Overview
Every wealth prospecting workflow starts with the same fundamental question: who owns the property? Plotbook answers this question at scale by integrating the most comprehensive US parcel database available and layering intelligence on top of raw property records. Rather than requiring you to search county recorder websites one at a time or purchase stale CSV exports from data brokers, Plotbook gives you a live, interactive map of nearly every parcel in the United States — with ownership details, assessed values, and property characteristics available on click. The system is built on three pillars: comprehensive data coverage through Regrid integration, real-time vector tile rendering for instant map exploration, and PostGIS-powered spatial queries for geographic filtering. Together, these components create a property intelligence layer that transforms how wealth managers identify and research prospective clients.
The Data Source: Regrid
Plotbook's property data comes from Regrid (formerly Loveland Technologies), the largest commercially available parcel data provider in the United States. Regrid aggregates property records from over 3,100 counties across all 50 states, compiling assessor records, deed transfers, zoning designations, and geographic boundaries into a standardized, searchable format. Each parcel record in Regrid includes the property's geographic boundary as a polygon, the recorded owner name and mailing address, the assessed market value as determined by the county assessor, the property classification (residential, commercial, agricultural, vacant), the parcel identification number (APN or PIN), lot size and acreage, and the zoning designation. Plotbook consumes this data through Regrid's vector tile API and parcel detail endpoints. When you load the map, Regrid streams parcel boundary polygons directly to your browser. When you click a specific parcel, Plotbook fetches the full property record — including owner name, assessed value, and property characteristics — and displays it in the detail panel. This architecture means you always see current data rather than a static snapshot that was exported weeks or months ago.
Coverage and Accuracy
Regrid's database covers approximately 155 million parcels across the United States, representing over 99% of the US land mass that has been parceled by county governments. Coverage is strongest in metropolitan areas and suburban communities where county assessor digitization is most complete. Rural counties with less digital infrastructure may have partial coverage, but these represent a small fraction of the wealth management target market. Assessed values are sourced from county assessor records, which are updated on cycles that vary by jurisdiction — typically every one to three years, with some states reassessing annually. While assessed values may not always match current market prices, they provide a reliable baseline for relative wealth comparison within a geography. A property assessed at $5M in Palm Beach is unambiguously in a different wealth tier than one assessed at $200K in the same county, even if the true market value differs by 10-20% from the assessment. For wealth prospecting purposes, this level of accuracy is more than sufficient to identify high-net-worth clusters and prioritize research efforts.
Vector Tile Architecture
Plotbook renders property boundaries using Mapbox GL vector tiles rather than pre-rendered raster images. This technical choice has significant practical implications for the user experience. Vector tiles are streamed from Regrid's tile servers and rendered directly in your browser using WebGL acceleration. As you pan and zoom the map, new tiles load dynamically — you never need to wait for a full map image to download. The vector format means parcel boundaries remain crisp at every zoom level, from a statewide overview down to individual lot boundaries. It also enables interactive features that raster maps cannot support: hover to highlight a parcel, click to select it, and filter the visible parcels by property value — all computed in real time in the browser without additional server requests. The base map layers support multiple views including satellite imagery from Mapbox, outdoor topographic maps from MapTiler, and hybrid satellite-plus-labels views. Users can switch between views depending on whether they need street context, terrain visualization, or high-resolution aerial photography to evaluate a property.
Value-Based Visualization
One of Plotbook's most powerful features is the automatic color-coding of parcels by assessed value. Each property on the map is filled with a color from a six-tier spectrum based on its assessed value. Properties valued under $5,000 appear in peach, indicating vacant lots or minimal-value parcels. The $5,000 to $500,000 range appears in light blue, representing typical residential properties. Properties between $500,000 and $1 million display in sky blue, marking the upper-middle market. The $1 million to $5 million tier shows in medium blue, identifying high-value residential and small commercial properties. Properties valued between $5 million and $10 million render in royal blue, highlighting luxury estates and significant commercial assets. Finally, the $10 million and above tier appears in dark blue, flagging ultra-high-value properties. This color coding transforms the map from a flat grid of parcel boundaries into an instant wealth heat map. Wealth managers can scan a region and immediately identify where high-value properties cluster — waterfront areas, gated communities, hilltop estates, and premium commercial corridors become visually obvious without reading a single data point. The parcels are rendered at 60% opacity so the underlying map detail remains visible, and a red highlight appears on hover to confirm which parcel you are inspecting.
Ownership Records
When you click on a parcel, Plotbook fetches the full property record from Regrid and displays the owner's name and mailing address, the assessed value and property class, the lot size and zoning designation, and the parcel identification number. This information comes directly from county assessor and recorder filings — the same public records that title companies, appraisers, and county tax offices use daily. The owner name serves as the starting point for Plotbook's deeper intelligence features. From the owner name and property address, you can launch an AI owner research query that cross-references the name against professional databases, public records, and web sources to build a comprehensive owner profile. Plotbook also stores fetched property records in a PostGIS-enabled PostgreSQL database, keyed by Regrid's stable unique identifier (ll_uuid). This caching layer ensures fast repeat access and enables spatial queries across previously viewed properties without re-fetching from the API.
Spatial Queries and PostGIS
Behind the scenes, Plotbook's PostgreSQL database uses the PostGIS extension to store property locations as geographic points. Each cached property record includes its latitude and longitude as a geometry column indexed with a GiST spatial index. This architecture enables powerful spatial queries that would be impossible with a standard database. The system can find all cached properties within a radius of a given point, identify property clusters by geographic density, calculate distances between properties for neighborhood analysis, and perform bounding-box queries to retrieve all properties visible in the current map viewport. For wealth managers, spatial capabilities translate to practical prospecting features: search a neighborhood and see every property owner in the area, identify affluent enclaves by looking for geographic concentrations of high-value parcels, and understand the wealth landscape of an entire market at a glance. The spatial index ensures these queries execute in milliseconds even as the cached property database grows to hundreds of thousands of records.
Data Freshness and Caching
Plotbook takes a hybrid approach to data freshness. Map tile data is served directly from Regrid's infrastructure, meaning parcel boundaries and assessed values reflect Regrid's latest county data refresh — typically updated on a rolling basis as counties publish new assessor records. When you click on a parcel to view the full detail, Plotbook checks its local cache first. If the property record exists and is recent, it serves the cached version instantly. If the record is stale or not yet cached, it fetches fresh data from Regrid's parcel detail API. This approach balances speed with freshness: you get sub-second responses for previously viewed properties while ensuring that first-time lookups return current data. The raw Regrid API response is stored alongside the parsed fields, so if Regrid adds new data points in the future, they can be surfaced without re-architecture. For wealth prospecting, data freshness matters primarily for ownership changes. When a property sells, the new owner's name appears in county records after the deed is filed — typically within weeks of closing. Regrid picks up these changes on their county refresh cycle, and Plotbook surfaces them on the next fetch. This means that recent home purchasers — a prime audience for financial advisors — appear in the system relatively quickly after their transaction closes.
Privacy and Compliance
All property data in Plotbook is sourced from public records. Property ownership, assessed values, and parcel boundaries are matters of public record maintained by county assessors and recorders across the United States. Accessing and displaying this information does not require consent from the property owner because it is already publicly available by law. Plotbook does not collect, store, or display any non-public personal information through its property data integration. The information shown — owner names, property addresses, assessed values, and lot characteristics — is the same information available to anyone who visits their county assessor's website or recorder's office. What Plotbook adds is aggregation, visualization, and intelligence — making information that is technically public but practically inaccessible (spread across 3,100+ county websites) available in a single, searchable interface. For organizations with compliance requirements — wealth management firms, registered investment advisors, and financial institutions — Plotbook's public-records-only approach means there are no data licensing gray areas or consent requirements to navigate. The data is public by law, and Plotbook simply makes it usable. This is fundamentally different from services that scrape private data or require opt-out mechanisms. Every data point displayed in the property layer is sourced from official government records that any citizen can access.