See what the water in front of a lakefront lot has done, season after season, before you sign.
LotCheck is now available in the Lake Pulse Toolbox. When you buy on a lake, you're buying two things: the house, and the water in front of it. The house gets inspected, appraised and scrutinized. The water usually gets a glance from the dock on a showing day. LotCheck closes that gap. Enter an address and a lot or parcel number, and Lake Pulse emails you a confidential report on the water in front of and around that property.
What LotCheck is and isn't
LotCheck is built entirely from public data: satellite records going back to 1984, plus public aerial imagery of the lot. There's no lab sampling and no site visit. It reads the water from above.
That means it can show patterns: how often the water greens up in summer, how often it turns muddy after storms, how far the shoreline pulls back in dry years, and how much weed growth builds along the shore. It can't tell you whether algae is toxic, which species are present, or what pollutants are in the water. Very small or narrow water, like a canal, may be too small to read from satellite, and the report says so when that happens.
LotCheck is not an inspection, an appraisal or a disclosure. It's a record: dated, method-visible, and yours alone. The report goes to your inbox and nowhere else. It's never posted to a lake portal or shared with the lake community, the neighbors or the seller.
The problem it solves
You find a property you love, on a lake that generally gets good reviews. You tour it in late winter. The water is still, clear, maybe iced at the edges. You close, and you move in by spring.
Then June arrives. The weeds in front of your dock get thick. By July there's algae that never quite goes away, and you have no idea whether it's the kind that can make a dog sick. After every heavy rain the water turns brown and stays that way for days.
None of that was hidden, exactly. It just wasn't visible in February. Satellites have been photographing that water every few days for years. LotCheck puts that record in front of you before the transaction is done, not after.
What's in the report
- A map of the water in front of the lot, and the area analyzed
- The most recent public aerial image of the property and lakefront
- How often the water in front of the lot has shown algae signals each summer, and whether that's increasing
- How that stretch of water compares with the rest of the same lake, because coves and bays often behave very differently from the open basin
- Muddy-water events after storms, and how long they take to clear
- How far the water pulls back in dry years, so you know whether the dock reaches usable water in August
- Weed growth along the shore, and its trend
- Questions worth asking before you close
If the report raises questions
Sometimes the record is clear. Sometimes it's inconclusive, or it points at something worth a closer look. That's useful too: it tells you what to ask.
Talk to the seller about their summers on the water. Ask the neighbors what July looks like. If something still isn't settled, add LotCheck's lab ground-truth option, or with the seller's permission order a test from the Toolbox to confirm what the satellite record suggests, whether that's algal toxins, bacteria, or what's living in the water. LotCheck tells you where to look; testing tells you what's there.
Selling? Let the water make your case
If you're selling a lakefront home with good water in front of it, LotCheck works in the other direction. A buyer can see a clean record of the frontage: few algae signals, water that clears quickly after storms, a shoreline that holds in dry years.
The report shows the full record, not a selection of it, and it doesn't replace any disclosure you're required to make. But when the water is an asset, LotCheck lets you prove it.
Not just for homebuyers
Developers weighing a lakefront parcel, conservation nonprofits evaluating land, local governments planning shoreline projects, and lake associations assessing a stretch of shoreline can all use LotCheck to understand a specific piece of water before committing to it.
How to order
LotCheck is $1,900 and part of the Check bundle family in the Toolbox. It covers lots on any lake in the United States, and it's open to anyone: you don't need to live on the lake or be a Lake Pulse member. Every report covers one lot and is emailed only to you.
A note on data: 100% of the data used in a LotCheck report is in the public domain. Lake Pulse uses no private data. We rebuild public satellite and aerial records into a format that's useful for one decision: whether this is the water you want in front of your home.
