Whether building a house from the ground or just renovating one part of the existing house, it will consume resources. People often postpone renovation works considering the complexity of the process.
Thanks to artificial intelligence, home remodeling, and renovations are becoming easier as we speak.
Skipp is an end-to-end renovation service. Skipp relies on A.I. to compile, analyze, and recommend home renovation options. The company majorly focuses on kitchens, the most challenging part of the house for a remodel.
A 3D camera captures precise measurements in the room and adds those points of intelligence to the system. The embedded intelligence tracks necessary information – the placement of gas lines, plumbing, and windows – plus architectural codes and standards. Then it takes into account the homeowner’s requests, such as optimizing the space for storage or entertaining, to start to apply an algorithm.
“A lot of horror stories come up with renovations, and people encounter those problems when they don’t have the right professional service at their side,” says Ian Jaffrey, co-founder, and chief executive officer of Skipp, an end-to-end renovation service. “We’re leveraging technology that is really about getting precise plans in place for customers. Doing that makes the process easier and allows people to focus on inspiration, transparency, and budget.”
One of the significant challenges faced during renovation is the space constraint. Skipp takes care of it by providing tailored options that fit the owner’s requirements. It doesn’t stop there. The service then connects homeowners with contractors in their area, who receive specific requests for proposals and design elements to start the work. Homeowners can focus on the “inspirational aspects,” says Jaffrey, such as cabinetry, door handles, and countertop materials, rather than get bogged down by building paperwork and contractor jargon.
For a 10-foot-by-10-foot kitchen, Skipp typically comes up with 700 different permutations. Jaffrey says that they have had kitchens ready to be built in as little as a week. Jaffrey explains that the average kitchen renovation takes nine to 12 months. With Skipp, homeowners can have a new kitchen in just 45 days. “No one wants to spend a year of their life planning a kitchen,” he adds.
Michael Bergin cofounded Higharc to help reduce the complexity of the home-building process. As the director of design innovation, he likens his product to a modern car configurator. Buyers can visualize hundreds of home options with real-time pricing for instant transparency. Like Skipp, Higharc replaces hours of manual drafting with an A.I. system to export layouts, appliance options, and other design elements, all while maintaining compliance with the nuances of building codes.
“Buildings in the past were designed from scratch in nearly every case,” Bergin says. “Carrying knowledge through projects was impossible. Higharc uses a knowledge base to capture and reuse data and continuously improve the options and quality of the homes created in the system.”
As an added benefit, Bergin says that Higharc’s reliable 3D model revealed a surprising statistic: Builders wasted up to 25% of the lumber ordered for a home due to errors in measurement, a hurdle that Higharc avoids thanks to A.I. That’s not only a cost saving but an environmental one too.
CEO and co-founder Nikki Pechet launched Homebound in the wake of the 2017 wildfires in California. The residents in the area needed new homes quickly. Homebound is as good as an e-commerce app. The buyers choose the floor plan, architectural style, finishes, and everything related in one place. Pechet says that Homebound is eight times more efficient in the design phase, and construction moves 20% faster than traditional large-scale home construction projects.
Homebound has a growing database of more than 25 million properties. Pechet’s team has trained robust algorithms to model the site acquisition cost, expected built costs, and expected sell prices of finished homes to forecast the feasibility of large-scale property development.
“The volume of home building information is so large that only A.I. and machine learning can see patterns across projects, jurisdictions, and marketplaces,” Pechet says. “That’s hugely impactful for an industry worth an estimated $1.5 trillion,” she adds.
