Why this exists
I was in kindergarten the first time I saw a piece of land fall through.
My dad sold land in Shelby County, Alabama for a long time, and he was good at it. One afternoon he drove us out to a tract that felt like it was deep in the woods, though it was really just undeveloped ground twenty minutes from town. He was looking at it for a development. He walked us across it and showed us where our house would be.
It didn't happen. The ground wouldn't perk. I didn't know what that meant. I know now: the soil failed a percolation test, so it couldn't take a septic system, so nothing could be built there without sewer that didn't exist. The information existed. Nobody had it in the truck.
I grew up riding along on those trips. Walking a tract through a stand of briars that impressed a first grader and earned some credit on the playground. An afternoon on the water looking at parcels from the lake side. Watching him do the thing he loved, which, I understand now, was mostly research done the hard way: courthouse records, a plat map, a windshield, and a good gut.
How it started
In early 2026 my dad was between jobs. I've always been one to worry, and on the drive home to Shelby County I couldn't stop turning over how to help him plan his next step. Somewhere on the interstate I pulled out my phone and started dictating to an AI, and what came out was a tool that would give him everything the county and the federal government already knew about a parcel, before he ever got in the truck.
I'm an engineer by trade. The tool pulls every undeveloped parcel from the county assessor, layers it with public data on slope, flood, soil, wetlands, timber, wildlife, solar, broadband and road access, and has an AI model write a verdict on each one with its reasons showing. It took a lot of trying and failing to get that right. At this point I think it's good enough to share.
My dad isn't in land sales anymore. When I showed it to him, he said it was exactly the tool he needed back when, and that there was absolutely a market for it. We'll see if he's right.
What it is, and isn't
LandScout is research software. It tells you what a parcel is before you write to the owner or drive out to look at it. It is not a listing, a brokerage, an appraisal or a survey. Nothing on it is for sale unless its owner says so. The data is public record and public science, every field names its source, and the AI's verdict is an opinion you can argue with, because it shows you the same fields it read.
The soil survey is in there. The ground either perks or it doesn't, and now you can know that from the office.
Who we are
MEC Media Co. is a small software business in Alabama. We build tools for people with mud on their boots: no overcomplication, no difficult interfaces, just the information you need, when you need it, in a form that makes sense. The data goes in your hands, not in a spreadsheet.
Shelby County came first because it's where I was born and raised, and one day I'll settle back there. It's one person building this. If something is wrong, confusing, or missing, email [email protected] and you'll get me.