If you don't find what you're looking for here, the Regulations page covers the full details of what the platform incorporates.
The platform analyzes the maximum number of dwelling units that can be developed on any San Diego parcel under current California and City of San Diego regulations. For each applicable pathway — Base Zoning MDUs + ADUs, Affordable Density Bonus, Micro-Unit Density Bonus, Complete Communities Housing Solutions, ADU Home Density Bonus, a stacked Affordable + ADU Home combination using San Diego's Realistic Development Capacity method, and SB-1211 multifamily ADUs — the engine determines eligibility, applies the relevant formula, and returns a unit count. Results are presented side by side so you can see which pathway yields the most development for your specific site.
Yes. The platform is built specifically for the City of San Diego. While many of the state laws it incorporates apply throughout California, the local regulations, overlay zones, bonus programs, and zoning data are specific to San Diego. We may expand to other California jurisdictions in the future.
A consultant brings professional judgment, site visits, and accountability — the platform doesn't replace that once a project moves toward entitlement. What it replaces is the preliminary screening step: the hours or days spent researching what's possible before deciding whether a site is worth pursuing. The platform returns that answer in seconds, at a fraction of the cost.
Just the parcel address or APN (Assessor's Parcel Number). The platform pulls zoning, lot size, overlay designations, and site conditions automatically. Before running the analysis you set development assumptions — stories, average unit size, efficiency factor, lot coverage, and parking type — and those assumptions remain editable on the results page so you can see how the unit counts update. If you intend to preserve an existing multifamily building on the site, enter the number of preserved units to evaluate the SB-1211 pathway.
During beta, each account includes 3 free site analyses. Additional sites are available through 5-site bundle, monthly, or annual plans — see the Pricing page for details.
The engine handles standard parcel configurations. Irregular lot shapes, flag lots, and parcels with multiple zoning designations or split overlays may produce results that require additional professional review. The tool automatically flags common site-level concerns — storm drain easements, overhead utility lines, corner-lot fire-access implications, Alquist-Priolo fault zones, FEMA flood zones, airport influence and safety zones, FAA Part 77 notification heights, and historic designations — but you should still verify against the title report and a site visit before relying on the analysis.
The platform is designed to reflect current law accurately. The regulations are maintained and updated when state legislation or local ordinances change. That said, results are preliminary feasibility analyses — they reflect what the regulations allow in principle, not a guarantee of what will be approved on any specific project. Site-specific conditions, design constraints, and discretionary review (where applicable) can affect actual outcomes.
Base zoning refers to development that complies with the parcel's underlying zone standards as written — use type, density, setbacks, height, parking, lot coverage — without invoking a density-bonus or other state-override program. Such projects are entitled to ministerial approval: the city must approve them if they meet objective standards, without a public hearing or discretionary review. "By-right" is a common colloquial label for the same concept, but "base zoning" is the more technically precise term, since every pathway in this tool (density bonus, ADU, Complete Communities) is also approved by-right under state law. The platform identifies which development pathways on your parcel are eligible and how many units each one yields.
That depends on your goals, financing structure, and appetite for complexity. Higher-yield pathways often require affordable unit commitments, design standards, or labor requirements. The results page presents the tradeoffs for each pathway so you can make an informed decision — but selecting the right strategy for a real project is where a development consultant or architect adds value.
Yes. After an analysis runs, you can edit Development Assumptions — stories, average unit size, efficiency factor, lot coverage, parking type, and preserved-unit count — on the results page and each pathway recalculates. You can also swap affordability tiers on any pathway that offers one (VLI / LI / MI for Density Bonus, Micro-Unit, and ADU Home Density Bonus; the four affordability mixes for Complete Communities), and the unit breakdown updates without running a new analysis.
It's the anchor input for the SB-1211 Multifamily ADU pathway. SB-1211 (California Gov. Code §66323, as amended effective 2025) lets a property owner add up to 8 detached ADUs plus interior conversions on a site with preserved existing multifamily dwellings — approved ministerially. Enter the number of existing primary units you intend to preserve to unlock the SB-1211 card. Other pathways don't depend on this field.
Reach out to us. Regulations are complex and edge cases exist. If you believe the analysis has misapplied a regulation or missed an overlay designation on your parcel, we want to know about it.
The platform reflects regulations currently in effect. SB-79 (effective July 1, 2026) is documented on the Regulations page as upcoming, and its downstream effects — such as exclusion of designated historic sites and Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone parcels from state-density provisions — are already flagged on results. Per-parcel SB-79 eligibility is not yet calculated; we're waiting on the authoritative transit-overlay map from SANDAG and California HCD and will wire it up once published. The Regulations page documents everything the platform currently incorporates, including effective dates.
Yes. The platform factors in overlays and site-level designations that affect development yield or permitting: Transit Priority Areas, Sustainable Development Areas (the City's walking-distance-to-transit definition), Complete Communities Housing Solutions tiers 1–4, the Coastal Overlay Zone and Coastal Height Limit Overlay Zone, Airport Influence Areas and ALUCP Safety Zones, FAA Part 77 notification heights, FEMA flood zones, Fire Hazard Severity Zones, Alquist-Priolo Earthquake Fault Zones, designated historic districts and resources, utility undergrounding districts, and site-level conditions (corner-lot status, alley adjacency, storm drain easements, overhead utility lines, trolley-line frontage). The Regulations page documents what each designation does to the analysis.
Coastal Zone parcels are supported, but results carry additional uncertainty. The Coastal Overlay Zone and Coastal Height Limitation Overlay Zone add permitting layers — including Coastal Development Permit requirements — that are flagged in results. Some state streamlining provisions have limited application in the Coastal Zone, and those limitations are reflected in the analysis.
The platform includes an AI assistant powered by Anthropic Claude, accessible from three places: the help bubble in the lower-right corner of every page (Ask AI tab), the dedicated /ask page (general zoning Q&A), and the "Ask AI about this analysis" card on the results page (chat pre-loaded with your specific analysis context — address, zone, inputs, per-pathway results — so it can answer parcel-specific questions and what-if scenarios). The assistant is grounded in the San Diego Municipal Code excerpts and zoning data loaded into the tool, and cites the source for every factual claim.
AI-generated answers are informational only. They may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — including when stated with high confidence and accompanied by code citations. They are explicitly NOT legal, architectural, engineering, financial, or planning advice. Verify every assistant answer against the San Diego Municipal Code and confirm with the City of San Diego Development Services Department or a licensed professional before relying on it for any project decision. Treat the assistant as a starting point for your own research, the same way you'd treat a search result.
Your question, recent prior turns of the same conversation, and (on the results page) a summary of your specific analysis are sent to Anthropic's Claude API for response generation. We log a truncated copy of each Q&A exchange to our database for cost monitoring and quality review. The conversation thread you see in the chat panel is stored only in your browser's sessionStorage — it's cleared when you close the tab and is not synced to any server-side conversation database. See the Privacy Policy for full details.
Yes — to keep costs predictable, the AI Q&A endpoint is rate-limited to 20 questions per minute and 200 per day, per user. The limits reset on the relevant rolling window. If you hit a limit, the chat will surface an error message indicating which one and when it resets. Most users won't notice — the limits are sized for genuine research use, not high-volume scripted access.
Each account includes 3 free site analyses during beta. Beyond that, you can purchase a 5-analysis bundle ($179 — $35.80/analysis), an unlimited monthly plan ($199/mo), or an unlimited annual plan ($1,499/yr — saves $889 vs. monthly, 37% off). For context, a single consultant feasibility analysis in San Diego typically runs $1,500 or more — meaning the Annual plan is roughly the cost of one consultant report, in exchange for a year of unlimited analyses. See the Pricing page for full details.
Yes. The parcel addresses you enter and the reports you generate are private to your account. We do not sell or share your data with third parties. See our Privacy Policy for full details.