Frequently asked questions

tract.earth is an AI-powered Massachusetts real-estate intelligence platform and property research database. The Tract Agent is the copilot on the desk; Scouts are named background agents that package findings while you work. Coverage is roughly 1.9 million parcels across all 351 municipalities, built on the MassGIS Level 3 parcel layer — assessor records, zoning, owner and LLC filings, comps, tax delinquency, pre-foreclosure, and auctions. Operators work leads in the Deal Desk CRM, run statewide owner search and skip trace, send direct mail, and pull the same data through a read-only REST API.

Every parcel in Massachusetts — roughly 1.9 million parcels across all 351 cities and towns. Coverage is built on the MassGIS Level 3 (L3) standardized parcel layer, so every municipality is included on day one, not a handful of pilot towns.

No scraping. The foundation is MassGIS L3 canonical parcels — the state-standardized assessor and geometry layer — enriched with assessor records, owner and entity data, comparable sales, and infrastructure context. Distress signals come from authoritative county and municipal records.

Parcel and assessor data tracks the municipal and MassGIS refresh cycles, and distress signals (tax delinquency, lis pendens, auctions) are updated on an ongoing basis. Skip-trace results are cached for 30 days before a refresh.

The map opens on all of Massachusetts with every municipality tinted by the average assessed value of its parcels — a one-glance read on which markets are underserved and which are primed. Hover a town for its value card, click it to load its parcels, or open the Market Screener to rank all 351 towns by median value, average value, and parcel count. The full walkthrough is in the User Guide at tract.earth/guide.

Yes. Owner/LLC intelligence pierces entity ownership using the Secretary of the Commonwealth registry, linking a parcel's owner-of-record LLC to its real principals, managers, and registered agent so you know who to contact.

Each parcel comes with comparable sales plus assessed-value context, so you can gauge value without leaving the property record.

Tax delinquency, pre-foreclosure, lis pendens (active litigation against the property), scheduled auctions, and absentee ownership. These are the signals that surface motivated sellers before a property hits the market.

A lis pendens is a public notice that a lawsuit affecting title to a property has been filed — often a foreclosure or ownership dispute. It is an early signal of distress, frequently months ahead of an auction, which is why investors track it.

Cap rates are modeled, and labeled as such. Income comes from a per-square-foot rent benchmark for the town adjusted by property type; expenses use vacancy and operating-expense ratios plus the parcel's actual taxes; and where enough recent arms-length sales exist, the assessed-to-market factor is measured from that town's own sales rather than assumed. Every assumption — vacancy, expense ratio, rent adjustment, market uplift — is adjustable from the comps panel, and your values flow through to the Tract Agent.

Yes. Switch the search box to owner mode and type a person, LLC, trust, or corporation name — no town selection needed. Matching is order-insensitive, so "first last" and "last, first" both work. Results appear as pins statewide, and selecting one jumps to the parcel and loads its town.

The Tract Visualizer is the interactive map of relationships. Its Ownership tab draws the network around any entity, person, or parcel: an LLC's full assessor portfolio, the people behind it, each person's personal holdings, and entities sharing the same mailing address — open it from the Visualize button on any entity-owned property card. Its Personal tab shows the private memory the Tract Agent builds for your account. Ownership ties are assessor-name matches, not chain-of-title, so treat them as leads rather than legal conclusions.

The Tract Agent is the AI copilot built into tract.earth — the reason the platform is AI-powered, not only a parcel database. It works through the desk: it resolves addresses to parcels, pulls assessor records and distress signals, runs comps, reads your pipeline, creates tasks, drafts LOIs and fee-sharing agreements, and remembers what matters in a private knowledge graph that belongs to your account. Click "send to agent" on any property card, or open the Agent tab, and it starts a conversation with the intel brief.

Scouts are named background agents on tract.earth — a roster you staff, not the name of the free billing plan. You set a market and a play; a scout sweeps parcels, joins Secretary of the Commonwealth filings, and writes a complete package — parcel, play, LLC members, and cached contact channels — without you sitting in the chat. The desk Tract Agent dispatches them. Scout labor is staffed by plan slots, not charged as chat credits.

The Tract Agent is the copilot you talk to — questions, drafts, and the map and intel rail on the desk. Scouts are staff you send out: they run in the background and return packages the Agent can pick up. Dispatching a scout does not occupy the current chat turn. You still research and work deals yourself; the AI layer does not replace the records.

Yes. tract.earth ships an MCP server so your data follows you into your own AI chat. Create an agent access token in Settings → Connections, install the earth-engine MCP server, and register it with your token — full steps are in Settings → Integrations. Your subscription decides which skills unlock: the free Scout tier includes starter skills (address-to-parcel, parcel records, area intel, and the deal playbook), while Pro and Brokerage unlock the complete set including owner portfolios, distress signals, comps, skip tracing, reports, and document drafting.

Yes — two ways. Each conversation is saved and can be resumed from the panel, and every few turns the agent writes a short summary into your private memory graph alongside the facts you ask it to remember. That memory is scoped to your account, exportable from the chat panel, never shared, and browsable in the Tract Visualizer's Personal tab.

Yes. Skip trace returns phone numbers and email for the owner of record, cached for 30 days. It is a user-only feature (not part of the public API surface) and respects applicable contact rules.

Yes. You can fire USPS-certified direct mail straight from a parcel, so outreach happens where the research already lives — no exporting lists into a separate mail tool.

Both. The Deal Desk is a built-in CRM: pipeline stages, contacts, tasks, saved lists, and automations. You research a property and work it as a lead in the same place, from sourced through closed.

Yes. The same Massachusetts parcel intelligence is available as a read-only, stateless REST API — pass an API key, get JSON. It is useful for PropTech apps, CRM enrichment, lender/insurance underwriting, lead generation, and market dashboards.

tract.earth is the real-estate product: research plus the Deal Desk CRM, built for operators. engine.earth is the developer playground for the same underlying APIs across all data products. Same data, two front doors.

No. Read-only data endpoints (parcels, owners, comps, signals, geocoding) are part of the API. Skip trace, direct mail, and saved-list endpoints remain user-only and are not exposed on the public API surface.

tract.earth is invite-only. Request access from the sign-in page — if we open a seat, you get a magic link. There is no self-serve signup. Once you are in, the desk opens on the Tract Agent; you can ask it about a parcel or staff Scouts in the background. Developers on engine.earth can still mint a playground key from the developer portal.

Yes. The User Guide at tract.earth/guide walks through the whole platform: the statewide value map and Market Screener, address and owner search, property intelligence and cap rates, LLC and ownership research, the map tools (overlays, Build, Assemble), deals and underwriting, the Tract Agent, and Scouts.

Access is invite-only. Pro is $499/month (one seat) and unlocks unlimited CRM, comps, the Tract Agent, Scouts, and monthly credits for owner intel, skip tracing, mail, and reports. Brokerage is $2,495/month for five seats at Pro parity, with pooled credits. Larger teams can talk to us about Enterprise. Compare them in Settings → Billing — the allowances there come straight from your account, so they are always current.

tract.earth is Massachusetts-first and goes deep on MA data quality. Additional states are on the roadmap; Massachusetts is where coverage is complete today.

Yes. tract.earth can show active MLS listings as price-labeled pins with photo cards, right alongside the parcel data. Listings appear once you connect your own MLS subscription in Settings → Connections.

MLS data is licensed per subscriber. To stay compliant, each agent or broker connects their own MLS credentials (for example an MLS PIN account), so listings load under your own entitlement. We never serve licensed MLS data through a shared account, and your credentials are stored encrypted.

Click a listing pin and open “Parcel record” to jump straight to the matching MassGIS parcel — assessment, owner, zoning, and history — so you can research a live listing the same way you research any property.

The free Scout plan includes Massachusetts map and parcel research, your own MLS listings, and a starter CRM (a capped number of contacts, deals, lists, and one project). It is meant to let you work real deals before upgrading.

Skip traces, direct-mail pieces, and property reports consume per-action credits. Paid plans include a monthly allowance that resets each billing period; you can buy top-up credits that never expire. Re-opening a skip trace you already ran does not cost another credit.

No. Research never spends credits implicitly — LLC and entity intelligence, owner portfolios, the Tract Visualizer, comps, cap rates, and search are all free reads. Credits are only consumed by explicit metered actions you click and confirm, like the Skip Trace research action, and those buttons say so before they run. The Tract Agent follows the same rule.

Yes. Cancel from Settings → Billing (Manage billing) at any time; your plan stays active through the end of the current billing period. Payments are billed in advance and are non-refundable except where required by law.

You do. The CRM content you create — contacts, deals, notes, lists, projects — is yours. We host and process it to run the Service and never use your private CRM content to train models. See our Privacy Policy for details.

No. tract.earth is not a consumer reporting agency and skip-trace data is not a consumer report under the FCRA — it cannot be used for credit, insurance, employment, or housing-eligibility decisions. Use it for legitimate real-estate outreach, and follow TCPA, Do-Not-Call, and CAN-SPAM rules when you contact owners.

You can delete individual records in the app. To close your account or request deletion or export of your personal data, email support@tract.earth from your account email. See our Privacy Policy for your rights and our retention practices.