FAQ

What exactly do I get?

A .zip containing 35 .kmz files — one per layer — plus the full written guide, a quickstart, and the licence. $49 for the set. They ship as separate files because Google Earth caps a project at about 10,000 features and 250,000 vertices, and the set is several times that; the README carries a per-layer table so you can see what fits together.

How does the download arrive?

By email. Write to support@preparedground.com and say you want the complete map. You get a reply with how to pay, and once payment clears the files come back by email. There is a person at the other end rather than a thank-you screen, so it is a short conversation rather than an instant download.

Why email rather than a checkout?

Because it is one person selling one product. A checkout here would mean a payment integration, a delivery service and an email sender to maintain, all to sell one download — email needs none of that, and the time goes on the layers instead. It also means a human reads what you are trying to do and confirms the map fits before any money changes hands, which is a large part of why refunds are rare.

Can I buy just one layer?

Not at the moment. Individual layers were priced at $5, but the fixed per-transaction card fee eats close to a tenth of that before anything else, and the bundle meant five layers already cost the same as all of them. If there is a layer you specifically want on its own, email me and say which — enough of those and it comes back.

What do I get for free, and what do I pay for?

One state is free for an email address: every county in it ranked 0–100 on water, privacy, hazard exposure and access, all of them clickable, with nothing screened out. The complete map ($49) is all 35 layers — the land itself (well depth, water rights, rainfall, wildfire, seismic, radon, prime farmland, growing season, temperature, public land and climate), people, infrastructure, property tax, building codes, state gun and homeschool law, military installations, nuclear strike zones, Cold War bunkers, where remote land still has a real connection, and the Canadian and Mexican layers. A custom layer built to your own criteria is $100.

Can I not just find all of this online for free?

Most of it, yes. Every source behind these layers is public and each one is named in its guide, so you can go straight to them. What you are paying for is that the collecting, reconciling and scoring is already done, in a form you can put a property against in Google Earth rather than spending your evenings assembling it. Your own state's screen is free precisely so you can judge the quality of that work before paying for the rest.

I have not used Google Earth or KML files before. Is that a problem?

No. Open a .kmz in Google Earth, tick layers on and off, and drop in the properties you are considering — that is the whole workflow. The quickstart in the download walks through it, and the guides here cover importing and working the layer tree if you would rather read it first.

How do I know this will actually help me pick a property?

It will not pick one for you, and it is not meant to. What it gives you is a second way to read an area: the things worth researching further before you spend a weekend driving to a property, and the things that should send you somewhere else instead. It narrows the search. It does not return a verdict.

I am only looking at a couple of properties. Is this worth it for me?

That is the case it handles best. Put each property on the map and read them against the same layers — population nearby, water, climate, hazard — and the differences between them surface quickly. Less about ranking the whole country than about deciding which of your shortlist earns the next weekend, and which you can cross off now.

Why buy this rather than doing the research myself?

You can do the research yourself; all of it is public. The question is where the time goes. Assembling these meant pulling each dataset, reconciling them against one another and deciding how to score them, and none of that is the part you actually care about, which is looking at properties. If building the maps is the part you enjoy, the guide gives every weight and every curve — go and build them.

Do I need Google Earth Pro?

No. It opens in Google Earth Web in a browser, in Google Earth Pro on desktop, and on the mobile apps. Pro is the most comfortable for heavy filtering because the layer tree is easier to work with, but nothing here requires it.

Is there a subscription? What about updates?

No subscription. You keep the files you are sent. Later releases are not included; to get notified of updates, join the mailing list on the free map page. The changelog lists each release, and every download carries its release date at the top of its README.

Does a high-ranking county mean a good property?

No, and this is the most important limitation to understand. These describe places, not parcels. They know nothing about flood zone, deeded access, HOA rules, severed mineral rights, or whether there is water on the ground. They tell you where to look. Everything after that is your own due diligence.

Do you sell property listings?

No. Nothing here is a listing feed and none of it tells you what is for sale. These are screening layers for deciding which regions are worth searching in — you take that to whichever listing site or agent you prefer.

Can you put the properties I am looking at on the map?

Yes — $50 for 5 properties, or half that, $25, if you own the complete map. Email the listing links; you get back one Google Earth file with a pin and an approximate boundary for each, traced from public parcel records and marked with how confident the match is. It is not a survey. See property mapping.

Where does the data come from?

All public sources — federal agencies such as NOAA, USGS, USFS, EPA, FCC, USDA, the Census Bureau and the Department of Defense, plus their Canadian and Mexican counterparts and state statute. The datasets are free; the work is in assembling, reconciling and scoring them. Every layer names its own sources on the layers page and in its guide.

Can you build me something that is not in the set?

Yes — $100 per custom layer, for anything derivable from public data. There is no buy button: email me, I tell you whether it is buildable and where it would be weak, we agree the scope in writing, and only then does a payment link go out. If it cannot be done properly you pay nothing. One condition: what I build for you may also be sold here afterwards. See the custom layers page.

Can I resell or redistribute the files?

No. The purchase is a personal licence for your own land search. The underlying public datasets are of course free for anyone to use; the assembled and scored layers are not.

Something went wrong with my order.

Email support@preparedground.com and I will sort it out. The refund policy is on the terms page.

I lost my download.

Email support@preparedground.com from the address you bought with and the files come by reply — there is no account to log into and no link to expire.

Browse the layers Filtering guide