Know about Austin rezonings before your competitors drive past the sign.
Zoning Firehose checks the Planning & Zoning agenda portals of 25 Austin municipalities. From each captured packet we extract the cases our reader supports — location, acreage, requested zoning, petitioner, staff recommendation where the packet states one; coverage and field completeness vary by city and packet — and email you the ones that match your keywords and counties. Alerts follow the processing of a matching case; the measured timing figures are below, each with the population it was measured on.
Built for small development-land brokerage teams, acquisition managers and developers working the Austin metro.
Recent observed examples in Austin
The most recently processed rezonings across the metro whose hearing is still ahead or not yet scheduled — click any one to see the property on a map. Subscribers get matching cases emailed when the packet is captured, ahead of the hearing where the city posts ahead.
San Marcos ZC-26-07 — Northern side of Wonder World Drive approximately 450' northwest of the intersection between, CM → BP, 4.64 acAustin C14-2026-0040 — 1221 and 1219 ½ South Interstate Highway 35 Service Road Northbound, 1400 Lupine Lane, Harper's Branch; East Riverside/Oltorf Combined Neighborhood Planning Area, LR-NP and SF-3-NP → CS-NP
San Marcos ZC-26-03 — 1600 Block Hunter Road, FD → CM, 14.72 ac
Austin C14-2025-0051 — 3426 ½ Parker Lane and 1710, 1712, 1714, 1716, 1718, 1720, 1722, 1724 Woodward Street, Country Club West Watershed; East Riverside/Oltorf Combined (Parker Lane) Neighborhood Planning Area, MF-3 → GR-DBC30
See every tracked case → · Who's filing in Austin →
How it works
- We check the portals. Each covered city's P&Z agenda page, checked repeatedly; the coverage page shows when each was last read successfully. Special meetings and revised agendas are read when the portal lists them.
- The packet is read for you. The cases our reader supports are extracted into structured data: location, acreage, current and requested zoning, petitioner, owner, hearing date, and the staff recommendation where the packet states one. Coverage and field completeness vary by city and packet; fields the packet omits stay blank.
- You get only your matches. Set counties and keywords — "multi-family," "SUP," a competitor's LLC, a road corridor. We email you when a case hits, and nothing when it doesn't.
You can do this by hand. Here's what that costs.
| Checking portals by hand | Zoning Firehose |
|---|---|
| Dozens of sites × weekly × 30 min each | Every covered P&Z portal, checked automatically |
| Misses special meetings and amendments | Revised agendas and continuances the portal lists are read too |
| A 200 MB agenda packet, hundreds of pages, if they find it | Read for you up to our packet limits (hundreds of pages); structured case data in a short email |
| Finds out when the sign goes up — or from the buyer | An email once a matching case is processed from the captured packet |
| ~10 hrs/mo of someone's time | $99/mo for one city, $599/mo for the whole metro — cancel anytime |
The Austin P&Z portals we check
Teal = a portal our monitor read successfully within the last 21 days and holds at least one case from. Grey = on the expansion list. What each status means →
Full coverage table → · Who's filing rezonings here → · Activity trends →
The case you don't hear about is the expensive one
Nobody pays for alerts. They pay for the two or three cases a year they would otherwise have found out about too late — and those are never the ones they were watching for.
Nobody is going to tell you
Cities mail notice to the owners immediately around a site — a ring measured in hundreds of feet. Own land across the road, hold a tract two blocks over, or sit under contract nearby, and you are outside it. The city has met its obligation and you never got a letter. That is the normal case, not the failure case.
The window is days, not weeks
Cities post agendas close to the legal minimum. Among the cases we first processed before their hearing, the median reached us 5 days ahead (cases we only saw after the hearing are not in that figure). Checking portals every Monday isn't slower than us — it means a case can be filed, heard and decided between two checks.
One case pays for years of this
A competitor quietly assembling next to your holdings. A staff report recommending denial on a tract you'd buy at the right basis. Land going multi-family a block from something you're about to close on. Any one of those is worth more than years of $99/month for a single city — and you only need to catch one.
More than a filing alert
Most services tell you a decision was published. By then the deal is done. We follow the case through the pipeline and flag the moments that actually change what land is worth.
Follow a case, not just a filing
One rezoning generates a stream, not a single email: first sighting, hearing scheduled, continued to a later date, then advanced from Planning & Zoning to Council. You see the case move through every stage instead of hearing about it once.
Know which deals are in trouble
We flag the cases fighting uphill — where the city planner has recommended denial in the packet, ahead of the vote. That is a staff recommendation, not a decision: we read agendas, so we can tell you a case is in trouble but never how the vote went. Filter your alerts down to only these if that's the game you're playing.
Watch your own land
Add the properties you own or have under contract and pick a radius. When something is filed near one of them we tell you how far away it is and which of your properties it's next to — whether or not it matches your keywords. Texas cities are only required to mail notice to owners within 200 feet of a site; our default ring is 1,000 feet.
What you get
Land acquisition teams
Rezonings and SUPs with acreage, requested zoning and petitioner as the packets list them — when the packet is captured, not when the sign goes up on the corner. See assemblage activity while a case is still in front of the commission; a proposal is not an approval, and a staff recommendation is not a vote.
Brokers pitching listings
Walk into the pitch knowing what's moving around the property: case numbers, hearing dates, staff recommendations where stated. Be the broker who already knew.
Civil engineers & planners
Track competitor filings and what each city's staff recommends — and how long items sit between stages — without babysitting a dozen portals. Outcomes are decided in minutes we don't collect, so we won't tell you what passed. Pull the same data by API when you need it in a model.
The next packet is on its way. Read it before the hearing.
14 days free · $99/mo one city, $599/mo the whole metro · cancel anytime