Igni for Architects & ADU Designers

The problem

• Design services are bought at the start of a project, but you mostly learn about ADU and residential work in your area too late to be considered.
• You don't know which neighborhoods and jurisdictions have the most active pipelines, so marketing your design and plan-set services is guesswork.
• Owner-builders and design-build crews file constantly, but finding the ones who still need drawings, revisions, or a second phase is manual.
• Every jurisdiction's plan-review process and ADU rules differ, and you can't easily see where pre-approved or standardized plan sets would actually sell.

Read permit activity as a design-demand map

Instead of guessing where to market, use permit data to see where residential and ADU design demand is actually concentrating. Filter by ADU type, ZIP, city, and project valuation to find the neighborhoods with the most active pipelines, then decide where it's worth learning a jurisdiction's submittal requirements and building relationships.

That turns business development from a hunch into a map: a firm that specializes in detached ADUs can see which submarkets generate the most detached filings, and a designer eyeing a new city can size its activity before committing. For what a single jurisdiction's review process involves, see the glossary entry on plan review, and browse markets on the state coverage hub.

Time outreach to the design-stage window

A permit usually implies a plan set already exists, so the highest-value moments for a designer are slightly different from a contractor's. Filter by permit status to catch projects still in motion — applications and in-review filings where scope, revisions, and resubmittals are common — rather than only issued permits where the design is locked. Owner-builder filings are a particularly useful signal: they flag owners managing their own project, who often still need drawings, corrections, or design help to clear plan check.

That lets your outreach be specific and timely — offering exactly the design or revision support a project at that stage needs. The owner-builder glossary entry explains who those filers are, and you can inspect a single record with the permit-lookup tool.

Target the exact ADU subtypes you design

A firehose of every building permit isn't useful to a design practice — the subtype is. Igni applies a typed ADU classification — detached, attached, junior ADU, conversion, or unknown — inferred from each jurisdiction's structured flags and free-text descriptions, so you can focus on the kind of unit your portfolio is built around.

A studio that specializes in detached new-build ADUs can filter to detached filings; a firm known for garage and basement conversions can focus there. That keeps your pipeline aligned with the work you actually want to sell. Compare the categories in our post on detached vs attached ADUs, or read the deep dive on the garage-conversion ADU.

Watch every market and spot infill design demand

Many design practices work across several jurisdictions, and watching each city's portal by hand doesn't scale. Igni ingests directly from official municipal open-data portals and normalizes everything into one consistent schema — consistent dates, standardized statuses, recovered ZIP codes — across 65 cities in 37 US states, so you can track every market you're licensed in from one feed. Active builders in an area also surface as potential design-build partners.

In California, SB-9 lot splits and by-right duplexes create a distinct stream of infill design work; Igni carries SB-9 and SB-10 flags so you can spot that activity early. Read the background in our overview of SB-9 and SB-10 and the detail on California permit data. Igni is contact-driven during its pilot, so access is a short conversation about your markets — there's no public self-serve checkout. This is general market information, not legal advice.

The filters that matter for you

Frequently asked questions