Type a California address; get a sourced, scored answer. This guide covers signing in, running a site, reading every section of the report, and getting your work out.
Site Due Diligence is a preliminary screening instrument for California affordable-housing sites. From one address (or APN, or coordinates) it assembles: parcel facts, the census tract and CTCAC/HCD opportunity designation, HUD QCT/DDA basis-boost status, TCAC 9% competitive site-amenity scoring with real GTFS transit headways, zoning with overlays and a density-bonus calculator, hazard screens, current CTCAC maximum rents, and a funding-program fit read.
What it is not: a substitute for professional diligence. Every fact carries a confidence label and its source; TCAC amenity points are always preliminary until field-verified; zoning and legal determinations need qualified professionals. The banner at the top of every report says this because it's true.
Signing in
Go to app.centralcoasteconomics.com (or click Sign in on the main site).
Enter your email — the one your invitation was issued to.
Check your inbox for a one-time code, enter it, and you're in. No password exists, which means there's no password to lose, share, or breach.
Sessions last one week; after that you'll be asked for a fresh code.
Access is per-person, by invitation. Codes go only to your email — sharing the URL doesn't share access (and each run is logged to the account that ran it).
Running a site
Enter the site in the left panel: a street address is usually enough. Add the APN or a lat/long if the address is ambiguous or the site is vacant land (for unaddressed parcels, coordinates work best).
Set project assumptions: housing type (Large Family, Senior, Special Needs / PSH…), set-aside, unit count, density, share of 3BR+ units, and construction type. These drive scoring — they're editable after the run, too.
Click Run due diligence. The seal fills with water as the data connectors report back — geocoding, parcel, opportunity map, HUD layers, amenities, transit, schools, zoning, hazards. A typical run takes one to three minutes depending on county.
Each connector shows its own status. FETCHED means live data landed; SKIPPED means an optional source wasn't configured (e.g. Google amenities without a key); FAILED means an upstream source didn't answer — the run continues and the report notes the gap.
Parcel geometry, APN, and zoning layers are wired for Ventura, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo counties. Geographic scoring (tract, opportunity area, QCT/DDA, amenities, transit) works statewide.
Reading the report
Confidence labels — read these first
Every fact is tagged:
COMPUTED measured from authoritative data (a distance from a geocoded point, a tract lookup). Reliable as computed — verify the underlying address match.
PRELIMINARY scored per the QAP but requiring field verification — most TCAC amenity points live here.
ADVISORY an interpretation (zoning read, legislation fit, funding likelihood) — a starting point for your planner or attorney, not a determination.
The sections, in order
Section
What you're looking at
Site facts
Resolved address, APN, acreage, jurisdiction, census tract, coordinates. If the geocoder matched a different address than you meant, everything downstream moves — check this first.
Computed geographic facts
Opportunity area category, HUD QCT/DDA (the 30% basis boost), FEMA flood, distances to mapped amenities.
TCAC site amenities
Each §10325(c) amenity with the distance measured, the tier earned, and points. Transit shows the actual GTFS peak headway when a qualifying stop is near.
Points System Summary
The full 9% competitive picture — amenity points plus Lowest Income scoring from your AMI mix — against the maximums.
Zoning & density bonus
Base zone (where county layers exist), overlays incl. HQTA, the §65915/AB 1287 density-bonus calculation from your AMI mix, and legislation advisories (SB 35/423-type streamlining fits).
Current CTCAC maximum rents for the county at your AMI tiers.
Funding fit
Program-by-program read (Likely / Unlikely / Needs research) across state and federal sources based on the site's facts.
The TCAC scoring panel
The scoring panel is live: change the AMI mix, set-aside, or assumptions and the Lowest Income points, Points System Summary, density bonus, and rent limits recompute instantly — no re-fetch of the geographic data. Use it to answer "what if we deepen affordability?" or "does Senior beat Large Family here?" in seconds. Edits are saved with the run.
Exports
Report (PDF) — the full scored report. In the browser it opens as a print-ready page: use Print → Save as PDF.
Field packet — a checklist version built for windshield surveys: every preliminary amenity with what to verify on the ground.
Excel pro-forma starter — unit mix, rent limits, and site facts pre-loaded into a workbook.
CTCAC Application Starter (.xlsx) — a Central Coast Economics-branded workbook modeled on the CTCAC application's Attachment 40 layout: project information, the full points system with threshold check, site amenities with measured evidence, rent limits, funding fit, and a field-verification punch list — organized so you can review each figure and transcribe it into the official state workbook or your own pro forma. It is deliberately not the official workbook and must never be submitted directly.
JSON — every collected fact with sources, for your own models.
Projects, History & notes
Every run is saved automatically — reopening a past report is instant and never re-fetches or re-computes anything. History now groups your reports into Projects: use Move to project… on any report to file it under a named portfolio ("Camarillo Pipeline", "2027 9% Round"), with unfiled reports listed under Unfiled. Reports you create are yours — other users of the deployment see their own. Compare puts runs side by side, and Notes & annotations travel with a run into its exports.
Appearance
Settings → Appearance: choose Day, Night, or System and one of three accent palettes (Oxblood, Cypress, Gilt). Your choice is saved to your account and follows you to any device the next time you sign in.
One more navigation note: clicking the Central Coast Economics seal in the header takes you back to the main website (where future tools will live) — you'll get a gentle confirmation the first time, with a "don't ask again" option.
Settings, data upgrades & AI keys
The app runs fully on free public data, with these upgrades:
Neighborhood demographics (income, poverty, renter share from the Census ACS) are provided by Central Coast Economics — nothing to configure.
Google Places (optional) — amenities come from free OpenStreetMap data by default; a Google key adds Google's commercial places database for better coverage and naming, useful when a site's amenity list looks thin. Google bills the key per lookup, and on a shared deployment every user's runs bill to it.
AI provider (optional, forward-looking) — accepts an Anthropic (Claude), OpenAI, Google Gemini, or xAI key. This powers the upcoming AI zoning-code extraction (reading a city's zoning PDF where no GIS layer exists); keys entered now activate when the feature ships.
Keys entered in Settings are shared across users of this deployment — don't paste keys you aren't comfortable sharing, and never paste keys into any field at someone else's request.
Troubleshooting
"No geocoder match" — the Census geocoder couldn't resolve the address. Add city + ZIP, try the APN, or enter lat/long directly (vacant parcels often need coordinates).
Parcel shows "—" — the site is outside the four wired counties, or the point fell just outside parcel geometry; scoring still runs. The nearest-parcel fallback catches most road-centerline geocodes.
A connector FAILED — public agency endpoints have bad days. Re-run later; the rest of the report is unaffected and the gap is labeled.
Sign-in code never arrives — check spam for mail from Cloudflare Access; codes expire quickly, request a fresh one.
"Your trial period has ended" / "No subscription found" — see Access & billing below.
Access, billing & support
Access is by invitation from Central Coast Economics. If your access lapses, the sign-in page will say so and — where subscriptions are enabled — offer a subscribe link; use the same email you sign in with and access re-activates automatically on payment.