Case studies and buyer guides — real lots, real federal data, real dollar translations. No thought-leadership fluff: just what FEMA, USDA, USGS, and NOAA actually say about parcels, and what each finding costs to build on.
Cheap land is rarely mispriced — it's priced for a defect you haven't found yet. Floodway, wetlands, failing soils, steep slope, no legal access, disturbed ground, unpermittable water: the checklist in deal-killing order, with the data source that exposes each flag before you're under contract.
Read guide →Insurance triggers, the Base Flood Elevation, freeboard, and the floodway trap — the one line on the FIRM that makes two neighboring "zone AE" lots differ by the entire value of the property. Plus when a LOMA gets you out entirely.
Read guide →The due-diligence item that never shows up at a July showing. What the National Wetlands Inventory reliably flags and routinely misses, the three field indicators, when to pay for a delineation, and what Sackett v. EPA did and didn't change.
Read guide →On unsewered land, septic feasibility is the buildability question. Four numbers in the free USDA soil survey — the septic rating, hydrologic group, water-table depth, and restrictive-layer depth — forecast the health department's verdict before you spend on testing.
Read guide →County viewers are authoritative for boundaries, zoning, and taxes — and quietly incomplete for buildability. Stale flood layers, invisible floodway lines, unexplained soil codes: where the illusion of "I checked the maps" comes from, and how to fill the gaps free.
Read guide →Four Florida parcel types run through the live SitePrior pipeline: a Cape Coral coastal canal lot in AE, a sinkhole-belt ridge where federal flood data goes silent on the real risk, a Tampa Bay AE-zone infill, and a North Florida pine-flatwoods lot where Zone X hides a $30K septic problem. Same federal sources, four very different cost profiles.
Read case study →Five real Buncombe and Polk County parcels run through the live SitePrior pipeline. Same Zone X, same Group B soils on the headline. Tens of thousands of dollars of difference in the build cost — driven by slope-vs-soil-map disagreement, clay-residuum drainage, cove water tables, and one urban-infill lot where federal data correctly gives up.
Read case study →More case studies coming. If there's a region or lot type you'd like us to write up, email hello@siteprior.com.