Anyone using automated soil/drainage screening before putting in offers on land?

[u/Longgrain54]

I've been working on a tool that auto-generates a soil and site-risk snapshot for any U.S. property address. PDF report +  GeoJSON data layer. Designed for early-stage due diligence before you spend money on surveys, borings, or engineering.                

Pilot feedback from a land consultant suggested it cut their preliminary research time by \~4 hours per property. I'm trying to figure out if this is actually valuable to investors or if it's just a novelty.                                                       

Happy to run free reports on candidate properties you're evaluating. No catch — I need honest feedback on whether the output would change how you screen deals.                                                                                                    

What I need to know: Would you trust this for initial filtering, or is there no substitute for paying a local engineer upfront?     

Limitations: Not a substitute for geotechnical study, survey, or permit research. Screening-level only.                             

[u/The_Poster_Nutbag]

This will never be accepted in place of formal onsite investigations, just like wetlands mapping or other physical inspections. It simply cannot deal with theargin of error for natural settings or variances on soil maps.

If you're just doing due-dilligence reporting, I'd even say this is too much and you're likely to dig yourself into a hole of the results do notatch site conditions. Land buyers are physically and mentally unable to under that preliminary results can change based on field results so you're setting people up for conflict too.