Building code & zoning · cited · by address

Know what you can build before you draw, bid, or buy.

Before you make the offer, price the job, or draw a line — find out what the property will actually allow. Zoning and building code, for one specific address, each answer cited to the subsection it came from. In a few minutes, not a few weeks.

Jurisdiction, zoning district and adopted code editions are free for any address. Get a free property snapshot, or an Architect Review for $499. No subscription.

Even an architect gets the front end of a project back. Everyone else skips paying one just to find out where they stand.

01 / What it gets you

You’re not buying a code review — you’re buying the decision on the other side of it

Whether to make the offer. What to tell the client. Whether the project is worth starting, and what it will really take. That’s what this is for.

Know what the rules say before you make the offer

The addition, the shop, the unit out back — the reason you want this particular property. We pull what the jurisdiction has published for that address and cite it, so you go in knowing the constraints instead of finding them after closing when it's no longer a choice.

Sell on what the property could become

“Zoned for it” is a shrug. A cited page showing what a buyer could add, and under which rules, is a reason to pay more — and it answers the objection before it's raised rather than after the showing.

Start faster, and spend less starting

Owner or professional, the front end of a project is where money leaks: weeks of research, a scheme drawn against assumptions, a redesign when the assumptions turn out wrong. Getting the constraints first is the cheapest hour in the whole job.

Give a client something to hold

“I checked” and “here is the subsection” are different conversations, and only one of them ends the doubt. Most client hesitation is uncertainty wearing a budget costume.

02 / The alternatives

You could find this out other ways

These are the most common. All of them work, sort of, and it’s worth being honest about what each one actually costs you — because the reason most people never get a straight answer isn’t that it’s secret. It’s that every route to it is slow, expensive, or quietly unreliable.

Hire an architect or code consultant

CostHundreds to thousandsTimeDays to weeks

A real, considered answer from someone accountable for it. For a project that's going ahead, this is right and you'll want it eventually.

The catchYou have to commit money to the project before you know whether the project is worth committing money to. So most people put the question off and decide without it — which is how a scheme gets drawn against an assumption nobody checked.

Work it out yourself

CostFreeTimeDays, realistically weeks

The information is public. It is all, technically, there.

The catchIt's all out there, and knowing what to look for is the hard part. Which edition the town adopted, which local amendments override it, which district your parcel is in, and whether a recorded plan quietly replaces that district altogether. There are a lot of ways to trip up, and missing one doesn't feel like missing anything — that's the problem.

Google it, or ask an AI

CostFreeTimeMinutes

Fast, and genuinely fine for getting oriented.

The catchIt can read an enormous amount and still not know which of it is the authority. A forum post, a neighboring town's code and the ordinance that actually governs your parcel all carry roughly the same weight, so what comes back is an average of several towns and several districts, possibly none of them yours, with the local amendment that decides the answer averaged away. It reads exactly as confident either way.

And then there’s this

The property report. A few minutes. One specific address.

Zoning and building code are two different departments, with two sets of documents that don’t reference each other. Getting both means two enquiries, two waits, and knowing what to ask each of them. We answer both halves together, for one address, in the time it takes to read this.

We resolve the actual parcel, the authority that actually governs it, the district or recorded plan that actually applies, and the code edition and local amendments that authority actually adopted — then answer from those documents and cite the subsection for every line. Nothing is averaged, inferred from a similar town, or smoothed into a plausible paragraph.

What’s in it
  • The zoning district — and whether a recorded plan or overlay quietly governs instead of it
  • Every use the district permits, and the ones it doesn’t
  • Setbacks, height, coverage, and the buildable envelope they leave you
  • Added-unit and ADU rules, including where an ADU is not allowed
  • Adopted building and energy code editions, and the local amendments that change what you can build
  • The mapped soils under the lot, with the USDA’s own ratings

Every line carries the subsection it came from, and a link back to the source wherever we can give you one. Where we don’t hold something, it says so and names who to ask — a blank is never filled with the nearest plausible number.

The analysis isn’t written by an AI

Every number, determination and citation comes from a rules engine reading the documents that jurisdiction actually adopted. A language model writes the plain-English summary at the top and describes your project back to you at intake — and it is blocked, at the point of writing, from stating any code section, edition or figure that isn’t already in the cited analysis. If it tries, you get the plain version instead.

We re-read every jurisdiction weekly

Codes get amended quietly and codifiers republish without announcing it, so every jurisdiction we cover is re-checked on a weekly cycle — the published code, the address data behind it, and the ordinances passed but not yet codified, which is the change that shows up nowhere else until it’s law. What we won’t claim is catching every change in every town the moment it happens.

Our limits, stated up front: we answer in full for the jurisdictions below and say so plainly when you’re outside them. Where we don’t hold something — a recorded plan we haven’t obtained, a topic we haven’t written yet — the report says exactly that and names the planning department to ask, rather than filling the gap with the nearest plausible number. It’s a fast, cited first read, not a stamped opinion.

03 / Who it’s for

Find yourself here

The same cited read pays off differently depending on your seat — and it changes which package makes sense. Pick yours.

If you’re a realtor…

Realtors

A buyer asks what they could do with the place — add a unit, pop the top, convert the shop — and the honest answer today is “I think so?” followed by a call to the planning department on Monday.

How we helpWe help you make the sale. The free report helps any sale; the architect review is for the buyer with a specific idea on the listing that “has potential” — so they learn what that potential actually is in days, not weeks.

  • Answer it in the meeting, not on Monday. A buyer who walks out to go look at something else rarely walks back in.
  • Run the free report on every listing you take. It is saved to your account, so the next client who asks about the same address gets an answer straight away.
  • Something cited to hand over. “Zoned for it” is a shrug; a page with the subsection on it answers the objection before the showing instead of after.
  • Set it against what an open house costs you. Same money, and this one closes the deal rather than filling a Sunday.
The longer case for realtors →
04 / How it works

Address in, cited answers out

No forms, nothing to tell us about the project. Three steps, and the address is the only thing you type — plus a free sign-in for the full report.

01

Type an address

Any address in a covered jurisdiction. No parcel numbers, no municipal-site spelunking. We resolve which authority actually governs it — town or county — and find the parcel itself.

02

We read what governs that parcel

The zoning district, and whether a recorded planned-development plan or an overlay governs instead of it. Then the code editions that authority adopted and the local amendments that differ from the model code. No questions to answer — the address is the input.

03

Get a cited report

Buildable envelope and setbacks, height, coverage, allowable use, adopted editions, amendments, energy code, the mapped soils and the design criteria — each answer with the subsection it came from, and a plain statement wherever we don't hold something.

Two steps

Check your address free. Get an architect’s review if you want one.

Free property snapshot
  • Which jurisdiction the parcel actually answers to — town or county
  • Its zoning district, and whether a planned-development plan or overlay governs instead
  • The adopted building, energy and electrical code editions in force there
  • The design criteria that town publishes — wind speed, ground snow, frost depth, seismic, climate zone — with the document they come from
Check your address free →
Architect Review · $499 · architect reviewed
  • Reviewed by an architect who lives and works in the Front Range
  • A 15-minute walkthrough call, by phone or video, to go over your report
  • What the adopted code and public records say about your project at this address, what is likely, and what still needs confirming, and with whom
  • The few things most likely to change your cost or schedule, ranked, with what to do about each
  • A diagram of what fits on your lot
  • Notes on your specific project, and a starting point for design
  • The permit path, and exactly who to ask about anything only the city can confirm
  • A one-page summary you can share with your client or contractor
  • Applied to your permit set. The research and site analysis carry into it, so you do not pay for them twice. Valid for 6 months.
What it includes →
05 / Coverage

Deep on the northern Front Range

We’d rather answer fewer jurisdictions properly than blanket a map thinly. Depth is the whole point.

Loading coverage map…
18jurisdictions answered in full — adopted editions, local amendments, zoning standards and overlays on file and checked.
Boulder County (Unincorporated)City and County of BroomfieldCity of BoulderCity of LafayetteCity of LongmontCity of LouisvilleCity of LovelandCity of ThorntonDenver (City and County)Larimer County (Unincorporated)MeadTown of ErieTown of Estes ParkTown of FirestoneTown of FrederickTown of LyonsTown of SuperiorWeld County (Unincorporated)
Partial — 5 moreAdams County (Unincorporated) · City of Dacono · City of Greeley · Jefferson County (Unincorporated) · Town of BerthoudWe hold the adopted code and some of the zoning for these, and the report says exactly what is missing rather than filling it in. We finish one on request.

The service area is Denver north to Fort Collins — stopping at the mountains on the west and reaching a little east of I-25. That edge is deliberate. Mountain jurisdictions each amend the code their own way, and we would rather answer the corridor properly than draw a wide map we can’t stand behind.

Inside that area we answer for 17 of 22 authorities — towns and the unincorporated county land between them, which answers to the county rather than any town.

We only claim a jurisdiction once the depth is really there. Outside the list you can still get a first pass from the model codes, clearly marked as such — and if a report hits something we don’t hold, it says so plainly and names the planning department to ask, rather than guessing.

Built to be corrected

See something off? Tell us in one click.

Codes and adopted editions change, and we track them closely — but you’re in these jurisdictions every day, and you’ll sometimes catch a change before we do. Every report has a one-tap way to flag something that looks out of date or wrong. We genuinely want to hear it: we look right away, and we tell you when we’ve fixed it.

We’d rather you tell us than find out the hard way. A tool about being right has to make it easy to say when it isn’t.

06 / Why it exists

Even knowing the code, it took me an afternoon per address.

I am an architect and a general contractor — twenty years of registered practice, and a construction company on the Front Range that has to actually build what gets drawn. Code and zoning research is not an unfamiliar job to me. I have done it for a very long time.

And it still took me an afternoon per address. Not because the information is secret — almost all of it is public. Because it is scattered: the adopted editions in one place, the local amendments in another, the ordinances a town keeps outside its municipal code somewhere else again, the fire district, the energy code, and a recorded plan that quietly governs the parcel instead of the district everybody assumes. Knowing the code well does not tell you where all of it is kept.

If it costs me an afternoon, it costs somebody doing it for the first time a week — or, more often, it costs them the project, because they never find out and decide without it. That bothered me enough to build the thing I wanted: type an address, get the answer, with the subsection printed under every line so I could check it.

I built it for my own jobs first, and then for everybody else running the same search. It is not a novel story and I do not think it needs to be. It is just the reason this exists, and why it is built to show its work rather than ask you to trust it.

07 / Pricing

Check your address free. Get an architect’s review if you want one.

The free snapshot shows what we found. The full report is an architect’s review of your project: a clear answer, what to watch for, and your next steps. Every number shows its source and the date it was checked.

Step 1 · Free

Free property snapshot

  • Which jurisdiction the parcel actually answers to — town or county
  • Its zoning district, and whether a planned-development plan or overlay governs instead
  • The adopted building, energy and electrical code editions in force there
  • The design criteria that town publishes — wind speed, ground snow, frost depth, seismic, climate zone — with the document they come from

Each line shows its source and the date it was checked. Labeled Automated snapshot.

Check your address free →
Step 2 · Architect reviewed

Architect Review | $499

An architect’s review of your project: what is allowed, what to watch for, and your next steps.

  • Reviewed by an architect who lives and works in the Front Range
  • A 15-minute walkthrough call, by phone or video, to go over your report
  • What the adopted code and public records say about your project at this address, what is likely, and what still needs confirming, and with whom
  • The few things most likely to change your cost or schedule, ranked, with what to do about each
  • A diagram of what fits on your lot
  • Notes on your specific project, and a starting point for design
  • The permit path, and exactly who to ask about anything only the city can confirm
  • A one-page summary you can share with your client or contractor
  • Applied to your permit set. The research and site analysis carry into it, so you do not pay for them twice. Valid for 6 months.

Architect reviewed. Based on the information available: public records and adopted codes as of the dates shown, and what you tell us about your project. The diagram is schematic. Not a permit, survey, site visit, or sealed document.

We review reports on set days. Book now to reserve the next open review day; your spot is final once payment is received. Your report arrives the next business day after your review. Need it sooner? Call 720-727-7279 for expedited service.

Founding rate: $349 for the first 5 reports, in exchange for your feedback and permission to quote it. 5 left.

Start with a free snapshot →

Free snapshot or the Architect Review?

What you getFreeReport · $499
Zoning district, setbacks and height, each with its source and dateYesYes, checked by an architect
Site plan with the setback linesBase planWhat fits for your project, with architect notes
Building code editions in effectYesPlus which edition applies when you apply
A direct answer for your project—Works, works with conditions, or does not work
The risks most likely to change your cost or schedule—Three to five, ranked, each with what to do
Your own questions answered—Up to three
What your project triggers: “if you do X, you’ll need Y”—Included
Studies and documents you’ll need (survey, soils, energy, engineering, drainage)—Included, with what triggers each
Who can build it: contractor licensing and homeowner permits—Included
Code changes coming that could affect your timeline—Included
Permit path and who to ask—With the questions written for you
Questions to ask your contractor—Included
Reviewed byAutomatedAn architect who lives and works in the Front Range, dated
A 15-minute call to walk through your report—Included, by phone or video
Fact guarantee—Any sourced fact corrected or refunded, 14 days
Credit toward your permit set—The full fee, for 6 months

Automated results are based on the information available: public data and adopted code text as of the dates shown. Verify with the jurisdiction before relying on them.

Towns, counties & planning departments

Put a cited answer in front of every owner in your jurisdiction

We build your jurisdiction’s own ground into a page you host — so the question your counter answers fifty times a week gets answered before it reaches you, from your adopted code, cited. Partnered jurisdictions can make the base report free to anyone asking about an address in their town.

08 / FAQ

Common questions

Still wondering something? Email joshua@addwell.design — a real person answers.

What exactly is in the property report?

Everything we hold for that specific property: which authority governs it, its zoning district and whether a recorded planned-development plan or overlay governs instead, your buildable envelope and setbacks, height and coverage limits, allowable use and ADU eligibility, adopted building and energy code editions, local amendments, the mapped soils under the lot with the USDA’s own ratings, and the design criteria an engineer needs. Each answer carries the subsection it came from, with a link back to the source document wherever we can give you one.

Is there a subscription?

No. The property report is free with an account, up to 10 new properties a month, and a property you have already looked up reopens any time without counting again. We put no time limit on re-running a property against the code as it changes: codes move, we keep reading them, and your report keeps up, for as long as we offer the service. The Architect Review is one flat fee per project. Nothing here bills you monthly. Need more than the monthly limit for your work? Ask us about a professional account.

What’s free?

For any address in a covered jurisdiction: which town or county governs it, its zoning district, whether a planned development or overlay applies, the adopted code editions in force, and your lot drawn to shape. That is a complete answer to “what is this property?” — not a teaser with the numbers blurred out. The computed figures and the cited analysis are the paid product.

Is this legal or professional advice?

No. It’s a cited first-pass research tool that points you at the governing code and zoning fast. It’s meant to speed up your own judgment or your professional’s — not to replace a stamped opinion, a formal zoning determination, or plan review. Verify with the jurisdiction before you design, permit, build, buy or sell.

Can this sit in a loan file?

Yes — as dated, cited research. Every answer is cited to the subsection it came from, with the adopted code editions named and dated, and the report carries a coverage statement separating what was evaluated and found clear from what we have not yet written for that jurisdiction. It is not a certification: not an appraisal, engineering or architectural certification, and never a guarantee that a permit will be issued. The authority having jurisdiction decides.

Can I hand it to a buyer or attach it to a listing?

Yes. The report is yours to share — hand it to a buyer, attach it to a listing, forward the link. It is not a disclosure: it shows what the jurisdiction publishes about a property, not what is recorded against the title, and it is not a code or zoning determination. Easements, covenants and HOA restrictions sit outside it, and a full title report is what tells you all encumbrances. Verify with the jurisdiction before anyone buys or sells on it.

Can I put this on a cover sheet?

No. It is not a code analysis for submission — not a construction document, not a code or zoning determination, and nothing here may be used to construct, to size or specify anything, or in place of a licensed designer or engineer. Use it to write yours: every line carries the subsection it came from and a link back to the source wherever we can give you one, so the re-reading is done and the judgment stays yours.

Does it give the permit path, fees, inspections?

The path, yes: the report’s Permitting & Submittal section names what to apply for and where, from the jurisdiction’s own submittal requirements. Fees and inspections are not evaluated. Fee schedules, permit expiry and inspection sequencing are administrative rules — real ones, and not the ones that decide whether the project works — so confirm them with the building department.

Is this just an AI answering?

No — and it’s worth being precise, because the distinction is the product. Every figure, determination and citation is produced by a rules engine reading the documents that jurisdiction adopted; no model decides a setback or picks a code section. A language model does two narrow jobs: it writes the plain-English summary at the top of the report, and when you describe a project it reads your description so you don’t have to answer questions that don’t apply. Both are fenced. The summary is checked before you see it and is discarded in favor of a plain template if it states anything the cited analysis doesn’t, and the intake’s reading of your description comes back as suggestions you can remove.

Which areas do you cover?

The northern Front Range — Denver up to Fort Collins, stopping at the mountains on the west. 18 jurisdictions are answered in full today, with 5 more held in part and marked as such, and the map above shows the outlines. We’re expanding through that corridor deliberately. Tell us the jurisdiction you need and it moves up the queue.

What happens when the code changes?

Every jurisdiction we cover is re-read on a weekly cycle — the published code, the address data behind it, and the ordinances that are passed but not yet codified, which is the change that shows up nowhere else until it’s already law. If something we told you about your property changes, we can tell you: the report regenerates from the same inputs, so we compare the actual answers rather than guessing from an amendment notice. What we can’t promise is to catch every change in every town the moment it happens, and we won’t claim otherwise.

Do I need an account?

Not for the free snapshot: choose your address and give us an email to send it to. A free account (Google or an emailed link) is how you keep reports under Your purchases and come back to a property later.

What do you do with my data?

We don’t sell it, we don’t train AI models on it, and we don’t share it with third parties. We store the addresses you look up so your reports work and so we can tell you if an answer changes; we use it only to run the service for you, and you can delete it. Payments are handled by Stripe — we never see or store your card.

Who built it?

A working architect and general contractor built it for their own Colorado design-build firm, out of real friction with jurisdiction research — then opened it up. It’s made by people who do this work, not a startup guessing at it.

Try it

Your next address, answered.

Look one up free and see what comes back. Jurisdiction, district, adopted editions and your lot — no card, no account. The full report is there when you want it.