About this tool

Type a NYC address or borough-block-lot number and get a one-page site screening: the zoning envelope and unused FAR, ownership and mortgage history, permit activity on the lot and its block, and a 485-x tax-exemption feasibility read for a proposed unit mix, exportable as a PDF memo. It is free, has no login, and works on any tax lot in the five boroughs.

Every number on a screening is computed by deterministic TypeScript reading official datasets and hand-verified rule tables. The FAR values come from the text of the Zoning Resolution, transcribed by hand with the section and verification date recorded on every row. The 485-x parameters come from the statute and HPD’s program materials the same way. If a district or program rule has not been verified against a primary source, it is not in the configuration, and the screener says so instead of guessing.

A language model has exactly one job here: turning a finished screening result into the memo’s opening paragraph. Before that paragraph ships, a validator extracts every numeric token from the draft and checks each one against the screening data; a draft containing any number that is not in the data is rejected and replaced with a deterministic template. The model never performs a calculation, and removing it entirely would not change a single figure the tool produces.

• Lot characteristics: DCP PLUTO, queried live from NYC Open Data per lot, with the PLUTO release version printed on every screening.
• Zoning envelope: maximum residential FAR from Zoning Resolution sections 23-21 and 23-22 (as amended December 2024 by City of Yes), commercial residential equivalents from section 34-112, each transcribed and dated.
• Ownership, sales, and mortgages: ACRIS Legals, Master, and Parties datasets, with document classes taken from the Department of Finance’s own document control codes table.
• Permits: DOB BIS filings and DOB NOW filings, merged and deduplicated.
• 485-x: RPTL section 485-x and HPD’s program page for options, schedules, and wage floors; HPD’s published AMI and rent charts for affordable rents; 2020 NTA boundaries and the mapped 96th Street centerline for Zone A/B geometry; DOF published tax rates for the screening tax estimate.

Every screening lists its sources with dataset IDs and retrieval dates.

A screening tool earns trust by knowing its limits. When a lot involves something the engine does not model, the screener flags it prominently and labels the numbers indicative instead of computing through it: special purpose districts, limited height districts, landmarks and historic districts, split-zoned lots, condominium lots, and any zoning district without a verified configuration entry. The limitations printed on every report are part of the product: it does not model MIH areas, air-rights transfers, the sliver law, height and setback rules, or zoning floor-area deductions, and its buildable-area figures are screening-grade approximations of what an architect would compute in a real zoning analysis.

Built by Jake Gandolfo, a Wharton MBA focused on NYC real estate development, as a working demonstration that AI-era tooling and real estate judgment belong in the same product: the AI writes sentences, the deterministic engine does the arithmetic, and the public record does the talking. Also the builder of VoucherMatch, a housing-voucher data platform.