Yesterday we got the news that commercial real estate data giant, Lightbox, acquired the zoning data company PZR. Along with the acquisition, Lightbox now has more than 223,000 digitized property zoning reports. This acquisition is a great validator of all the work we’ve been doing for the past five years. 

Deepblocks software includes zoning data for 16,430,232 sites in the US. Moreover, these data points are not just digitized, they are all part of powerful site-selection functionality. For example, developers and acquisition teams filter 10,000 sites for multifamily units allowed in under one minute. 

Why is zoning data powerful?

Zoning data projects the future of a city. Not just on what can be built. Zoning also has qualitative insights into how a city thinks about growth, density, inclusivity, and walkability. These are all soft metrics that can make or break a development vision. 

Having this data across hundreds of cities, and identifying the quantitative and qualitative opportunities is our job. We are using machine learning to combine zoning with demographic data to predict the next boom markets. 

Can zoning be used for Value-Add investments?

It would be silly not to! Think about it. Why would you renovate a building that has a huge development multiple? Understanding what is possible on any site with an existing building is crucial. Zoning can also tell you if the zoning has been maximized, which means, most likely that it is a great Value-Add or maybe Core Plus opportunity. 

The combination of identifying older buildings that have maxed out their zoning capacity can be huge for Value-Add operations. 

More will be revealed,

Olivia

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Olivia Ramos is the CEO of Deepblocks, an AI-powered software that automates the site selection process for developers and investors. 

See how quickly you can find your next development site here (our record is 3 minutes).