Five New FutureLot Features Designed for the Way Builders Actually Work

We just rolled out a set of updates focused on the parts of a project where you actually spend your time. Site planning, homeowner conversations, the weird zoning questions that don't fit a structured report, and the closing math on whether the project pencils out for the homeowner.

Here are five new things in FutureLot, what they do, and why we built them.

1. Sketch: annotate the lot, capture it in the report

You can now draw directly on the lot with full control over colors and patterns. The patterns include landscape, hard flooring, bricks, tiles, wood, and several general-purpose options.

So when you're walking a homeowner through their property on a call or at a site visit, you can mark the driveway, the patio, the walkways, the impervious versus pervious surfaces, the deck that used to be there, the spot where the septic field is. Everything you'd otherwise be sketching on a paper printout, now sitting inside the project record.

Annotations also flow through to the Site Plan and Pre-Feasibility reports, so the homeowner walks away with documentation that reflects the actual conversation you just had, not a generic plot.

Watch a quick demo

2. Setbacks with the nuance the zoning document actually contains

This upgrade pulls more detail and nuance directly from the underlying zoning document. When the rules vary by structure type, by lot condition, or by interpretation (corner lots, exterior side yards, structures with different principal-vs-accessory treatment, special exceptions for hospice houses, you name it), the setback information now reflects all of it.

What this means in practice: fewer edge cases where you have to open the bylaw yourself to verify. The information is in the report, with the source citation, ready to use in a conversation with the building department.

How to find it? here you go.

3. Notes that scale with how you actually work

Notes now operate at three levels:

• Address-level: pin a note to a specific property. Useful at home shows, on intake calls, anywhere you're capturing customer-specific context.

• Municipality-level: pin a note to a town. The senior member of your team who has been doing Newton projects for ten years can drop their hard-won knowledge here, and the next person who runs a Newton lookup sees it. Team knowledge that compounds instead of evaporating.

• Geo-tagged map notes: pin a note to a specific spot on a specific lot. Best when you're on-site and want to mark "neighbor's shed is 3 feet from the line, confirm with surveyor" or "old well location, verify before excavation." Geo-tagged notes can also be included in the Pre-Feasibility PDF Report.

Here is where you can find all these goodies.

4. Rental Income estimates

We've connected to rent data providers to estimate potential rental income for ADUs, single-family homes, in-home apartments, and other unit types.

The use case is straightforward: when you're on a call with a homeowner, being able to pull up "your ADU could generate roughly $X per month" changes the conversation from "this is expensive" to "this pays for itself in x years." The estimate can also be included in the Pre-Feasibility PDF Report, so it goes home with the homeowner as part of the package.

The numbers come from real rent data. There are controls you can configure to tune the estimate. Worth playing with ahead of your next call.

What are the options you can control? check it here.

5. Zoning Navigator (Experimental Beta)

We’ve opened an early beta of our zoning chatbot. Unlike general-purpose tools (ChatGPT/Gemini), Zoning Navigator is designed to reference the latest zoning document for the municipality and help you explore zoning details beyond the structured pre-feasibility analysis. 

All five updates are live now. Log in to FutureLot to try them. If you're not a user yet, you can sign up at futurelot.com.