Property · Select a property, draw a box or polygon, or upload a boundary

Find the best house site on your land

To find the best house site on your land, this tool tests every part of the property against the conditions that matter at once: slope, the direction it faces, winter sun, wetness and room for a pad. Only the ground that passes every test is highlighted.

It screens a large rural property down to the few places worth walking, then hands the best patch to Cut & Fill, Sunlight or a property report. Presets cover a house site, solar panels, an orchard or vineyard block, a drain field and a shop pad.

Free to run · pay to download

See the full result on the map free, with no account. Download the matching-ground map as a GeoTIFF with a pass: US$29 for 24 hours, US$99 for 30 days or US$399 for 12 months, a one-off payment in US dollars that never renews. Every download on the site is included while the pass lasts.

Open Find Matching Areas on the map →Pass prices and what’s included

Who uses this

Rural landowners. Decide where the house, the shop or the greenhouse should go.
Buyers. Check that a large parcel actually has a buildable, sunny pad on it.
Designers and solar installers. Shortlist candidate sites before a site visit.

When to use it

Finding candidate house sites or building pads on rural acreage.
Locating flat, sunny ground for a shop, a greenhouse, an orchard block or solar panels.
Screening a large property down to the few places worth walking.

Tools for your job

Find Matching Areas is one step in a bigger question. These are the jobs it helps with, and the tools that go with it.

For the job: Solar panels and sun

Where will panels, a greenhouse or a deck get the most sun?

1.Sunlight — Hours of direct sun on any date, with terrain shadows from up to 1.86 mi away. Start with December 21.
2.Slope & Aspect — The aspect view shows which faces point south, and the slope view how steep the mounting ground is.
3.Find Matching Areas (this tool) — Highlights the ground that is flat enough, faces the right way and gets a minimum of winter sun, all at once.
4.Object Heights — Tree and building heights, to spot the firs that will shade the array.

For the job: Choosing a house site

Where on this property should the house go?

1.Find Matching Areas (this tool) — Narrows the property to the patches that are flat, sunny and facing the right way.
2.Slope & Aspect — Shows where the ground is easy to build on and where retaining walls will be needed.
3.Sunlight — Checks winter sun on the candidate pad, hour by hour.
4.Cut & Fill — Estimates the excavation to level the pad before you ask for bids.
5.Viewshed — Shows what the house will see and who will see it.

How to use it

Select a property, draw an area or upload a boundary.
Pick a starting point (house site, solar panels, orchard or vineyard, drain field, shop pad) or set the conditions yourself.
Adjust the numbers. The first three conditions are always on; wetness and room to build are under More conditions.
Run the analysis. Matching ground is green, everything else gray. The panel shows how much ground each condition removed.
Choose Use as area on a patch, then open Cut & Fill, Sunlight, Viewshed or a Property Report to look at just that patch.

Step by step: a Bend subdivision

We look for ground in a Bend subdivision that is gentle enough to build on and still gets winter sun, narrow it to candidate house sites, and size the earthwork on the best one.

1.With the area selected, open Find Matching Areas. The conditions read as a sentence. First we keep the defaults for slope, facing direction and winter sun.

2.Run the analysis. The panel shows how much of the area, and what share of it, passes all three conditions.

3.Now pick the House site preset, which also asks that the ground is not among the wettest and has room for a square pad. The panel shows what each condition leaves.

4.Choose Use as area on the largest patch, open Cut & Fill and run it. The panel shows how much would be cut and filled to level the patch.

5.The Solar panels preset with Show ground that misses by one condition turned on. Amber is ground that fails only one test: the places where changing one number gains the most.

What it showed

The funnel shows which condition does the most damage, so you know which number to relax first. Room for a whole pad often removes much of what the other tests leave.
Use as area is the link between tools: find the spot with one, then size the earthwork, sun or view with the next.
This is a terrain filter. Zoning, access, utilities and soils are separate questions for the county.

Try it yourself on a Bend subdivision →

How it works

Every cell of the USGS 3DEP bare-earth model is tested. Slope and facing direction come from the terrain; direct sun hours are modeled for December 21 by tracing the sun and checking whether terrain up to 1.86 mi away blocks it.

Wetness uses the same topographic wetness index as the Wetness Map, ranked within your area, so “not in the wettest 20%” leaves out the fifth of the ground where the shape of the land gathers the most water.

Room to build keeps only ground where a square pad of the chosen width fits with every cell inside it passing. A long thin strip can pass every other test and still have nowhere to put a house; this removes it.

A cell matches only when every active test passes. Flat ground has no facing direction, so it only passes that test when any direction is allowed.

Reading the results

What each condition leaves lists the ground remaining after each test in turn. The condition that removes the most is highlighted: relax that one first if too little is left.

Show ground that misses by one condition adds amber for ground that fails exactly one test, which is where a small change would add the most.

Largest patches lists the five biggest matching patches. Use as area makes one of them the selected area for any other tool.

Winter sun is modeled on bare ground, so a patch shaded by a stand of firs or a neighbor’s house can still show as sunny.

Limits and caveats

Terrain criteria only. It does not check zoning, setbacks, geotechnical stability, access, utilities, septic suitability or flood hazard; check those with the county.
Presets are starting points, not rules. Check them against your own plans and your county’s requirements.
Areas up to 7.5 miles per side. Larger areas are sampled more coarsely, so small pads can disappear; select a smaller area for detail.
Where lidar has not been flown, the USGS 3DEP model falls back to its 1/3 arc-second layer, about 33 ft per pixel, and downloads state what share of the area came from it. That coarser model is not fit for site-scale decisions. DOGAMI reports about 99% of Oregon covered by at least one lidar project. The fallback is rare.

Data and attribution

Results come from the USGS 3D Elevation Program (3DEP) bare-earth elevation model: lidar at 3.3 ft per pixel where it has been flown, and the 1/3 arc-second model, about 33 ft per pixel, elsewhere, with elevations above NAVD 88. The tools with a surface option (Sunlight, Viewshed, Sightline, Object Heights) read DOGAMI’s statewide digital surface model of trees and buildings.

USGS 3DEP elevation data and USGS maps are U.S. Government works in the public domain: you may use the results, including commercially. A credit to the USGS 3D Elevation Program is appreciated, and every file you download carries it. DOGAMI lidar products are published by the State of Oregon; credit "DOGAMI / Oregon Lidar Consortium". County taxlot boundaries are the assessor's GIS data, not surveys, and each county publishes its own disclaimer, shown with the parcel. The aerial basemap is from Esri and follows Esri's terms; it is not included in downloads.

Questions

Does it check zoning or setbacks?

No. It is terrain only: slope, aspect, sun, wetness and room to build. Zoning (including exclusive farm use and forest zones), setbacks, access, septic approval, flood hazard and ground stability have to be checked with the county and the right professionals.

What does it assume about winter sun?

Direct sun on December 21, with shadows from terrain up to 1.86 mi away. Trees and buildings are not counted in this tool, so a patch behind a stand of firs can still show as sunny.

Ready to try it?

Open Find Matching Areas on the map →

Free to use, no account. The analysis runs in your browser on public-domain USGS 3DEP data. Downloading the results needs a pass: see pricing.