The Future Of Construction Tech
Issue 19 - February 12th, 2021
It's the year 2030. You are excited about building a custom home from scratch and designing it exactly how you want it. You already have your creekside lot in your favorite neighborhood ready to go, and the computer screen you are staring at knows the exact dimensions, setbacks, and restrictions of the lot to help you design it. You go through each room, step by step, picking out finishes and features, and tweaking the layout in addition to looking through an Oculus Virtual Reality headset to take a virtual tour at different stages of your design process to get the look and the feel of the home as if you were there today. Choosing colors, ceiling heights, cabinet pulls, and every single little detail feels similar to something like a video game. 8 weeks later your home will be constructed on site in just 2 weeks and you can move into your new custom built home in less than 90 days from the day you complete the design.
Is this the future of homebuilding?
Newsworthy Links To Share
Zillow Group to acquire ShowingTime for $500 million dollars in their biggest acquisition since buying Trulia. ShowingTime is a software product used all over the country to help real estate agents manage listings and schedule property showings with their clients. "One of the main reasons Zillow opted to buy ShowingTime rather than building something in-house was the company’s existing relationships and client base. ShowingTime has nearly a million agents — many of which are Premier Agent clients as well — using the platform, Samuelson said." Read more HERE.
The first ever 3-D printed home in America is for sale in Riverhead, New York for $299,999. SQ4D, a New York based development firm, built the home which features an open floor plan with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a detached two-car garage. A demo version of the home was constructed with 3D printed concrete, which SQ4D said has the “strength and durability that conventional wood-frame construction cannot match.” Read more HERE.
Mighty Buildings, an Oakland, Calif.-based construction tech company, raised $40 million in Series B funding. I am a HUGE fan of the pre-fab construction sector, and I think "construction-tech" is one of the most exciting verticals in the real estate world. Mighty Buildings is a company that is delivering an exceptional, affordable, and quality product at scale, and this funding round will only accelerate their growth - keep an eye on them in this space. Check out their homes HERE.
Getaway, a startup delivering a tiny cabin hospitality experience off the grid close to major cities, raises $41.7 million dollars. Founded in 2015, Getaway builds “Outposts” — collections of tiny cabins in rustic locations within a two-hour drive of major cities like Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles and New York. Each cabin has its own fire pit and spaced 50 to 150 feet from the others, with no common areas. There is a also a "cell phone locker" in each unit if you truly want to decompress from this crazy world. Their business has exploded during the pandemic, and they are rapidly expanding into new markets across the country. Read more HERE.
Saturday Night Live Skit last weekend showing Zillow home-browsing as a replacement to sex goes viral. The pandemic is driving more traffic to Zillow’s mobile apps and websites, which reached a record 236 million average monthly unique users in the third quarter of 2020, up 21% year-over-year. Total visits reached 2.8 million, up 32% and another record. In their earnings reports from Wednesday this week, Zillow disclosed that visits to their mobile apps increased by over 1.5 billion in 2020 over 2019. Watch the video HERE.
UpEquity announces $25 million debt and equity round to expand their "cash offer" service for home buyers. The company makes free cash offers for buyers but charges 2.5% on the loans it makes to homebuyers to give them the cash they need to make an offer before having to go through the traditional process of taking out a home loan through a bank. Then the homeowners can make payments directly to UpEquity to pay off the mortgage on the house. Read more HERE.