Land Atlas: Honest Farmability Scores for Every Parcel Before You Call the Broker
Land Atlas – soil, farmability, and crop analysis for land listings
I built Land Atlas to help buyers discover what land is really worth before contacting a broker. By capturing listings from major marketplaces, we automatically score every parcel using USDA soil data, FEMA flood zones, and climate records. This tool blends soil quality, crop fit, and grid access into a single honest farmability score, eliminating the need for manual spreadsheets or tab-juggling across government websites.
Know what land is really worth before you ever call the broker.
- ecommerceguy
Former GIS guy here, I've modeled and mapped hundreds of rural jurisdictions so I'm familiar with what you are trying to accomplish. Not sure how comprehensive USDA soil surveys are these days as soil conditions can be hyper local (down to the feet).
Many of large ranch lands and farms are going to be listed exclusively by a certain broker which may require website scrapping at minimum and or heads up data entry at worst.
Colorado:
For general usability, I'd suggest at a minimum adding State and County lines, and further, census place points for labeling.
You've included some interesting filters that's for sure.
And of course my usual plug for a great mapping book - How to Lie with Maps - https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo274005...
I'd be willing to give you input.
- doodlebugging
Nice start to what can be a really useful tool. I did try some of the filters and I think there is a problem in your lookup database somewhere. I clicked on one of the listings in south Texas, Real County, and instead of the map showing the location of that property it took me to Uvalde, Texas which is quite a ways southeast of the property.
I saw similar things for a property in Joshua Tree, California that had no address, just a street name.
I would do as /u/ecommerceguy has suggested and at the very least add a toggle for State and County lines, and label roads and towns and other useful information.
As a feature that you could consider eventually adding for those who are interested in finding a rural property to land on, consider adding a toggle that can show the locations of the closest power and water access for a property using an labelled icon or other visual aid.
Sometimes the biggest challenge in determining whether you should purchase a property that you can live on is to find a place that is close enough to existing infrastructure that it doesn't cost more than the land value to gain access to water. Electricity is less important unless you are far enough north that your exposure limits your collection ability so that battery storage becomes a critical cost to consider.
With that in mind, adding info about solar suitability could be useful.
Here is a Google maps project that can help evaluate options for a property.[0]
- jeffbee
It's nice to have a better UX the the USDA WSS offers, but I feel that this hides too much information. If I click, I am getting soil information at a point, but that might be a minor component and doesn't tell me about the overall area of interest. Also, as a Californian I feel that is irrelevant bordering on useless to display the non-irrigated capability class, as everyone irrigates. Looking at a parcel I am intimately familiar with, it is "4 of 8" but it is class 1 irrigated farmland, prime land of high value.