An owner wants an addition, a second unit, a tenant fit-out in a bay they just leased — and they ring a builder, not an architect. You know the code. What decides whether it is possible is the zoning, and that usually arrives with the designer, months and several thousand dollars later. This puts that answer on the first call.
An address is enough — no plans, no client details. Pick one where you had to say “we’d have to get a designer involved to know” and see what you could have told them on the phone.
If you have built in the same three jurisdictions for fifteen years you know the building code better than any tool will, and a product that opens by telling you otherwise has already said what it thinks of you. That is not the gap.
Two things are, and the first is that “the code” for one address is not one document. It is the adopted editions, plus local amendments, plus the separate ordinances a town keeps outside its municipal code, plus the fire district, plus energy, plus whatever a recorded plan says — scattered across the AHJ and sometimes across a state statute. Knowing the code well does not tell you where all of it is kept.
The second is that “can I do this at all?” is almost never a building-code question in the first place. It is zoning — the district and what it permits, setbacks and the buildable envelope, height and coverage, whether an accessory unit is allowed here, and whether a recorded planned-development plan or an overlay quietly governs instead of the district everyone assumes. That knowledge normally walks in with the designer.
Which means the client has to commit real money and several months before anyone can tell them whether the thing is possible. Plenty of them simply do not, and the job never happens.
“Can I even do this?” is the question that starts every job, and today the honest answer is “you'll need to hire someone to find out.” That is the moment a prospect goes quiet, or goes elsewhere.
They turn up knowing what the lot allows, with a document. The design engagement starts further along, costs the client less to reach a decision, and you are the one who got them there.
Some of them are not possible as described, and some are much bigger than the owner thinks. Learning that on the first call is worth more than learning it after two site visits and a takeoff.
Once it is a live job, the adopted editions and the local amendments in force at that address are the same read — including the ones that cost real money rather than paperwork.
These are not hypotheticals. Each is a thing we hit in a real jurisdiction and had to resolve, and each produces a confident wrong answer if you stop at the obvious source.
One town’s own site was serving permitted uses out of an article it had already repealed. Reading the code was not enough — you had to know which version was in force.
A quarter of one city’s addresses take their setbacks from a recorded plan that is not in the municipal code at all. The code will answer you. It will answer you wrongly.
Colorado’s wildfire code reads as voluntary in its own front matter. The mandate is in the statute that created it — two documents away from where you would look.
Adopted building and energy editions, the local amendments in force, the zoning standards that actually govern the parcel, and the overlays or planned-development plans that quietly replace the base district — cited line by line. A Permitting & Submittal section names the path in: what to apply for, and where, from the jurisdiction’s own submittal requirements.
$99 one property · 3 property reports $249
The deeper cost-cliff analysis — sprinkler triggers, construction type, fire separation distance as the design moves — sits in the $299 project workspace, not in the single report. If you are pricing off finished drawings, the report is usually what you want. And fees and inspections are not evaluated in either: fee schedules, permit expiry and inspection sequencing are administrative rules — real ones, and not the ones that decide whether the project works. Confirm them with the building department.
The first call is one answer. What follows is a fortnight of “what if we push it back three feet”, “what if the garage goes the other way”, “what if we drop the second story to save money” — the same property, asked ten different ways, usually while the owner is deciding whether to commit.
The workspace is priced per property rather than per question. Put the footprint on the site plan, move it, and read the setbacks, height, coverage and remaining floor area against it each time. Twelve months, unlimited passes — so the tenth version costs nothing, which is the only way anyone actually checks the tenth version.
One property, twelve months, unlimited passes. The site plan is 2D today; height, coverage and floor area are read against it rather than drawn.
It’s a first pass, and the designer is still the point. Knowing what the zoning allows is where a project starts, not a substitute for designing one — nobody should build from this. What it changes is that the client walks into that first design meeting already knowing the thing is possible and roughly what shape it has to take. The designer starts further along instead of spending the first fortnight establishing what the lot will take, and the client reaches a decision for less. That is a better opening for everyone in the room, including you.
We show what the jurisdiction publishes about a property. That is the scope, and it is not the whole picture: easements, utility and drainage locations, private covenants, HOA restrictions and anything else recorded against the title sit outside it, and any of them can further limit what is buildable. A full title report is what tells you all encumbrances on a property — this tells you what the code and the zoning allow on it.
We never tell you a permit will be issued. We read what the adopted code and the zoning say about a parcel and show you where each answer came from. Whether an application is approved is the jurisdiction’s call, every time.
Where we don’t hold a rule, we say so rather than inferring one. A blank is safe; a confident wrong number in a bid is not. And this does not replace your plan reviewer, your engineer, or a call to the building department — it means you make that call already knowing what you are dealing with.
A call where somebody asked whether their project was possible and the honest answer was “we’d need to get a designer involved to know.” Send the address and we will show you what you could have told them on that call — and what their real next step was. Addresses only, no client details.
Coverage is published live rather than quoted here, so it cannot go stale behind us — see which jurisdictions are answered today. Questions? Ask directly — joshua@addwell.design.