About
Built so independent operators don’t have to guess.
Locavisor is location-decision software for the people who actually sign the lease. The user we have in mind is a first-time owner-operator opening a coffee shop, a boba shop, a salon, a barbershop, a pet groomer — someone who is spending real money on real estate and can’t afford a $50k retail siting study.
The goal is simple: give that person a structured, defensible shortlist of neighborhoods to tour before they start touring. Not a magic answer. A starting point that rules out the obvious bad fits and explains the trade-offs in the surviving ones.
Methodology
Where the numbers come from
- Google Places (verified). Every competitor named in a Locavisor report is pulled from Google Places — name, rating, review count, price level, hours. We don’t invent businesses. If a competitor card shows up, you can click into Google Maps and find it.
- U.S. Census ACS. 5-year American Community Survey at the tract level for demographics, income, and household composition.
- LEHD LODES. Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics origin-destination data — where people work vs. live, used to estimate daytime vs. residential demand mix.
- Zillow Observed Rent Index. ZIP-level rent trends used as a sanity-check on broker ranges.
- Brokerage market reports. Cushman & Wakefield and CBRE quarterly retail reports where the metro is covered. Cited by report name and quarter.
- AI scoring layer. A multi-stage LLM pipeline (DeepSeek for grounded neighborhood prose, Claude Sonnet for personalization) turns the raw signals into rankings and explanations. Critically, the LLM does not generate competitor names or rent numbers — it only narrates around verified inputs.
What we don’t claim
The honest list of limits
- We are not your broker. We don’t walk space, negotiate leases, or know which landlord will give you free rent for two months. After Locavisor narrows the list, talk to a local commercial broker.
- We don’t see inside specific addresses. Locavisor scores neighborhoods, not individual storefronts. Two units on the same block can perform very differently because of foot-traffic micro-flow, signage, parking, and co-tenancy.
- Rent bands are ranges. We cite broker-reported asking-rent bands. Real deals come in higher or lower depending on TI allowances, term, your guarantor profile, and timing.
- Data has a vintage. Census is annual. LODES lags ~2 years. Google Places is live. Every report stamps the data window we used.
The team
Who built this
Locavisor is built by a small, independent team based in the San Francisco Bay Area, combining backgrounds in retail real estate research, data engineering, and AI systems. We started this because the “professional” siting tools in the industry cost five figures and price out the exact people — independent first-time owners — who need them most.
We’re reachable directly. Email support@locavisor.app with feedback, errors, refund requests, or feature asks. A human reads every email.
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