In a shifting real estate market, the guidance and expertise that Inman imparts are never more valuable. Whether at our events, or with our daily news coverage and how-to journalism, we’re here to help you build your business, adopt the right tools — and make money. Join us in person in Las Vegas at Connect, and utilize your Select subscription for all the information you need to make the right decisions. When the waters get choppy, trust Inman to help you navigate.
A company whose software is poised to make home construction and commercial development move faster is the recipient of $20 million in Series A funding, according to an announcement sent to Inman.
TestFit’s interactive, AI-powered real estate feasibility software consolidates data from multiple phases of construction preplanning to arrive at groundbreaking weeks ahead of what traditional methods allow.
The funding was led by Parkway Venture Capital. In total, the company has raised $22 million.
“Pioneers integrated drawings and the model years ago, but the industry has stagnated until recently,” TestFit co-founder and CEO Clifton Harness said in the statement. “This new funding will enable us to quadruple down on our product and engineering teams — there is so much opportunity in the market, and we want to be there to create even more value for our customers.”
Harness said TestFit is the first company to marry pro forma, construction cost and asset design into a user-facing software product. The byproducts are many but what stands out is the ability to more accurately perceive and proactively respond to the many risk factors that put off building start dates and thus increase costs and operational headaches.
Building plans can be adjusted in seconds to test and reconfigure multiple scenarios, which can lead to cost-saving discoveries and even a better final outcome. It also greatly reduces delays in purchasing materials and scheduling contractors, issues of considerable note given ongoing supply chain issues.
Advancements in software capability and the availability of enterprise industry data continue to enhance the way commercial and residential developers plan for and execute everything, from large-scale mixed-use developments to simple residential bathroom remodels.
Imerza, for example, builds high-definition interactive construction visualizations on behalf of private and municipal partnerships and urban planners, the type of project that requires widespread public buy-in and may be hard to realize from merely a drawing or colorful illustrations.
REDTech is similar to TestFit. Short for “real estate development technology,” the company connects developers with modular home manufacturers to financially assess projects, create unit renderings and produce investor proforma. Veev, a modular home builder, earned $400 million in Series D financing in March 2022.
PunchList USA and Inspectify, for example, quickly collect and process regional data on home repair costs to assemble transparent financial reports. Ownly and Welcome Homes are turning new home building into a retail-like experience while a multitude of other proptechs continues to find ways to flatten the real estate transaction. It can only help that companies like TestFit continue to attract such hefty investments.
“TestFit will use the funding to expand delivery of better outcomes for their customers, made possible by their integration of property management (PropTech), construction planning (ConTech), and design technologies (DesignTech) into a unified enterprise platform for commodity real estate development,” the release stated.
