In this episode, the complexity of training LandPricer’s AI to accurately identify flag lots is revealed, requiring extensive prompt refinement to handle edge cases like hourglass-shaped parcels where properties narrow mid-parcel but have buildable areas near the street, ultimately achieving 95%+ accuracy by restricting flag lot classification to only parcels where the narrow “pole” section cannot accommodate structures.
Key Takeaways:
- Hourglass Parcels Break Simple Flag Lot Detection Properties that widen near the street, narrow in the middle, then widen again confuse basic algorithms, requiring sophisticated logic to determine whether the street-adjacent area is buildable.
- Louisiana Flag Lot Became Premium After $100K Investment The typical flag lot disadvantage reversed completely when driveway installation, clearing, and turnkey preparation absorbed nearly $100K in development costs on behalf of buyers.
- Edge Case Testing Required Hours of Iterative Refinement Achieving reliable flag lot identification demanded extensive testing across unusual parcel shapes and terrain configurations, with each edge case requiring prompt adjustments to maintain 95%+ accuracy.
Listen to the full episode to understand the engineering challenges behind automated flag lot detection.
(Podcast transcript below)
Welcome to get serious. I wanted to dive in and share again a bit more behind the scenes on land Pricer and some of the relevant questions that we’re going to be determining on the backend using large language model image analysis. There’s a lot of complexity to this as I’m sure you can imagine, but we’re trying to arrive at
very useful answers on behalf of the user looking to price out their property and then any relevant offline check-ins that may need to be done upon the completion of the land price review. So I’m trying to do a lot of these kind of mini insights as we anticipate our upcoming launch here.
those of you who aren’t aware, can check out landpricer.ai for all the key updates. I promise I’m going to be sending an email to that list here very shortly. I’ve just been under the gun as I’m sure you can imagine trying to wrap up the product, but we are trying to build the most reliable land pricing tool on the market. Still being very efficient. The goal is to get done within five to 10 minutes max for any land parcel that you review in the entire
U.S. But the primary focus is being reliable in the judgment of the pricing and any existing solution currently on the market does not fit my company’s needs at Sirius Land Capital. So we are building a tool for ourselves first and foremost and won’t be satisfied with anything less. I won’t release anything that we wouldn’t use internally. So that is the
Northstar and the standard that we are holding ourselves to. So I talked about how we have a more nuanced approach to determining street access and why street not all street access is created equal. Next is determining whether the parcel is a flag lot. Like, well, flag lot, that should be super simple. Anybody when I say a flag lot that’s been in the land investing game for, I don’t know, longer than two or three weeks, the union is immediately picture.
what a flag lot looks like. And for those of you who might not be as familiar, generally that will, you know, to kind of visualize and paint a picture is, you know, just kind of imagine what flag looks like in your head. And that kind of pole part of the flag is going to be what allows and connects to direct street access for a particular property.
usually oriented for a longer driveway and to get whatever utilities are needed for presumably residential structure farther in the back of the property that widens out, hence the flag portion of the property that allows for some type of structural improvements. So most of the times, flag lots are going to be a bit less desirable than
properties with a wider street frontage, both for a convenience as well as a cost perspective. Cause as you can imagine, if you’ve done any type of development or even looked into pricing, anything out or talk to realtors about this thing costs for installing driveways are pretty significant or, you know, extending power lines or water lines from the street, for instance. So.
You know, all of that is going to have to be borne by the buyer of the property. And if you have a pretty substantial, you know, length of driveway, just to access your flag portion, the buildable portion of your lot, you know, who knows? It could be a few hundred feet, several hundred feet. Some could be upwards of a quarter, half mile. It depends. Right? So, all of that generally is going to make those types of parcels a bit less.
desirable, come compare it again to properties that have more significant road frontage for the actual property boundary and allow you to build a lot closer to the street and less cost involved generally. Now, of course, I should just mention, you know, the subdivide that we’re doing in Louisiana.
At the moment, our flag lot is actually going to be the most prime premier lot because we’ve put in all of that effort to install the driveway to clear a turnkey set up for an buyer. So we invested probably almost $100,000 into doing that on behalf of the buyer. we knocked out a ton of that cost for them.
So you just kind of have to keep that in mind what work might have already been done on the property But in general if something has not been improved significantly Or cleared, you know again think about that too like I was just assuming okay, you know utilities and Driveway, but you know, generally you’re gonna have to Clear out a bunch of vegetation if there’s been any type of overgrowth or dense trees and so forth So that’s gonna cost even more
compared to a property that you can build closer to the street. All that to say, that is why it is a key question that we’re trying to determine within our land price or analysis, because again, on average, flag lots are gonna be less valuable. So we need to take that into account for pricing. Now, again, most people, if you’re just looking at an aerial, if you’ve been in the land game for any length of time, you can usually determine what’s a flag lot.
Surprisingly, this was a tougher question for the image analysis to determine. There are a lot of edge cases. I had to rework this prompt a lot. Because we’re trying to teach software how to determine what is truly a flag line and what is not. It is far, far more complex than you might imagine because, you know, even though we have that, you know, standard flag,
Image in our mind. There’s potentially a lot of edge cases, right? So where the model was initially getting tripped up. It’s like, okay, maybe I have a bit more substantial road frontage for, you know, the first third of a property close to the street, but then it narrows a bit and then it widens out again in the back of the property. So it almost looks like an hourglass sometimes, you know, land can come in all shapes and sizes, right?
And so the model would determine, well, this is a flag lot, right? Because it kind of, it narrows there and then you got a wider part in the back. Now you need to restrict that determination because that wider part near the street could potentially be built on. And so then it’s like not actually a true flag lot because you’re not restricted by the middle of the property that is too narrow to build on.
Um, so that is, you know, like an example of what, uh, um, could kind of trip up the model when we were initially looking at it. Um, so there, there were a whole bunch of, of examples like that. Um, uh, that had to just, we, we, had to improve the math and, and, uh, you know, restrict the model a lot more in order to figure out, yeah, only consider.
Flag lots to be those where like you can’t build within that narrow portion, you know the pole portion of the property Otherwise it shouldn’t be considered a flag lot. So I I don’t want to get too technical here. It’s just to mention okay this is trickier on the back end for the Model to determine but we worked at it hour after hour after hour to get it to that 95 % plus
Accuracy rate for determining what a true flag lot is so You don’t need to do that as a user of land price or it’ll all be done After you input the information about your particular property so just wanted to mention again a little bit more on our logic about how we’re designing the product here and
why that is precisely being determined here. So hopefully this is helpful and interesting to you. Again, if you want to sign up for Landpricer, just check it out. Landpricer.ai coming out here ASAP. I know we’ve been endlessly delayed. That’s my fault as a software business operator, substantially different than a funding business, but you know, learning every day, right?
So we will get that out to you here shortly. And then if you’re looking for any funding, serious land dot capital for any of your vacant land funding needs and then land daily diligence Facebook group, subscribe and share. Looking forward to chatting with you all next time. Take care now. Bye.
