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Your coverage areas are the US counties you pay Ploti for. You can search, read and analyze every official record Ploti holds for them, such as parcels, zoning, permits and local codes. When a question needs data Ploti doesn’t have, you ask it in a research request. Ploti collects the missing records from the government office that publishes them, answers your question, and emails you. The new data then stays in Ploti and keeps updating.

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Coverage areas

A coverage area is a US county you choose to work in. You pick them in Ploti, change them at any time, and pay per county: the first is free, and each one after starts at $50 a month. Coverage areas and pricing has the prices. Each county opens:
  • Its county and city records that Ploti has collected, such as parcels with owners and sales, zoning, permits and ordinances (the local zoning and land-use codes).
  • Its state agencies’ data.
  • National sources Ploti reads, such as FEMA flood zones, USGS, the Census, the EPA and HUD.
How much is there on the first day varies. Some counties already have a lot, often because another customer works there. In others, Ploti’s data agents, the AI software that does the collecting, start when you add the county, and the data fills in over the following days and weeks. The data is shared: what Ploti collects for a county is available to every customer who covers it. Your requests stay private, and other customers never see who asked for a dataset. Four steps: a research request asked in plain words, data requests for each missing dataset, the data collected and an email that your answer is ready, then follow-up questions to the map agent on the map Four steps: a research request asked in plain words, data requests for each missing dataset, the data collected and an email that your answer is ready, then follow-up questions to the map agent on the map

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Asking for data Ploti doesn’t have

A research request is a question you hand to Ploti to answer from start to finish, including collecting any data it doesn’t have yet. For example: “Which parcels over 10 acres in Polk County, Florida, are zoned for industrial use and outside the flood zone?” A data request is one job inside it. A dataset is one table of records for one place, such as one county’s building permits, so the same kind of record in two counties is two datasets. Ploti starts one data request for each dataset the question is missing. You never file a data request yourself.
1

You describe what you want to find out

In plain words, in the Ploti app or from an AI assistant such as ChatGPT that you have connected to Ploti. You don’t need to know what data exists. Ploti reads the places and the kinds of records from your description.
2

Ploti checks what it already has

Within minutes, the request’s page shows the data Ploti already holds for the question and the data it still needs. If your question is too vague to check, it asks you a few short questions first.
3

Ploti collects what is missing

For each missing dataset, Ploti’s data agents find the official source, such as a county’s permit portal, and collect it. Where a county doesn’t publish the data online, Ploti can email the county for it.
4

You get an email

Collecting can take hours or days, and you don’t need to wait on the page. When every missing dataset has been collected, Ploti answers your question and emails you that your research is ready.
Collecting a new dataset costs 3 credits, Ploti’s unit for paid work. Credits are charged only when the dataset is collected, and returned if it can’t be found. Your first research request is free. Coverage areas and pricing says how many credits you start with and how to get more. Your research requests are visible only to you. How a research request works has the details.