In 2021, a collective of Cadmappers exposed that 62% of vacant lots in a major U.S. city’s poorest ward were owned by just three shell companies, all tracing back to a single foreign investor. The city had no idea. The tax assessor had them listed as “owner unknown.”
Governments are starting to notice. Several European cities have hired known Cadmappers to build public land registries. The reaction from the real estate lobby has been predictably hostile: bills to “privatize” property records have been introduced in three U.S. states. cadmappers
What unites them is a belief that In most of the world, property records are public by law. But “public” does not mean “accessible.” A firehose of PDFs is not transparency. A search portal that crashes after three queries is not accountability. In 2021, a collective of Cadmappers exposed that
Maps are lies. But most lies are polite. They straighten rivers, smooth coastlines, and pretend the Earth is flat enough to fit in your glove compartment. The tax assessor had them listed as “owner unknown
Then there are the other maps.