LandCheck — Raw Land Analysis

LandCheck

raw land analysis · v0.1

US datasets · FEMA · USFWS · USGS · USDA

Now viewing01

Lat —

Lon —

Zoom —

Scale —

Data Layers 02

Parcels

FEMA Flood Zones

NWI Wetlands

USGS Contours

USDA Soil (SSURGO)

Protected Lands (PAD-US)

HOA Boundaries

Zoning Districts

Admin Boundaries 03

States

Counties

Cities / Places

Streets & Roads

My Places 04

No saved places yet. Click the map or a parcel and use “Save this place”.

Basemap05

Measure06

Drawn Area— ac

Drawn Perimeter— ft

Terrain change—

Last Distance— ft

Pinned Parcels

About LandCheck

A free tool for evaluating raw land before purchase. Pulls public US data from FEMA, USFWS, USGS, USDA, and the US Census, plus parcel records from official state & county GIS portals — statewide where a state publishes one, otherwise the largest metro counties, plus Virginia via 30 localities. See the Coverage button for the full list.

No account and no cookies — your saved places and settings stay in your browser. Page views are counted with Cloudflare's cookieless analytics (aggregate counts only; no personal data, no fingerprinting). Map clicks and searches are sent directly to the public data providers (OpenStreetMap, US Census, USGS, FEMA, USDA, and county GIS servers) to fetch results, and those services may log the request.

This is a research aid, not due diligence: boundaries are county GIS renderings, not surveys. Verify with a licensed surveyor and a title company before any purchase decision.

The map and its data are free. LandCheck Pro is an optional subscription ($39 a year or $5 a month) that adds branded PDF reports, batch lookup, HD imagery, nearby points of interest, unlimited saved places and sync.

Built for landowners, by a landowner.
Pricing · help@landcheck.io · Terms, privacy & refunds · Open-source & data notices

LandCheck Pro

Have a license key?

Sync is off.

Report branding

Printed on every PDF instead of the LandCheck mark. Stays in this browser.

Name Company Phone Email Logo

A subscription through our merchant of record (Lemon Squeezy): $39 a year or $5 a month, cancel any time. 14-day no-questions refund on a first payment. Everything data-related stays free. Terms, privacy & refunds.

Batch lookup

One location per line as latitude, longitude (up to 100). Each row gets the parcel under the point, FEMA flood zone, elevation and the HOA reading. Addresses arrive with the geocoder upgrade — for now, paste coordinates.

Listing fact sheet

One page for the lot in the panel: parcel ID, county-recorded acreage and assessed value, zoning, flood, wetlands, septic rating, elevation, road access, HOA and the deed link, with the map. Add the listing's own figures and they print beside the county's, as two facts. LandCheck never prices a property.

Asking price (optional) Listed acreage (optional) Listing link (optional)

How to use LandCheck

One map, every public dataset that matters for raw land. Click anywhere and the panel on the right fills in; switch layers on the left.

Getting around

Click the map — drops a pin and looks up elevation, FEMA flood zone and (when the Soil layer is on) the USDA soil unit for that exact spot. The detail panel slides in from the right.
Search — street address, city, ZIP, or paste lat, lon. Recent searches are remembered.
Share link (in the panel) copies a URL that reopens the map at this spot, with the same layers and basemap and the same point selected.
Now viewing shows the map centre, zoom and scale. Your last view and basemap are restored next visit; Reset view in the footer clears them.
On phones the sidebar is a bottom sheet — drag the handle up for the full list.
Install as an app — LandCheck works as a home-screen app. Chrome, Edge and Android show an Install button in the header when they offer it; on iPhone/iPad use Safari's Share menu → Add to Home Screen. The map shell opens offline; live data still needs a connection.

Parcels

Turn on Parcels. In open country they start loading from zoom 11 (the app first checks how many parcels are in view and loads them when there are fewer than about 1,500); in towns you need zoom 14. The layer row always shows your current zoom and what it is waiting for. Property lines load from each state or county's own GIS server — statewide where a state publishes one, otherwise the largest metro counties. Coverage… lists every source.
Click a parcel for its ID, owner, acreage and assessed value — each only where that county exposes it. Acreage falls back to a geometry estimate when the county field is empty or zero.
Parcel IDs are shown the way the county's own lookup expects them (Maryland account numbers omit the two-digit county code, as on listing sites).
Road access — on every parcel click the app checks OpenStreetMap road centrelines around the boundary: public road frontage, a public road nearby, only a private lane, or no road at all. It is a desktop heuristic — recorded easements live in the deed, so "no public road found" means verify legal access, never "landlocked". The Deed records row links the official recorder search for the point where one is known (34 portals so far), because that is where recorded easements and covenants live.
Zoning — where a county offers a property page, View on county site → opens that parcel's record for zoning and assessment detail.
Boundaries are county GIS renderings, not surveys. Anything you would sign for needs a licensed surveyor and a title search.

Data layers

FEMA Flood Zones — special flood hazard areas (the "100-year" zones) and 0.2 % areas. Click a point to read the zone code with a plain-language explanation.
NWI Wetlands — USFWS wetland polygons (zoom 11+).
USGS Contours — topographic contour lines over any basemap.
USDA Soil — SSURGO soil units coloured green / amber / red for drainage, hydric rating and farmland class. Red means wetland-leaning soil, not "bad" land. Click a polygon for the raw values. Every click also shows the soil survey's septic suitability rating for a conventional drain field with its limiting features — the closest a desktop gets to "will it perc?"
Protected Lands — USGS PAD-US parks, forests, BLM land and conservation easements (zoom 10+); click for manager and designation.
HOA Boundaries — association boundaries from the counties and cities that publish them (zoom 11+). The panel's HOA row reads inside <name>, None mapped (that county publishes boundaries and none cover the point — covenants can still exist) or Unknown (no public HOA map for the area, which is most of the country). There is no free nationwide HOA dataset, so LandCheck cannot hide HOA parcels; Coverage lists the jurisdictions.
Zoning districts — district polygons from the jurisdictions with an official zoning GIS layer (zoom 12+); where the jurisdiction's code is online, an Ordinance link opens what that district code allows. Every click fills the panel's Zoning district row: the code and name (R-1 · Residential), None mapped (a layer covers the area and no district contains the point — often a town that zones separately) or Unknown (no public layer). Zoning is municipal and usually published only as a PDF, so coverage is partial; Coverage lists it.
Some layers only draw above a minimum zoom — a message tells you when.

Admin boundaries

State, county, city and street outlines, each with its own minimum zoom. The gear icon lets you change those thresholds. Boundaries are cached in your browser for a week so panning stays fast.

Light or dark

The header's Light / Dark button switches the whole interface; the choice is remembered in this browser. The map imagery is unaffected.

Basemaps

Satellite (default — free USGS imagery with place labels, sharpest at zoom 16), HD Satellite (Pro — Esri imagery to zoom 19), USGS Topo, Street and Terrain. Switching keeps your zoom level — lower-resolution tiles are simply enlarged.

Measure & draw

Draw Parcel — click corners to outline an area. The panel shows acreage, perimeter and Terrain change (elevation range sampled around the outline).
Measure Distance — click points along a route for feet or miles.
Finish with a right-click, double-click, Enter, or the bar above the map. Esc cancels. Backspace removes the last point. Clicking the tool button again also cancels. Clear All wipes drawings.

Save, compare, export

Save this place keeps a point or parcel (with a label and notes) under My Places — 25 places on the free plan. Tick two or three to compare them side by side (Pro: unlimited places, tags, six-way compare, CSV export).
Export PDF builds a two-page report with a map snapshot and every readout — handy for a lender, partner or contractor.
Everything is stored in this browser only. Nothing is uploaded and there is no account; clearing site data removes your saved places. Pro can sync places between devices under the license key (see the Pro screen).

Search & demographics

Address search uses OpenStreetMap (Nominatim), restricted to the US.
The Demographics section of the panel loads census-tract figures (population, income, age, education, employment, ownership) on demand.
Climate (Pro) shows NOAA's 1991–2020 normals from the nearest weather stations: yearly rain and snow, summer highs, winter lows, last and first frost, growing season.
Flood exposure (Pro) measures how much of a parcel's area sits in FEMA's 100-year floodplain and the moderate (500-year) zone, lists the zones and the published base flood elevation. Measured by area on FEMA's flood map, not an elevation study.
Buildable land (Pro) takes the floodplain, mapped wetlands and ground steeper than 25% out of a parcel as one combined area and shows what is left, plus a lot-count estimate from the minimum lot size and setback you type in (LandCheck never reads those from the zoning layer). An estimate from public map layers, not a wetland delineation or a buildability determination.
Pan only — the arrows button under the zoom control stops clicks from opening the panel, so you can drag the map freely. Click it again to inspect again.
Listing links — paste a Zillow®, Redfin®, Realtor.com®, Trulia® or Google Maps link into the search box and the map goes to that address or spot. Only the link's text is read; the listing page is never fetched. Those names are trademarks of their owners; LandCheck is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.
Nearby (incl. the nearest mapped power line and substation) (Pro) lists the closest hospital, grocery, big-box and home-improvement stores, gas, school, fire station, highway exit, airport and state or national park with straight-line miles. Expand it before exporting to include it in the PDF.

Privacy & limits

No cookies, no account. Map clicks and searches go straight to the public data providers (county GIS servers, USGS, FEMA, USDA, US Census, OpenStreetMap), which may log the request. Page views are counted with cookieless analytics only. Data sources change without notice; if a layer stops loading, it is usually the provider — check again later or drop me a line.

Parcel Coverage

Coverage is expanded county-by-county. Don't see your county? Drop me a line.

Click anywhere on the map for elevation lookup. Draw a polygon to measure parcel acreage. Layer data from public US government services — verify against authoritative sources before purchase decisions.

Help · About · Reset view · Terms & privacy · Counties · Guides · Pricing

Loading parcels…

Soil quality

Well-drained, non-hydric, prime/farmable

Mixed signals

Poorly drained, hydric, non-prime

Red ≠ bad. It means wetland-leaning soil — great for wildlife habitat and certain crops, less suitable for building or row-crop farming. Click any soil polygon for raw SSURGO values.

— click the map

Parcel

Property ID—

Owner—

Acreage—

Assessed Value—

County—

Road access—

Deed records

HOA—

Zoning district—

Ordinance

County recordView on county site →

Hazards

Flood Zone—

How much of the lot sits in FEMA's 100-year floodplain and the moderate (500-year) zone, which zones, and the published base flood elevation — in the panel and the PDF.

Terrain

Elevation— ft

Acres left after the floodplain, mapped wetlands and ground steeper than 25% are taken out, and a lot-count estimate from the minimum lot size and setback you enter — in the panel and the PDF.

Minimum lot size ac Setback ft

Soil

Map Unit—

Drainage—

Hydric—

Farmland—

Septic suitability—

Parent Material—

Yearly rain and snow, summer highs and winter lows, frost dates and growing season from NOAA's 1991–2020 climate normals at the nearest weather stations — in the panel and the PDF.

Population—

Median income—

Median age—

Bachelor's+—

Employed—

Owner-occupied—

Distance to the nearest hospital, grocery, big-box store, home-improvement store, gas station, school, fire station, highway exit, airport and state or national park — in the panel and the PDF.

Label Notes Tags