and cite it, so you go in knowing the constraints instead of finding them after closing when it's no longer a choice.
“Zoned for it” is a shrug. A cited page showing what a buyer could add, and under which rules, is a reason to pay more — and it answers the objection before it's raised rather than after the showing.
Owner or professional, the front end of a project is where money leaks: weeks of research, a scheme drawn against assumptions, a redesign when the assumptions turn out wrong. Getting the constraints first is the cheapest hour in the whole job.
“I checked” and “here is the subsection” are different conversations, and only one of them ends the doubt. Most client hesitation is uncertainty wearing a budget costume.
These are the most common. All of them work, sort of, and it’s worth being honest about what each one actually costs you — because the reason most people never get a straight answer isn’t that it’s secret. It’s that every route to it is slow, expensive, or quietly unreliable.
A real, considered answer from someone accountable for it. For a project that's going ahead, this is right and you'll want it eventually.
The catchYou have to commit money to the project before you know whether the project is worth committing money to. So most people put the question off and decide without it — which is how a scheme gets drawn against an assumption nobody checked.
The information is public. It is all, technically, there.
The catchIt's all out there, and knowing what to look for is the hard part. Which edition the town adopted, which local amendments override it, which district your parcel is in, and whether a recorded plan quietly replaces that district altogether. There are a lot of ways to trip up, and missing one doesn't feel like missing anything — that's the problem.
Fast, and genuinely fine for getting oriented.
The catchIt can read an enormous amount and still not know which of it is the authority. A forum post, a neighboring town's code and the ordinance that actually governs your parcel all carry roughly the same weight, so what comes back is an average of several towns and several districts, possibly none of them yours, with the local amendment that decides the answer averaged away. It reads exactly as confident either way.
Zoning and building code are two different departments, with two sets of documents that don’t reference each other. Getting both means two enquiries, two waits, and knowing what to ask each of them. We answer both halves together, for one address, in the time it takes to read this.
We resolve the actual parcel, the authority that actually governs it, the district or recorded plan that actually applies, and the code edition and local amendments that authority actually adopted — then answer from those documents and cite the subsection for every line. Nothing is averaged, inferred from a similar town, or smoothed into a plausible paragraph.
Every line carries the subsection it came from, and a link back to the source wherever we can give you one. Where we don’t hold something, it says so and names who to ask — a blank is never filled with the nearest plausible number.
Every number, determination and citation comes from a rules engine reading the documents that jurisdiction actually adopted. A language model writes the plain-English summary at the top and describes your project back to you at intake — and it is blocked, at the point of writing, from stating any code section, edition or figure that isn’t already in the cited analysis. If it tries, you get the plain version instead.
Codes get amended quietly and codifiers republish without announcing it, so every jurisdiction we cover is re-checked on a weekly cycle — the published code, the address data behind it, and the ordinances passed but not yet codified, which is the change that shows up nowhere else until it’s law. What we won’t claim is catching every change in every town the moment it happens.
Our limits, stated up front: we answer in full for the jurisdictions below and say so plainly when you’re outside them. Where we don’t hold something — a recorded plan we haven’t obtained, a topic we haven’t written yet — the report says exactly that and names the planning department to ask, rather than filling the gap with the nearest plausible number. It’s a fast, cited first read, not a stamped opinion.
The same cited read pays off differently depending on your seat — and it changes which package makes sense. Pick yours.
A buyer asks what they could do with the place — add a unit, pop the top, convert the shop — and the honest answer today is “I think so?” followed by a call to the planning department on Monday.
How we helpWe help you make the sale. The base report helps any sale; the workspace is for the listing that “has potential” — so you can show them what that potential actually is while they are still sitting in front of you.
No account, no forms, nothing to tell us about the project. Three steps, and the address is the only thing you type.
Any address in a covered jurisdiction. No parcel numbers, no municipal-site spelunking. We resolve which authority actually governs it — town or county — and find the parcel itself.
The zoning district, and whether a recorded planned-development plan or an overlay governs instead of it. Then the code editions that authority adopted and the local amendments that differ from the model code. No questions to answer — the address is the input.
Buildable envelope and setbacks, height, coverage, allowable use, adopted editions, amendments, energy code, the mapped soils and the design criteria — each answer with the subsection it came from, and a plain statement wherever we don't hold something.
Not one product in three sizes — three different questions. Most people need the first or the second and never the third.
| What you get | Freeany address | Property report$99 | Design workspace$299 |
|---|---|---|---|
| About the property — true before you have a project | |||
| Zoning district, and what it permitsEvery use the district allows, conditions, and what it forbids. | Partly includedThe district itself is free. What it permits is the paid half. | Included | Included |
| Setbacks, height, coverage and floor areaThe district's own figures, with the datum each is measured from. | Not included | Included | Included |
| Your buildable envelope, drawn on your lotThe county parcel boundary with the envelope drawn inside it. | Partly includedYour lot is drawn to shape for free. The envelope and setback lines are not. | Included | Included |
| Adopted code editions and local amendmentsWhere this jurisdiction differs from the model code. | Partly includedThe adopted editions are free. The local amendments are the paid half. | Included | Included |
| Design criteria — wind, ground snow, frost depth, seismic, climate zoneThe figures the town publishes, with the document they come from. | Included | Included | Included |
| Overlays, planned-development plans, special districtsIncluding recorded PUD plans most people never find. | Partly includedYou learn for free THAT one governs your parcel. What it says is the paid half. | Included | Included |
| Mapped soils, wildfire and hazards | Not included | Included | Included |
| What is scheduled to changeAdopted-but-not-yet-effective editions, and pending amendments. | Not included | Included | Included |
| Every figure cited to the section it came from | Not included | Included | Included |
| A PDF you keep, dated and sourced | Not included | Included | Included |
| About your project — these depend on what you build | |||
| Requirements for YOUR designEgress, energy, structure and fire, evaluated against the project you describe. | Not included | Not included | Included |
| The trades: mechanical, plumbing, electrical, energyWith this jurisdiction's own adopted figures, not the model default. | Not included | Not included | Included |
| The thresholds that turn requirements ONImpervious area, disturbed area, earthwork, occupant load, work area — the number that makes a rule fire. | Not included | Not included | Included |
| The alteration path for an existing buildingWhat changes because you are touching something already there. | Not included | Not included | Included |
| Iterate — move it, resize it, see what moves with itThe loop. Change the footprint and watch which requirements change. | Not included | Not included | Included |
| Saved for 12 months, as many passes as you likeWhich is why the workspace needs a free account and the report does not. | Not included | Not included | Included |
| Neither one does these — and no tool honestly can | |||
| A stamped or engineered designWe will not size a beam, lay out a stair, or certify anything. | Not included | Not included | Not included |
| A code or zoning determinationWhere a rule is discretionary, your jurisdiction decides. We tell you the question exists. | Not included | Not included | Not included |
| Variances, alternates and appeals | Not included | Not included | Not included |
Or just read one. The first two are the same real Longmont lot asked the two different questions — held constant on purpose, so the gap between the documents is the difference between the products. The third is a commercial parcel.
Sample property report (PDF) →Sample design workspace (PDF) →Sample property report, commercial parcel (PDF) →Note: The site plan is drawn from the county's own parcel boundary. Where a jurisdiction publishes no boundary for a lot, the report still gives the setback, height and coverage figures — without the drawing. We tell you which you are getting before you pay, never after.
The free lookup is a complete small answer, not a crippled report — it fully answers “what is this property, and who governs it?” What you pay for is every computed figure and the cited analysis behind it. The workspace is a different question again: not a longer report, but somewhere to keep asking as the design changes.
We’d rather answer fewer jurisdictions properly than blanket a map thinly. Depth is the whole point.
The service area is Denver north to Fort Collins — stopping at the mountains on the west and reaching a little east of I-25. That edge is deliberate. Mountain jurisdictions each amend the code their own way, and we would rather answer the corridor properly than draw a wide map we can’t stand behind.
Inside that area we answer for 16 of 21 authorities — towns and the unincorporated county land between them, which answers to the county rather than any town.
We only claim a jurisdiction once the depth is really there. Outside the list you can still get a first pass from the model codes, clearly marked as such — and if a report hits something we don’t hold, it says so plainly and names the planning department to ask, rather than guessing.
Codes and adopted editions change, and we track them closely — but you’re in these jurisdictions every day, and you’ll sometimes catch a change before we do. Every report has a one-tap way to flag something that looks out of date or wrong. We genuinely want to hear it: we look right away, and we tell you when we’ve fixed it.
We’d rather you tell us than find out the hard way. A tool about being right has to make it easy to say when it isn’t.
I am an architect and a general contractor — twenty years of registered practice, and a construction company on the Front Range that has to actually build what gets drawn. Code and zoning research is not an unfamiliar job to me. I have done it for a very long time.
And it still took me an afternoon per address. Not because the information is secret — almost all of it is public. Because it is scattered: the adopted editions in one place, the local amendments in another, the ordinances a town keeps outside its municipal code somewhere else again, the fire district, the energy code, and a recorded plan that quietly governs the parcel instead of the district everybody assumes. Knowing the code well does not tell you where all of it is kept.
If it costs me an afternoon, it costs somebody doing it for the first time a week — or, more often, it costs them the project, because they never find out and decide without it. That bothered me enough to build the thing I wanted: type an address, get the answer, with the subsection printed under every line so I could check it.
I built it for my own jobs first, and then for everybody else running the same search. It is not a novel story and I do not think it needs to be. It is just the reason this exists, and why it is built to show its work rather than ask you to trust it.
A report is a fact about a place, dated the day you bought it, and the document stays yours. What carries a term is re-running that address after the code moves. If you run properties through this every month, a pack of three brings the per-report price down — and every report in it is still bought per property, not as a login to an unlimited tap.
Two different questions. Most people start with the first and only some need the second — and if you buy the report first, it credits in full toward the workspace on that same property.
“What does this property allow?”
You have an address. You may not have a project yet, and you do not need one.
A few minutes. No questions asked beyond the address.
“Will MY project work here, and what breaks when I change it?”
You are designing something on that property — an addition, a second unit, a change of use, a scrape-and-rebuild — and the scheme is going to move several times before it is finished.
Answer as much as you know; run it again every time the design moves.
Because the answer is not where you would look for it, and the obvious answer is often the wrong one. Frederick was serving permitted uses out of an article of its own code it had already repealed. A quarter of Louisville's addresses take their setbacks from a recorded plan that is not in the municipal code at all. Superior keys its standards to a development name that its zoning map does not carry. Colorado's wildfire code reads voluntary in its own front matter — the mandate is in the statute that created it. Denver publishes setbacks by lot width, so the district alone does not answer the question. Each of those produces a confident, wrong answer if you stop at the obvious source, and every one of them is a real thing we hit and had to resolve.
Everything we hold for that address: zoning district and the standards that actually govern it, buildable envelope, allowable use, adopted code editions, local amendments, energy code, and the overlays or planned-development plans most people never find. Cited line by line.
For a project you're weighing across a few parcels, or a couple of months of client questions. Credits don't expire.
Almost nobody should start at the top. The path below is the one we would actually recommend, and the last rung only makes sense once the habit is real.
One property report$99
See what the thing actually gives you on an address you already know the answer to. No account, no subscription, and if you go on to design something there it credits in full.
Upgrade that report to the design workspace+$200
The $99 comes off, so the workspace costs $200 from here. One property, unlimited passes for 12 months — the listing you keep getting asked about, or the project you are actually going to draw.
A three- or six-month subscriptionfrom $2,997
Worth it from about four properties a month — three if your months come in lumps and you would use the rollover. Below that, buying them one at a time is genuinely cheaper and we would rather you did.
One property, unlimited passes for 12 months. Test a design, change it, test it again — footprint and setbacks on the plan, with height, coverage, area and the code that bites reported against it. Iterating is the job, so it isn't metered.
Bought the $99 report first? It credits in full toward the workspace on that same property.
What each product answers — and where it stops → Three levels of detail, with the ceiling of each stated plainly. Worth two minutes before you choose.
We build your jurisdiction’s own ground into a page you host — so the question your counter answers fifty times a week gets answered before it reaches you, from your adopted code, cited. Partnered jurisdictions can make the base report free to anyone asking about an address in their town.
No account needed to buy — pay, get the report, claim it afterwards if you want it kept. Payments handled by Stripe; we never see your card.
Still wondering something? Email joshua@addwell.design — a real person answers.
Everything we hold for that specific property: which authority governs it, its zoning district and whether a recorded planned-development plan or overlay governs instead, your buildable envelope and setbacks, height and coverage limits, allowable use and ADU eligibility, adopted building and energy code editions, local amendments, the mapped soils under the lot with the USDA’s own ratings, and the design criteria an engineer needs. Each answer carries the subsection it came from, with a link back to the source document wherever we can give you one.
No. You buy the report for a property and it is yours — the document is dated and stays available, and we put no time limit on re-running that property against the code as it changes. Codes move, we keep reading them, and your report keeps up, for as long as we offer the service. The design workspace is bought the same way, per project, and stays live on that property for a full twelve months. If you run several properties a month, a pack of three reports brings the price of each one down; nothing here bills you monthly.
For any address in a covered jurisdiction: which town or county governs it, its zoning district, whether a planned development or overlay applies, the adopted code editions in force, and your lot drawn to shape. That is a complete answer to “what is this property?” — not a teaser with the numbers blurred out. The computed figures and the cited analysis are the paid product.
No. It’s a cited first-pass research tool that points you at the governing code and zoning fast. It’s meant to speed up your own judgment or your professional’s — not to replace a stamped opinion, a formal zoning determination, or plan review. Verify with the jurisdiction before you design, permit, build, buy or sell.
Yes — as dated, cited research. Every answer is cited to the subsection it came from, with the adopted code editions named and dated, and the report carries a coverage statement separating what was evaluated and found clear from what we have not yet written for that jurisdiction. It is not a certification: not an appraisal, engineering or architectural certification, and never a guarantee that a permit will be issued. The authority having jurisdiction decides.
Yes. The report is yours to share — hand it to a buyer, attach it to a listing, forward the link. It is not a disclosure: it shows what the jurisdiction publishes about a property, not what is recorded against the title, and it is not a code or zoning determination. Easements, covenants and HOA restrictions sit outside it, and a full title report is what tells you all encumbrances. Verify with the jurisdiction before anyone buys or sells on it.
No. It is not a code analysis for submission — not a construction document, not a code or zoning determination, and nothing here may be used to construct, to size or specify anything, or in place of a licensed designer or engineer. Use it to write yours: every line carries the subsection it came from and a link back to the source wherever we can give you one, so the re-reading is done and the judgment stays yours.
The path, yes: the report’s Permitting & Submittal section names what to apply for and where, from the jurisdiction’s own submittal requirements. Fees and inspections are not evaluated. Fee schedules, permit expiry and inspection sequencing are administrative rules — real ones, and not the ones that decide whether the project works — so confirm them with the building department.
No — and it’s worth being precise, because the distinction is the product. Every figure, determination and citation is produced by a rules engine reading the documents that jurisdiction adopted; no model decides a setback or picks a code section. A language model does two narrow jobs: it writes the plain-English summary at the top of the report, and at the start of a workspace it reads your description of the project so you don’t have to answer questions that don’t apply. Both are fenced. The summary is checked before you see it and is discarded in favor of a plain template if it states anything the cited analysis doesn’t, and the intake’s reading of your description comes back as suggestions you can remove.
The northern Front Range — Denver up to Fort Collins, stopping at the mountains on the west. 16 jurisdictions are answered in full today, with 5 more held in part and marked as such, and the map above shows the outlines. We’re expanding through that corridor deliberately. Tell us the jurisdiction you need and it moves up the queue.
Every jurisdiction we cover is re-read on a weekly cycle — the published code, the address data behind it, and the ordinances that are passed but not yet codified, which is the change that shows up nowhere else until it’s already law. If something we told you about your property changes, we can tell you: the report regenerates from the same inputs, so we compare the actual answers rather than guessing from an amendment notice. What we can’t promise is to catch every change in every town the moment it happens, and we won’t claim otherwise.
Not to look something up, and not to buy a report — pay, read it, and claim it afterwards if you want it kept and watched. For the design workspace you do want one, because the whole point is coming back: twelve months of running the design again as it changes, and printing the current version whenever you need it. An account is also what lets you start with the $99 report and upgrade that same property to a workspace later, paying only the difference.
We don’t sell it, we don’t train AI models on it, and we don’t share it with third parties. We store the addresses you look up so your reports work and so we can tell you if an answer changes; we use it only to run the service for you, and you can delete it. Payments are handled by Stripe — we never see or store your card.
A working architect and general contractor built it for their own Colorado design-build firm, out of real friction with jurisdiction research — then opened it up. It’s made by people who do this work, not a startup guessing at it.
Look one up free and see what comes back. Jurisdiction, district, adopted editions and your lot — no card, no account. The full report is there when you want it.