Write the criteria down first
You give us the territory, the property types, and the decision. The criteria go in writing before any data is pulled.
Method
How our property analysis works, source by source
Public imagery, parcel and permit records, and hazard layers, screened by our own engine against criteria written down in advance. An analyst reviews every rank before it ships.
Sec. 01 — Sources
The public programs the research draws on.
Coverage differs county by county. Every report names the sources that carried it, with their capture dates.
| Source program | What we take from it | How current it is |
|---|---|---|
| USDA NAIP aerial imagery | Roof shape and obstructions, existing arrays, parking and laydown area, site access. | Flown on a two-to-three-year cycle, state by state. |
| USGS 3DEP elevation | Bare-earth terrain, slope, and aspect across the parcel. | Lidar where a county has been flown; coarser DEM where it has not. |
| FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer | Effective flood zone and floodway across the building footprint. | Panel effective dates differ county to county. |
| NOAA storm event records | Recorded hail and wind events over the county, with dates and magnitudes. | Published monthly, with a reporting lag of several weeks. |
| County assessor and parcel records | Parcel boundary, land-use code, building area, year built, owner of record. | Republished on each county's own assessment cycle. |
| County and municipal permit portals | Roofing, electrical, and solar permits filed against an address. | Uneven. Some jurisdictions publish nothing searchable at all. |
| EIA and utility service-territory data | Which utility serves the address, and the rate context around it. | Annual filings. |
Data vintage
County imagery runs one to three years old. A rank resting on a stale source is marked as resting on one.
Sec. 02 — The engine
The screening runs on an engine we built ourselves.
Not off-the-shelf GIS, and not a reseller’s data product. We wrote the software that joins the sources and applies the rubric.
The engine narrows the territory. A named analyst signs off on every rank that leaves the building.
UniformityOne rubric, every parcel
Criteria you signed off are applied the same way on property one and property one thousand.
JoinSources read together
Imagery, parcel, permit, hazard, and utility records normally sit in separate systems. Here they resolve to one address.
ThroughputA territory in days
A 25-property pilot lands in 10 business days, because a territory is a run rather than a stack of manual look-ups.
TraceabilityEvery rank opens up
A position traces back to the records and dates that produced it, so you can challenge it and have it re-run.
Sec. 03 — Review process
Five steps, run the same way every time.
Assemble what the county publishes
The engine pulls the sources above for every parcel. The first output is a list of what exists and what does not.
Screen every parcel against the same rule
Each property carries the evidence that moved it, cited to its source and its date.
Have an analyst try to break the rank
A person hunts for evidence that contradicts each ranked property. What survives ships; what does not is demoted or flagged.
Hand back the open checks
The report ends with what your team still has to verify: outreach, records, engineering, or a site visit.
Sec. 04 — Scope and limits
Rank one means “open this one first”, not “this one will close”.
Both halves of this grid, and the limits under it, are printed in the report itself.
- Which parcels in the territory meet the written criteria, and which do not.
- Where a source was missing, stale, or contradicted another source.
- The specific checks still open on each property, listed per property.
- A rubric you can challenge, adjust, and have us re-run.
- Owner intent, willingness to answer, or budget.
- Equipment condition, remaining service life, or warranty status.
- Interconnection capacity or utility approval.
- Zoning, permitting, or title outcomes.
- Engineering feasibility, project cost, or revenue.
Where these sources fall short
- NAIP imagery is leaf-on and close to midday. Winter shading, seasonal obstruction, and anything built since the flight are invisible to it.
- Assessor records commonly lag a transfer by a full assessment cycle. The owner of record may not be the current owner.
- Permit portals are the least consistent source we use. An absence of permits is not evidence that no work was done.
- A flood zone is a regulatory designation, not a hazard measurement. Outside a mapped zone is not outside flood risk.
- A visible array does not tell you who owns it. Host-owned, leased, and third-party systems look identical from above.
- Nothing here substitutes for engineering, title, appraisal, underwriting, or legal review. A report is prepared for one agreed decision.
Test the method
Have us run this on 3 properties in your territory.
Same sources, same engine, same analyst review, on your market. 3 business days, $0, no obligation.
Get 3 free properties
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