Our mission has always been to help real estate agents and cannabis professionals find cannabis zoned properties faster. Rather than just giving you the tool to do that we've decided to go one step further and find those listings for you. Our smart algorithms collect listings from all over the web and then verify their boundaries in accordance with the local municipality zoning ordinance. This is the biggest pivot we've done to date so we'd like to share with you all the details about this change.

What is Smart Listing and what happened to our old features?

Spoiler alert, those features are still here but now available as a separate product. We've divided our services into two products: Smart Listing and Opportunity Search. Base on our research 99% of real estate agents rely on listings websites to find properties. Considering that browsing listings is such an important process for every real estate agent we figured that we could provide an enhanced experience to what they are used to so far that focuses on the cannabis space. Our Smart Listings utilize the power of artificial intelligence and smart algorithm to combine the regulation data that we've collected with our zoning algorithm. But how do Smart Listings compare to our previous features you may ask.

Our previous features were focused on providing real estate agents with every tool they need to browse municipality regulations and map to identify not only properties that are zoned for cannabis but also find new opportunities. Through customers' interviews and data, we realized that these features fit with a small number of companies but most companies were getting more values from actual listings. They felt that the tool was helpful to simplify the search but they still felt that they had to do a lot of research to identify a property. Since the biggest time real estate agents were spending were created to regulatory search;  we asked ourselves a very simple question: Why not remove the regulation search from the process altogether? This is how the ideas of building enhanced listings came to be. Since our advanced tool is useful to a small niche of users, we've decided to offer this product at a premium for brokerages who need more of Zonegoat. Making your search simpler always been our mission so Smart Listings is now our main product. 

We love smart listings and we believe that you will too. On top of providing you with an enhanced experience for finding cannabis properties, our team will also verify each property behind the scene for you. Whenever a listing is confirmed to be zoned for marijuana by a local municipality for a given type of use; we will update the zoning badge to reflect that. 

We now have the LARGEST Cannabis Property Listing database in Michigan

Using technology to do something that until now was mostly done manually has very powerful advantages. As soon as our team collects data for a given state, it can take us only a matter of minutes for collecting properties and verifying them with our algorithm. That means that as long as we have the data it only takes us a few minutes to verify hundreds of properties at once. This process can also be scaled to verify ten of thousands of properties in a few minutes. 

By using our algorithm at the launch of our new feature; we are proud to announce that we've collected more cannabis listings than any other listings site in Michigan in a few minutes. Having such an efficient process comes with a lot of processes we need to oversee and some responsibilities. We want to have more Zoned listings than listings with No boundaries to completely remove the effort of doing a regulatory search for your listing. Because we'd like to give you the best experience on Zonegoat we're growing our team to verify each listing for you behind the scene. As more people start using Zonegoat, we will increase our property collection rate so that you can get access to more listings.

Verify the zoning report of any address with a paid subscription

With our new Zoning Report Database feature we're now giving full access to our database of thousands of property reports to every paid subscriber. That gives you the ability to view the zoning report we've run for any address in Michigan.

Our New Pricing

Having a new business model, mean new pricing but don't worry it's not more expensive. We're actually providing Smart Listing for FREE with a limited number of results per city. With Smart Listing Pro you'll get unlimited listing results per city. 

We're limiting the number of access to our Opportunity Search plan during our beta. If you're interested contact sales@zonegoat.com 

What's up next? 

We're consistently learning from your feedback and we're listening. Since we've started we've always been willing to completely change our business model, and focus as long as it aligns with our vision to help you find cannabis zoned properties more easily. 

Our priority for the next few weeks will be around improving the quality of our listings so that most of our listings are already verified by our team. This way we'll have a higher percentage of Zonned properties than properties with No Boundaries. 

We hope you'll update this update. If you have any suggestions please feel free to contact us by interacting with this post or contacting our team by email at sales@zonegoat.com 

This is our biggest and most exciting update so far, and we think that you will be very happy with the changes made to our core features and the new features we've added.

Our goal with Zonegoat has always been to help commercial real estate agents find properties that are zoned for Cannabis. Our main feature was allowing agents to explore municipality regulations and to explore boundaries in those municipalities. Unfortunately, before this redesign we didn’t have the ability to display properties,  Zonegoat was allowing real estate agents to identify zones with no boundaries but wasn’t helping agents find properties in those zones. We realized that there was an issue with our UX and that we needed to revamp our core features, and for these past three months we did just that.

What's New on Zonegoat Feature by Feature

BROWSE FEATURE 

We've completely redesigned the Overview section to provide the most essential information to our users.  Browse now has a completely new overview section with less information clutter. When you navigate to a municipality you will be able to view the limits right away.

We've also added an accordion display for any additional information such as Zoning Distance Rules, Zoning Districts and Municipality Maps & Bylaws. So don't worry, all the additional information you were utilizing before are still accessible from the click of a mouse.

We've improved how users find and explore municipalities with a brand new Search Layout and Search Filters.

When a municipality of interest had a limit or didn't allow marijuana, there was no intuitive way to explore municipalities nearby. So, we've added Municipalities Nearby.

Our analytics showed that less than 1% of our users were using Zoning Simulation so we decided to remove direct access to the feature. This will allow us to focus all our efforts on maintaining and improving our core features and to provide simulation on-demand to whoever needs it. For our users who still need Simulation, the feature will now be available on demand.

MAP FEATURE

We've completely redesigned the Map Feature to make it more interactive and we've added the anticipated Property Feature. You can now explore and discover opportunities directly from the Map. Our new property feature will tell you right away the current estimate we have for a property: If it has No Boundaries and if it is Zoned. To run a more detailed report you can Run a Zoning Report.

You can now easily view all parcels near a property including the property itself. The Parcel Number for each property is now available on the Zoning Report that you can run anytime at no extra cost. 

If you'd like more information about a property; the broker information is available on the Property Card. You can also easily save your property of interest and run a zoning report for those properties later.

When a listing is fetched from Public record, we make it easy for you to directly access the original listings:

ZONING REPORT FEATURE

Our detailed Zoning Report was improved with Parcel Details, Parcel Numbers and Owner's Name.

Review the parcel of a property that is estimated to be zoned including the boundaries detected nearby. And know exactly why a property is estimated to be within boundary limits.

DASHBOARD

We've added a brand new dashboard that gives you a quick overview of your property saved and quick links to help you with your search.

DETAILED ZONING COVERAGE

It took us a while to figure out the best way to provide you with a clear overview of our data coverage. If you'd like to know where we are in terms of data collection this is a quick and easy way to find out. We believe that being transparent as possible with our progress and it allows you to have a bigger understanding of how Zonegoat can help you with your search. 

We are collecting data every day and we're always looking for new ways to collect data faster. We've recently made some internal changes that will allow us to collect our next batch of data at 15x the rate at which we were collecting it so far. This update will allow us to collect more municipalities and additional states faster. Because of this major change that is taking place on our data strategy, we believe that once this is fully implemented, we will be able to collect data nationwide faster than anticipated, and we might be able to reach that target before the end of the year. You can consult our coverage at any time or stay tuned with our announcements.

CREDITS SYSTEM & USAGE QUOTA

Bringing you all the features that Zonegoat provides doesn't come without cost. But we're always negotiating with our partners to find better ways to provide you with the services that Zonegoat provides at an affordable cost. We couldn't provide unlimited usage, but we wanted to give our users the ability to only pay for what they use. The beauty of a credit system is that it allows us to anticipate total usage while being able to afford and provide our service and allow our users to only pay for the credit they need and use them as they go.

The next time you open the map, you'll notice a new section that might look unfamiliar.

This is your Credit Usage Quota. Your total credit will be based on your plan. You might wonder how we price actions with credits. We like to keep things simple so we kept the cost of each action simple and easy to remember:

• Browsing Municipalities ( Unlimited with a subscription – No Credit required )
• Search ( 10 credits )
• Show property parcel ( 1 credit )
• Zoning Reports ( 40 credits )

That means that as long as you have an active subscription, browsing municipalities won't cost you a single credit (Yes, that's right! ). You only pay credits when you use the map to find opportunities, view a property parcel and/or run a zoning report.

By giving you unlimited access to the Browse feature, we hope that it will give you all the time you need to narrow down your areas of focus before exploring opportunities. 

FREE TRIAL 

We always wanted to make it easier for everyone to have the ability to experience the value of Zonegoat before having to pay for it.  Since we changed our business model to a credit system, it's now much easier for us to offer a Free Trial. 

When you sign up for Zonegoat you automatically get a 7 days Free Trial with 100 credits. It gives you enough credits to experience our product and see if Zonegoat is for you. When you're ready to upgrade and put your team on it, you can contact sales and our team and customer success manager will be happy to assist you. 

MULTIPLE USERS SUPPORT

By opening our Sign Up process to everyone, we've also made it easier for new users to create an organization or join their existing organization when their team is already on Zonegoat.

To add a user right now the organization admin will need to contact us via the chat but don't worry, your organization admin will soon have the ability to invite users right from his dashboard.

WHAT'S NEXT 😆

As you can see, these past three months moved at a very fast pace, but we don't intend to slow down. There are still a lot of things we are planning to achieve in the next couple of weeks. Here's what to expect: 

• We're Adding A LOT MORE municipalities data, including new states! We're adding new data daily, but since we are revamping our data collection strategy, when it is fully implemented you can expect to see a much larger set of data added into our system within the next few weeks. More municipality data also means that you'll be able to run zoning reports in more municipalities.
• We're Adding Zoning District Validation which will allow us to display Zoning District Name and Code for any address. This is a much-anticipated feature that will greatly improve our Zoning Algorithm. We've been working on it for months, and we're excited to announce that we are a few weeks away from launching.

Do let us know how excited you are about these new updates! And please don't hesitate to reach out via email to share your experience with us. We can't wait to hear from you!

💯Hundreds of municipality boundaries were added – Now available on Explore

Here are some of the new municipality maps we added: Kalkaska Village, Orion Charter Township, Bay City, Burton, Emmett Charter Township, Ionia City, Lenox Township, Muskegon Heights, Monitor Charter Township, Egelston, Benton Harbor, Hampton Charter Township, Dalton, Bedford Charter Township, Lapeer, Albion, Center Line, Buena Vista Charter Township, Walled Lake, Windsor, Negaunee Township, Mount Morris Township, Parma Township, Sands Township, Pulaski Township, Newaygo, Leslie, Thetford Township, Lapeer Township, Kawkawlin Township, Vassar Township, Richmond Township, Hamlin Townshp and much more!

+500 Municipality ordinance, and zoning maps 📑 – Now available on Browse

Your municipality-to-municipality comparison and research is now extended to more local governments in Michigan. 

As we're improving our current feature, we're also adding HUNDREDS of local government information EVERY week. Feel free to contact us if you'd like us to add data for a specific municipality.

The map business type filters now display business types when there's data available for a specific business.

What's next? 🤖

- We will start displaying badges on local government that have no buffer rules in their ordinances. That will make it easier for user to differentiate these municipalities from those where we haven't collected data yet.
- We will add +400 additional municipalities ordinances and zoning maps for the state of Michigan this coming week. 🙌
- Zoning District and Zoning Zone information will be available on the Browse feature for +50 Michigan Local Governments next week! ⭐
- We will start beta testing one of our most anticipated feature: Zoning Zones. That includes displaying Zoning Zones on the Map, and showing boundaries based on Zoning Zones boundary buffer.  👍(e.g: Must be 500 feet away from a Residential District) 

Have a wonderful weekend!

1. Boundary Details are now available

Zonegoat is a tool to help you simplify your search and due diligence. To make that process more efficient we felt that it was essential for you to be able to view the detailed information of those boundaries directly on the map.

Since we use third party data combined with our zoning algorithm we cannot guarantee the accuracy of each boundary. But we're confident that our application gives a very close estimate on whether a boundary should be of concern or not. 

Being able to view the details of each boundary will give you the information you need to make better decisions. 

2.  Map Clusters

We've heard from you that sometimes there are so many boundaries that it's hard to count how many there are on the map. With this feature it will now be a breeze to navigate through boundaries on the map and count them. It will also allow you to focus in on the ones you'd like to analyze.

3. "Map" is now "Explore". 

We've made so many updates to this feature recently that we felt that this feature has become much more than a map.

You can:
- View licensed marijuana businesses in a given municipality
- Identify potential boundary risks
- Uncover areas of opportunities
- Visualize buffer rules simulations
- an search for property of interest

But more importantly this feature is a way for users to explore areas of opportunities and simplify the due diligence process for Cannabis Zoned Properties. Since this feature is a way to Explore and analyze, we've decided to rename it "Explore".

4. Boundaries Tab

The boundary tab is a quick and easy way to go through every single boundary shown on the map. 

PS. Now that each boundary buffers are clickable, you can also view the detailed information of a buffer directly on the map.

5. Excluded Boundaries

Sometimes the system collects boundary buffers based on incorrect details provided by third parties and/or the business owner of a location. When these boundary buffers are incorrect, our team manually excludes them from the map. 

These excluded boundaries will appear in the Excluded Tab.

6. You can now generate reports for FREE

Our goal is to deliver as much value as possible. From your feedback we've learned that the way our report feature currently works is not of value to you. So we've decided to send this feature back to our lab and make it entirely free during the process as we will look for ways to make this feature more valuable for users in the future.

Boundary details that were once only available through a report are now available on the Explore feature at no additional cost. 

If you'd like to investigate an area outside of the search radius used for generating the boundaries on the map, you can still use this feature to generate a report.

We want to build features that are useful and valuable to you. So If you have any suggestion on how reports should work in the future, please don't hesitate to send us your feedback by either commenting below or sending a feature suggestion here.

What's next?

The features we announced today are currently exclusive to the standard display mode of the map but you will soon be able to take advantage of these features in Simulation mode as well. 🎉

We are adding new data every day!  Our next big bash of import will happen in the next few days. We will be adding Buffer Rules for 75 local governments and +500 municipalities links such as zoning ordinances and maps.

We are  actively working to add:
- Zoning Zones Information for each municipalities which will be accessible from the Browse feature
- Measurement guideline for buffer rules which will be accessible from the Browse Feature
- Ability to display zoning districts for a local government directly on the Map. This feature will allow us to display boundaries not just based on buffer rules but also based on zoning district restrictions.

We hope you'll enjoy this big release. 🍻

About 142 local governments have shared their license limits with LARA. We've added all the licenses limits provided by LARA into the system and more. You can now view these limits directly on Zonegoat. 

We're adding new data to Zonegoat E-v-e-r-y-d-a-y. Make sure to keep an eye on this announcement tab for future updates!

Cheers and Have a wonderful Weekend! 🥳

Tell us how you feel about this new feature by Sending your Feedback below. 

Before we used to display all existing buffer boundaries on the map at once regardless of their business type. Since buffer Rules often apply to specific business types,  we realized that it wasn't the most efficient way to help you with your search. So we've decided to make the map more interactive by adding a business type filter. This new feature will allow you to display buffer boundaries for your specific business type.

And if you were wondering, the answer is YES – This feature will also work with our newly added simulation mode. 🥳 

Let us know what you think about this improvement in the comment by Sending us Your Feedback.

Want to suggest a feature? Click Here

Our map  gives you the ability to visualize land use and narrow down your scope for a property search. But until now, it was limited to be used for municipalities that have passed marijuana ordinances and buffer rules. With Zonegoat Simulation Mode you can now ignite your search for municipalities that haven't yet passed an ordinance.

Create a Simulation in the Browse view and enjoy it on the Map

Here are a four reasons why we think you'll love this new exciting feature:

1. When we haven't yet collected buffer rules for a municipality; you can add a few custom one yourself to simulate potential ordinance

2. With this feature you now have the ability to visualize potential land use in municipality that haven't yet passed an ordinance or are still in draft mode.

3. You'll be able to identify risky real estate lands and areas where strict buffer rules might be passed. 

4. If you get hold of buffer rules before they are available, you can simulate how they might look like.

Easily create your simulation with pre-populated lists of common options.

Here at Zonegoat we are consistently handling hundreds and sometimes thousand of local government data per day. Having such a large set of data mean that we have the ability to notice patterns and commonalities between municipalities. To make it easy for you to create buffer rules we've added a list of common boundaries that are often used in Zoning Ordinances. 

Going through government regulation can be complicated. So we wanted a seamless experience for adding buffer rules that didn't require too much thinking. We've added enough Boundary types that you will be able to find either the exact boundary you're looking for or at least a close match. If you believe that we should add additional boundaries, you can let us know at any time by either contacting Support or Reporting the missing data with our 'missing data form' (located on the bottom right of the Browse view ).

Our team has been working day and night for the release of this feature, and we are very excited to finally make it available to all users during this Pilot. We're still actively adding new improvement to this feature daily – you will notice a few tweaks within the next few days. With your feedback we can add tweaks and updates that will improve your experience with Simulation Mode.

Features like this one are born from user surveys and user feedback. As always, thank you for your suggestions . We are always looking for additional feedback and suggestions about our features. If you're not sure how you can help us improve your experience with Zonegoat, you can start by sharing your personal experience with us:

For example:

- Tell us what feature of Zonegoat is the most important or useful for you
- Let us know what features are missing
- Tell us about the glitch you can't stand or the user experience you wish to have
- Or even how you would improve some of our current features.

We hope you'll enjoy Simulation Mode and we can't wait to hear from you!

Marijuana Businesses Info Box

Last week we added 651 marijuana businesses to the Map feature. You will now be able to view more details about Michigan licensed marijuana businesses when you click on a Marijuana Business marker.

Searched Property Info Box

We made the property you search more visible by displaying an info box right after your search. 

We've also added a button that will make it easier for you to generate a zoning report for that property. Did you know you could already view a detailed list of boundaries buffer in your zoning reports ( see below)

We want to make the report more valuable for you. Once our Places Nearby feature goes live you will also be able to view a detailed list of properties nearby in your Zoning Report.

We are always exploring ways to make the map even more interactive and useful for you. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have a suggestion.

Thank you for your feedback! 🙌

The Browse and Map view used to default to Detroit, Wayne. Now it remembers the last local government you browsed and always displays that local government as the default on both view. 

You won't have to use the search engine anymore on the map to go to the local government you were just browsing every time you leave the Browse view to view that local government on the map 👍

We hope this feature will improve your experience. Thank you for your feedback!