LotForma: what we're building next, and what it isn't
LotForma is in development as an invite-only pilot. Enter an address and it reads the zoning, sizes the buildable envelope, benchmarks construction cost, and flags the risks. Here is what it does, what it produces, and, plainly, what it is not.
Most property decisions are made in the gap between a listing and a feasibility study. Someone is weighing three parcels, or a building they already own, and needs an answer to a simple question before they commit real money: which of these deserves a deeper look?
Today that question is expensive to answer. A zoning check, a rough envelope, a cost benchmark, and a list of risks each live in a different place, and pulling them together is a specialist's week. So the decision gets made on a hunch, or delayed until it is no longer cheap to delay.
Judging a site shouldn't require a specialist's week.
What LotForma does
LotForma is the product we are building next. You enter an address, and it reads the zoning, sizes the buildable envelope, benchmarks construction cost, and flags the risks — so you can judge which sites deserve a deeper look, before you pay for a full feasibility study.
What you get back
The output is built for a decision, not for a data dump. On a parcel where the city data is loaded, you get:
- Zoning district, overlays, and setbacks for that parcel.
- The buildable envelope — footprint, height, unit count, and parking type.
- Hard and soft cost ranges, traced to the source they came from, so a number can be checked rather than taken on faith.
- A PDF report and a share link you can hand to partners and lenders.
That last point matters more than it sounds. The usual outcome of an early site review is a paragraph in an email that nobody can audit six weeks later. A report and a share link keep the reasoning attached to the numbers.
What it is not
This is the part we want to be precise about, because it is easy to read a product like this as more than it is.
LotForma is in development. It is an invite-only pilot, access requires an invite code, there is no public signup, and there is no launch date to announce. It is not finished, and it is not generally available.
It also describes itself the way we want it described: an early screening aid. It is not zoning verification, and it is not professional advice. It will tell you which sites are worth a closer look and give you the reasoning to start that conversation; it will not replace the zoning official, the survey, the engineer, or the attorney who signs off on the real thing.
An early screening aid — not zoning verification, and not professional advice.
Why pilot it this way
Because the honest version of this product depends on data we do not control. Zoning detail is only as good as what a given city publishes: where the data is loaded for a parcel, the district, overlays, and setbacks come back; where it is not, they do not, and the tool should never pretend otherwise.
An invite-only pilot lets us work with a small number of real sites and real questions, find where the screening is thin, and fix it before anyone relies on it. That is slower than announcing something. It is also the only way we would be comfortable putting it in front of someone making a land decision.
Why we are building it at all
It is the same reason behind everything else we make. Mercatura exists because powerful tools tend to arrive packaged for teams with the time and budget to use them — and the people making consequential decisions with less support get the worst of that. AI's problem was never capability; it was packaging.
LotForma is that idea applied to land. The first two bets, STVARA and Praetix, proved the pattern on marketing and publishing. This one is earlier, and we are treating it that way. The story of how the company got here is in “It began with a friendship.”
Where it stands
LotForma is under development, badged as an invite-only pilot on our products page, and that is where its status is kept current. There is nothing to sign up for today, and we are not going to invent a date to make this read like a launch.
What we will say plainly: the problem is real, the approach is the one we would want if we were the ones deciding which site to pursue, and we would rather show it to a handful of people who can stress it than announce it to everyone before it is ready.
If you are weighing a site and want to talk it through, get in touch. You can also read more about LotForma on its own site, lotforma.com.