Zoning research, delivered.
ZoneRep is a zoning research firm. We produce professional zoning and permit reports — instantly when automated, thoroughly when it matters. Order a report. We deliver it.
$1,200
$149
per report you order
per outsourced report
14 days
90 sec
your report is ready
avg firm turnaround
Order once
for one deal
or by the month
for your practice
No credit card required · Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Miami-Dade next
Sample report · 1823 S Congress Ave →
1823 S Congress Ave, Austin, TX 78704
Generated May 16, 2026 · Austin Full Purpose
Overall Risk
General Commercial Services + Mixed Use + Neighborhood Plan overlay
Permitted uses (by right)
Open permit — deal blocker
Permit #2023-098712 BP · issued March 2023
Status: ACTIVE (26 months unfinaled)
Impact: Lender will not fund until resolved.
Whether it's your deal or your client's.
Three audiences. One report standard. ZoneRep replaces hours of manual research or four-figure outsourcing — for everyone in the transaction.
Attorneys & Law Firms
Order reports on behalf of your clients. We produce them.
Stop coordinating with outside firms or running it manually. Order a professional report from us, deliver it to your client the same day, and move closings forward.
Title & Closing
We handle the zoning research on every closing. You stay in your workflow.
Catch nonconforming uses, open permits, and unrecorded violations before they become title exceptions. Reports your underwriters and clients can rely on — produced by us, branded for you.
Investors & Developers
Screen 20 properties. Buy the right one.
Instead of paying $1,200 per report on every deal, order Instant screens at $149 each across your pipeline and order Verified or Certified on the deal you commit to. Find what kills the deal before earnest money.
$0
What attorneys and investors currently pay certified firms — per report
(Industry rates from certified zoning firms)
0 days
Average turnaround from a certified zoning firm
(Industry standard for lender-grade reports)
0%
Of commercial transactions surface a zoning or permit issue — found at closing instead of before contract
(ALTA survey data)
$0
Cost of city permit data — it's been publicly available for 15+ years
(US Open Data Initiative)
Real estate professionals are flying blind — with a lot of money on the line.
When you go under contract on a commercial or investment property, you enter a due diligence window. What happens in that window determines whether the deal closes — and whether you close it profitably.
Standard practice today: either hire a certified zoning firm for $1,200 and wait two weeks, or spend 20+ hours manually navigating city websites, PDF ordinances, and permit portals. Most investors skip both and hope the title company catches problems at closing.
That's too late. Problems found at closing cost you: earnest money, attorney fees, deal timelines, and sometimes the deal itself.
A certified report costs what it costs
Certified zoning firms produce thorough, certifiable reports. They should exist. But at $500–$1,200 per report with 10–14 day turnarounds, they're designed for loan closings — not the 20 properties you evaluate before finding the one you want to buy.
Manual research is a full-time job
City permit portals aren't designed for professionals doing due diligence. Each city stores data differently. Finding every permit, reading every status code, cross-referencing the zoning code with the actual ordinance — done properly, it takes a full working day per property.
The wrong problem found at the wrong time
Open permits. Nonconforming structures. Expired code violations. Overlay districts that restrict your renovation plans. These aren't obscure edge cases — they appear on a significant portion of investment properties. Finding them before contract, not at closing, changes everything.
Timeline: where most investors find zoning problems
“The earlier you find a problem, the cheaper it is.”
Address in. Professional report out.
ZoneRep pulls from every relevant public data source, runs it through a structured analysis engine, and produces a formatted report in under 90 seconds.
Address Input
You type an address
City Data
Zoning classification + overlays
Permit History
Every permit ever filed on this parcel
Analysis Engine
Red flags identified + risk score
Report + PDF
Full report emailed
We know what to look for
Zoning data alone tells you the designation. What it doesn't tell you is whether the existing building was built to that designation — or whether improvements were made properly. Our analysis goes beyond the zone code into the permit record, searching for the specific conditions that make a property financeable or not.
Every data source, automatically queried
For each property, we query multiple official government data sources simultaneously — zoning records, construction permits, environmental designations, and more. Cross-referencing these sources is where the analysis value comes from. Checking one in isolation is how professionals miss things.
The report a professional would write
Our report format mirrors the structure used by certified zoning firms — the same sections, the same comparison tables, the same conformance determinations. You get institutional-quality analysis at the speed and cost of a self-service tool.
A report that stands up to scrutiny.
14 sections. Professional formatting. Every number sourced. Delivered as a branded PDF and a live online link — shareable with your team, your attorney, or your lender.
Click to explore →
Permit History — 1823 S Congress Ave, Austin TX
14 permits on record (2006 – present) · Permit health score: 0/100
Open Permit — Action Required
- 2023BPCommercial Interior Renovation$45,000Active
Permit #2023-098712 · Issued 3/14/2023
⚠ 26 months unfinaled. Must be resolved before closing.
- 2022EPElectrical Upgrade$8,200Final ✓
- 2021BPInterior Renovation$28,000Final ✓
- 2019BPNew Construction — Commercial$540,000Final ✓
- 2018MPMechanical — HVAC$12,000Final ✓
[9 additional finaled permits — 2006–2017]
Permit Health Score
-25 points: 1 open permit
Every layer of due diligence, in a single report.
ZoneRep covers the full spectrum of zoning and permit due diligence — from the quick pre-offer check to the lender-ready compliance package.
Zoning Classification & Overlay Parsing
Every zone code, base designation, and combining district resolved into plain English. Overlays are analyzed individually — because that's where the complexity lives.
Permitted Uses — By Right and Conditional
A complete list of what can be done on the property without a special permit, and what requires one. Critical before any offer conversation.
Development Standards Table
Height limits, FAR, setbacks, lot coverage, and density requirements — presented as a comparison table: what's required versus what exists.
Adjacent Property Zoning
The zoning designation of every neighboring property (N, S, E, W). Required for identifying compatibility buffer requirements that aren't obvious from the subject zone alone.
Future Land Use Map Analysis
The municipality's stated vision for what an area should become — separate from current zoning. Identifies upzoning potential and long-term risk.
23 total features
What this costs your practice vs. what you're paying now.
Real math for a real estate practice running zoning research at typical volume.
Without ZoneRep
- Outsourced report cost$1,200 per report
- Turnaround time10–14 business days
- Reports per month5–8 typical
- Monthly research cost$6,000–$9,600
- Passed to clientMarked up + delayed
With ZoneRep Professional
- Cost per report$149 — or $99 on Professional
- Turnaround timeUnder 90 seconds
- Reports per month5 included + $99 each thereafter
- Monthly research cost$599 + usage
- Passed to clientBranded with your firm
The average real estate practice saves $3,400–$16,400 per month.
Based on typical outsourcing rates ($1,200/report) and reported research volumes for firms handling 5–15 commercial closings per month.
When the deal requires a human — we are the human.
Every ZoneRep report is produced by our research process — AI-driven by default, human-verified when the transaction requires it. When an official letter needs to be requested from a city, our team requests it. When a fire department record needs to be checked, our team checks it. When physical archives need to be pulled, our researchers pull them. You order a report. We handle the rest.
Official documentation — we handle the entire process.
Certain lenders and title underwriters require official documentation that only a government authority can issue. Our Certified tier includes submitting the request and delivering the result. We handle the process; you receive the output when it's ready.
Our researchers go where databases end.
Every jurisdiction maintains records differently. Some data is current. Some lags. Some lives in physical archives or only comes back if you call the right department. Verified and Certified reports include a human researcher on our team handling exactly those steps before the report is released.
Zoning, building, and fire code — all three covered. Our team handles what automation can't reach.
Zoning, building, and fire code violations each live in different systems. Our process covers all three categories — the automated portion screens what's in public data, and our researchers retrieve the rest directly from the municipal authority.
We know each city's records system. We've done the research.
Rather than providing thin coverage across 3,000 cities, we build deep, verified coverage city by city — with specific knowledge of each jurisdiction's data sources, code structure, and local regulatory nuances. That depth is what separates a useful report from a risky one.
“We do not overstate what our reports certify. We are explicit about what is automated, what is verified, and what requires additional professional review. That transparency is a feature, not a limitation.”
Three ways to order.
Order an Instant report when AI alone is enough. Order Verified when a real person needs to review it. Order Certified when an official letter must be procured. The customer orders. We produce.
Instant
AI pipeline · 90-second delivery
For: Pre-offer screening and standard due diligence
- Risk score
- Zoning classification
- Full conformance table
- Complete permit history
- Permit timeline visual
- Adjacent zoning
- Detailed red flags
- Right to rebuild analysis
- Environmental flags
- Branded PDF + 90-day link
Verified
AI + human researcher · 24–48 hours
For: Reports going to attorneys, lenders, or clients
Includes human researcher review + fire department check
- Everything in Instant
- Researcher review of every finding
- Fire department violation check
- Pre-2006 variance lookup
- Open permit verification with city DSD
- “Verified by ZoneRep Research Team” certification
- Suitable for sharing with counsel
Certified
Full-service · 7–10 business days
For: Lender submissions and underwriting packages
Includes official letter procurement + full researcher handling
- Everything in Verified
- Official Zoning Verification Letter procurement
- Physical variance record retrieval
- Structural reconstruction stress analysis
- Law & ordinance insurance calculation
- Fannie Mae Form 4089
- Lender-submittable package
Volume API
Custom pricing based on volume
For: CRE platforms, large title operations, lenders at scale
- REST API access
- Webhook delivery
- White-label PDFs
- Custom data fields
- SLA + dedicated infra
- Volume pricing
Prices shown are planned launch pricing. Waitlist members receive founder pricing on their first 3 reports. Each report covers one property address. Austin, TX at launch — additional markets rolling out.
Questions, answered directly.
Traditional firms like BBG or Partner ESI produce lender-certified reports — official documents, physical signatures, professional liability insurance. That work is appropriate for commercial loan closings. ZoneRep is itself a zoning research firm — rebuilt with automation at the foundation. 80% of the work is done by our AI pipeline (Instant tier). The remaining 20% — fire department checks, archived variances, official letter procurement — is handled by our human research team (Verified and Certified tiers). The customer orders. We produce.
Get ahead of every deal.
You order a zoning report. We produce it. Whether the deal is yours or your client's — ZoneRep handles the research end to end.
Order Verified or Certified reports on behalf of your clients. Human researcher in the loop. Branded for your firm.
Join the waitlist for early access and founder pricing on your first Instant reports.
Austin waitlist open. Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Miami-Dade coming shortly.