The Hidden Cost of Slow Zoning: Why Builders, Homeowners, and Cities All Lose

Avi Kaufman didn't set out to build a software company. He set out to help an Afghan refugee find a home. In a recent conversation with Dave Cooper on the Dave Cooper Live podcast, FutureLot's co-founder walked through the origin story behind the platform, the broken process it fixes, and where the housing industry goes from here. The thread that ties it all together: most of the friction in residential construction isn't physical. It's informational. And that's a problem we can actually solve.

A volunteer effort became a thesis

After the US withdrew from Afghanistan, Avi got pulled into a volunteer group helping resettle Afghan refugees. The work was monumental, but a parallel group's success caught his attention: they'd placed a refugee in a carriage house behind someone's home. A small structure. A spare lot. A family with a new start.

It was a lightbulb moment. To make communities stronger, we need more capacity. More housing for our kids, our parents, the people we want to support. Around the same time, Avi was working as a real estate broker in a high-end market, watching young families delay starting families and older homeowners feel stuck in houses they could no longer maintain. The supply problem wasn't abstract. It was sitting across the desk from him every day. Dave asked Avi where builders are bleeding hours. The answer: everywhere upfront.

A homeowner calls a builder and asks, "Can I build this on my lot?" Unless that builder is intimately familiar with the specific bylaw in that specific zoning district, here's what happens next:

• Find the zoning bylaw (if you can find it)
• Read through a 50 to 3,000 page document
• Try to find the relevant sections
• Realize the document contradicts itself
• Try to call the building official
• Cross-reference multiple GIS systems
• Get told, "We won't tell you an answer until you file an application"
• Call a surveyor
•  

Meanwhile, the homeowner is wondering why the builder hasn't called back. Project lost. Here's the part that's almost frustrating, as Avi pointed out to Dave: all the data sources are publicly available. The zoning codes, the GIS layers, the setback requirements, the wetlands maps. It's all out there.

So why does it take weeks to even sketch out what a lot might support? That's the question FutureLot exists to answer. The platform compresses hours, days, or weeks of research into seconds. FutureLot gives builders the tools to draft an initial site plan before bringing in a surveyor or engineer. That means going back to the homeowner with a real concept, then bringing it to the building department early with a specific question: "This is what I'm thinking. Here are the bylaw provisions that say I should be able to do it. Am I reading this right?"

Early feedback instead of a redlined application three months in. Is it 100% correct? Honest answer: no.

Avi is candid about this on the show. Even government sources aren't 100% correct. FutureLot's reports are designed to enable intelligent conversations with homeowners and building departments, flag red flags early, and give builders a confident first look at whether a project is worth pursuing.

And here's a story Avi shared with Dave that says everything: FutureLot customers have walked into building departments, been told "you can't do that there," then pulled out the FutureLot report. The building department checks again and says, "You're right." These codes are complex. Having the citation in hand matters. For homeowners: excitement, then a lead

On the homeowner-facing side, FutureLot keeps things simple. No detailed zoning analysis, no topography layers. The whole point is to get the homeowner excited and then connect them to the builder.

A homeowner comes in thinking about a backyard cottage. They see the builder's home plans. They drop it onto the satellite view, slide it around the lot. "What if we put it here? What if we put it there?" They show their partner. They get excited. They fill out a form. That form becomes a lead, routed straight to the builder's CRM.

Builders adding this to their websites are seeing 2 to 5 times higher conversion rates. Because interactive beats static, every time. Municipalities are in on it now

The same logic applies to cities and towns. As Avi told Dave: no municipality wakes up wanting to be confusing. Nobody on a planning staff loves spending dozens of hours answering questions they don't have clean answers to.

FutureLot is partnering with municipalities to fix that. The Greater Portland Council of Governments tapped FutureLot to power maineaduguide.org, where any Maine resident can enter their address, see ADU floor plans that fit their lot, and get connected to their town planner. A state-level partnership is being announced next week. More are coming.

The premise is simple: the information is already public. The data is already there. What's missing is the bridge between a homeowner's question and a clear, fast answer.

That's the bridge FutureLot is building, lot by lot, town by town. Catch the full conversation between Avi Kaufman and Dave Cooper on the Dave Cooper Live podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hC16i2NZDo