In a continuation of its commitment to remove friction from the process of building a brand-new, customized home entirely online, Welcome Homes, a homebuilding tech startup, has introduced two new products – Make-an-Offer and AI-powered Land Vetting. Using Welcome’s AI-based land vetting technology, customers can now view every buildable property within their desired area.
With the surge of mortgage rates over the last year, the price points between existing homes and new ones are starting to converge. As such, consumers in the market for their next home are more frequently opting for new construction, driving Welcome Homes’ innovations to bring the entire home building process online, streamlining the journey from land selection to design to construction, the company said.
“The residential construction industry is missing crucial bridges between different stakeholders in the process,” said Alec Hartman, CEO and cofounder of Welcome Homes. “Homebuyers, contractors, civil engineers, municipal authorities — incentives across these groups are not aligned. Our technology can be the throughline that eliminates friction and improves collaboration throughout the new home construction process, making it a more fruitful, and less stressful endeavor for all parties involved. This is why we’re aggressively adding innovations like our AI-powered land vetting and ability to make offers on new construction projects in seconds online. Technology is the key to eliminating the housing crunch.”
With Make-an-Offer, Welcome customers can submit an offer to purchase their land and construction directly within Welcome’s online platform, making it easier than ever to buy a new home. The traditional process for building a new home entails weeks, sometimes months, of collecting quotes from builders and architects. Welcome’s new offers feature simplifies this process down to a few clicks and puts the buyer in control from day one.
Once the offer is submitted, Welcome operates as a managed marketplace; the customer’s offer is distributed to Welcome’s network of local partner builders and matched to the most qualified builder for the job. Builders accept or reject offers online, much like gig drivers in rideshare apps. Welcome has onboarded builders into their offer network for all 60-plus counties it operates in.
AI Reviews are the next evolution of Welcome’s proprietary land vetting technology. Using predictive, AI-powered models, Welcome can now automatically determine the buildability and estimated build cost for any given property. Welcome’s AI models are trained on thousands of site assessments created by Welcome’s in-house team of civil engineers.
Typically, without the support of Welcome’s technology, the property vetting process could take anywhere from three weeks to three months. Before the introduction of AI, Welcome’s vetting process took three hours. With AI, properties are now vetted in seconds, unlocking true scale and efficiency for Welcome’s homebuilding platform.
Welcome has over 19,000 buildable, pre-vetted properties available on its platform, a 2,500% increase since the introduction of AI. New properties are reviewed instantaneously when they hit the market. For prospective Welcome customers, this means every opportunity to build a new home is available at their fingertips. Welcome plans to rapidly expand into new markets in late 2023 and early 2024.
