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Overview

Each BPD parcel record contains 100+ fields sourced from county assessors and enriched with external datasets. All fields are optional; availability varies by county. A null value means the county did not provide that data, not that the parcel doesn’t exist.

Core parcel fields

Ownership

Location & identity

Valuation

Physical characteristics

Land use & zoning

Zoning data is raw and county-specific. BPD collects the zoning code exactly as the county reports it but does not standardize it across counties. A code of A-1 means different things in different counties. Cross-county zoning comparisons require your own normalization layer.

Stack & parcel identity


Enriched external data

In addition to county assessor data, each parcel is enriched with several external datasets.

USDA Cropland Data Layer (CDL)

The CDL is updated annually by USDA and covers all US agricultural land. Useful for filtering parcels by crop type or identifying agricultural versus developed land at scale.

Elevation

Adjacent acreage

Useful for identifying large contiguous landholdings that may be split across multiple parcel records.

FEMA flood zones

Zone X indicates minimal flood hazard. Zones beginning with A or V indicate Special Flood Hazard Areas (SFHA) where federal flood insurance may be required.

Building footprints

When you request parcel data with include_buildings: true, each parcel includes a buildings array. Each entry represents one structure on the parcel. A parcel may have zero or more buildings. A null buildings field means include_buildings was not requested, not that no buildings exist.

Additional county-specific fields


Null values

A null value on any field means the county did not publish that data. BPD does not estimate, impute, or infer missing values. This is by design: a null sale_price means no sale was recorded by the county, not that the parcel has never sold. A null zoning means the county GIS did not include zoning in its parcel dataset. BPD retains all parcel records regardless of data completeness. Some competitors remove parcels that fall below a minimum field threshold, which makes their counts appear lower while BPD’s count reflects the true universe of recorded parcels.