Early notice of development filings
Know about the subdivision years before it goes out to bid.
By name, with the developer's name on it. A site contractor normally hears about a job when the plans hit the street, at the same moment as five other bidders. The application that started that job was public two to four years earlier.
A bid list is not a pipeline. It is the end of somebody else's two-year conversation.
By the time plans go out, the developer has an engineer, a budget, and a site plan drawn around conditions they have already agreed to. They usually have a contractor they trust as well. Everyone else on that list is pricing a decision that was made while they were not in the room.
The estimate is where the job is won. The invitation to estimate is where it was lost, and that happened years earlier.
None of it was secret. The application, the staff report, the hearing and the conditions are public on the day they happen, in the town's own records. They are simply unreadable at the speed a business runs.
One person watching agendas covers two towns, a week late.
A county and the towns inside it publish on separate calendars, in separate systems, with packets posted whenever the clerk posts them. Following one of them is a habit. Following twelve is a job nobody has.
In a ten-jurisdiction pilot, KnowToYes captured 438 development filings and 118 board items between June 23 and September 18, 2026. 214 of the filings were tagged major site work, which is roughly sixteen a week.
Source: KnowToYes Development Application Tracker pilot, ten North Carolina jurisdictions, June 23 to September 18, 2026.
Estimators cannot read sixteen a week on top of their own work, so they read the two towns they already know and find out about the rest when the plans go out.
One site contract can change the trajectory of a company, and it is decided by who the developer already knows.
Site work is won on relationships, and relationships take years to build. At the application stage the developer is being told what the site will cost to put in, and they have nobody to ask. That conversation happens once, with whoever is there for it.
Two years later the same project is an email to five bidders and a spreadsheet. Being early on a handful of the right projects is worth more than being on every bid list in the state.
Source: KnowToYes Development Application Tracker pilot, ten North Carolina jurisdictions, June 23 to September 18, 2026.
Start the relationship at the filing.
The Development Application Tracker is a web portal. Sign in from a browser, nothing to install. It lists the new development applications that local governments publish and the land use items their boards take up, pulled from each jurisdiction's permit portal and board meeting record and updated daily.
One row is a project: what was filed, where, by whom, which board has it, and what that board did. Every project is tagged major or minor, so a grading contractor is not reading past sign permits to find the subdivisions.
It is not a bid service. It answers one question, asked every day: what is being built here that nobody is building yet?
| Stage | What it is | Who is competing for the work |
|---|---|---|
| Application filed | Rezoning, preliminary subdivision, pre-submittal or technical review | Nobody yet |
| Board hearing | Planning board or council takes the item up | Nobody yet |
| Site plan review | Construction drawings and the conditions drawn into them | The engineer's own list |
| Plans out to bid | Scope, on a deadline | Everyone, at once |
| Dirt moves | The job belongs to somebody | It is over |
The Development Application Tracker starts at the first row. Bid services start at the fourth.
How it works
The list and the map show the same projects, side by side or one at a time. Sort the list, narrow it with filters, and open any project for the facts behind it.
Source: KnowToYes Development Application Tracker, data through October 9, 2026.
| You can | How it works |
|---|---|
| See the projects | A list and a map of the same set. Dots group where projects are close together; select one to open it |
| Sort | Newest first, earliest stage first, or largest first. Pre-application requests and rezonings sit at the top of the earliest stage sort |
| Filter | Use, acres, lots, units, square feet, town, stage, date filed, and major projects or all filings |
| Open a project | The facts, the filing documents, the companies on the record and, where your agreement includes them, business contacts |
| Know where a value came from | Each value is labeled as stated in the record, inferred, or taken from the parcel. One switch limits results to stated values |
| Keep what matters | Save a search and come back to it. Save a lead and it stays on your list |
| Take it with you | Export what you see as a CSV or a PDF report |
What is in a row
| Field | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Jurisdiction and board | Who has it, and which calendar it moves on |
| Filing date and case number | When it became public, and the identifier the town uses for it |
| Project name and address | What to call it in the first conversation, and where it is on the map |
| Use and size | What it will be and how big: use, acres, lots, units and building square feet, each labeled stated, inferred or from the parcel |
| Applicant, owner and the companies on the project | Who to call, and who is already advising them. Business contacts where your agreement includes them |
| Application type and stage | Pre-application, rezoning, plan review, approved or later stage |
| Site work tag | Major or minor, so the list is readable in a minute |
| Board action and date | What the board did, and when the item is back in front of it |
| Documents and link to the source record | The town's own documents, so nothing has to be taken on faith |
Source: KnowToYes Development Application Tracker record fields, as of October 9, 2026.
What we will not claim.
The first time a portal omits a record or a town changes its software, a loose promise turns into an argument. So the limits are stated here, in the same place as the claim, and they stay stated.
| We do not say | We say |
|---|---|
| Everything filed | All eligible public filings captured from the jurisdictions we cover |
| Real time | Added as each jurisdiction publishes, on that jurisdiction's own schedule |
| Every county in the state | The markets named in your agreement. If you need another town, we add it |
| We track permits | We track development applications and board actions |
Two more, straight out. Agendas and packets reach us on each jurisdiction's own schedule, so a board item can appear a few days after the meeting was noticed. And a filing is in the list only if the jurisdiction published it. A pre-application request appears when the town posts it, and a conversation that never reaches the public record does not.
Neither of those changes the argument. A few days behind the town is still years ahead of the bid list.
Who reads this list
It is written first for a grading and site work contractor, because the value is visible to them in one screen. Four other readers use the same list for different reasons.
| Reader | What they take from it | Territory they buy |
|---|---|---|
| Site and utility contractors | Early relationships on major site work | County to regional |
| Material suppliers: pipe, stone, concrete | Volume forecasting and early quotes | Regional to statewide |
| Engineering and survey firms | Who filed without a consultant yet | County to regional |
| Residential builders and land buyers | Where entitled lots are coming | Regional |
| Lenders and land investors | Entitlement activity as a market signal | Statewide |
Contractors buy the counties they can physically work in. Suppliers and lenders buy the state, because their market is the state. Those are two different agreements, not two sizes of the same one.
Ten jurisdictions, one quarter, 438 filings.
A pilot across ten North Carolina jurisdictions captured 438 development filings and 118 board items between June 23 and September 18, 2026. 214 of the filings were tagged major site work, roughly sixteen a week. The stages they sat at were the upstream ones: pre-submittal meetings, technical review committee, preliminary subdivision, and zoning map changes.
Those are real projects with real names on them, and the fastest way to judge the list is to read a real week of it, in the sample week from the pilot.
Source: KnowToYes Development Application Tracker pilot, ten North Carolina jurisdictions, June 23 to September 18, 2026.
Built from the public record
If the question is whether it will be approved
This list tells you a project exists and where it stands. It does not tell you whether the board will approve it, and it never predicts an approval outcome. If that is the question, the reports read the board's own history on your use, and YES takes the calls the record cannot make.
Take control
Name your counties. We will set them up.
The Tracker is available by market. Tell us the counties you work in and we will set them up. If you need a town we do not pull yet, we will add it. The quote follows that check.
To judge the list itself, read a real week from the pilot and see the portal on the samples page. If you already recognize three of the projects, you will know inside a minute whether it is worth paying for.