A true Chattanooga story

From a $20,000 "unbuildable" lot
to a $1,000,000 cliffside Airbnb

Permitio exists because our co-founder lived this. The land didn't change. The permissions did.

$20,000WHAT LUKE PAID

→

the right permits
+ rezoning

→

$1,000,000+WHAT IT'S WORTH TODAY

Same dirt. Same view. Different paperwork.

Before — a lot nobody wanted

🌲Luke's original "before" photo coming soon — picture a wooded, sloping cliffside lot everyone passed over

Not zoned for building — considered unbuildable
No short-term rental permission
No approved dwelling, no septic approval
Priced accordingly: under $20,000

After — the permits changed everything

Luke's cliffside Airbnb with infinity pool overlooking the Tennessee mountains

Rezoned & permitted for building
Home with septic — approved
Short-term rental — certified
Today: a top-5% Airbnb valued at over $1M

★ 4.94 rating72 reviewsTop 5% of Airbnb listingsSuperhost See the listing →

🚵 Photo of Luke coming soon

Meet Luke Swab

Luke lives in Chattanooga and loves it the way only a local can. When he's not building houses, he's outside — mountain biking fifty miles of gravel along the Ocoee, or finding a new cave across the Alabama line.

He hosted People of Chattanooga, a podcast interviewing the city's most interesting people, because he believes the city's greatest asset is who's already here.

And he's convinced of a bigger thesis: Chattanooga is built to win the remote-work era. A strong tertiary market with beautiful mountains, great weather, a healthy tax base and friendly taxes, real safety, and a municipal government that has invested seriously in infrastructure, fiber, and smart zoning. A city designed for growth — where the right development, done right, makes everyone better off.

The cliffside lot proved the thesis on a single parcel. Permitio is how he and co-founder Brook Armstrong scale it to everyone else's parcel.

The lesson we built a company on

The value was in that lot the whole time — locked behind zoning nobody wanted to untangle. Most owners never find out what their property could become. The process is confusing, the data is buried in meeting minutes, and one wrong guess costs thousands. So we built the tool we wished existed: enter your address, see what your property could be, and get an application drafted the way winning applications are written — backed by hundreds of real Chattanooga board decisions.

Luke Swab

Co-founder. Chattanooga native energy, builder, Superhost, People of Chattanooga host. Partnerships, market, and the proof-of-concept property.

Brook Armstrong

Co-founder. Product and technology — building the data engine that turns public records into approval intelligence.

What we believe

🔓

Public data should work for the public

Everything we build runs on public records — ordinances, permit datasets, board minutes. We make that information usable for the people it was published for.

🤝

Growth done right helps the whole city

Complete, well-prepared applications mean faster reviews for city staff and better projects for neighborhoods. Chattanooga grows; everybody wins.

📏

Honesty over hype

We never invent facts, never guarantee approvals, and always show our sources. If your project is a long shot, we'll tell you before you spend money on it.

From a $20,000 "unbuildable" lotto a $1,000,000 cliffside Airbnb