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Property appraisals are at the heart of home appraisals, insurance claims, renovation projects, and many other important processes. Inaccurate or late estimates can set back projects and saddle customers with higher costs.
Now, a platform first developed at MIT makes it as easy as snapping a few pictures to create detailed property appraisals. Alumni-founded startup Hosta ai analyzes images to create accurate space measurements, detailed floor plans, 3D room models and materials reports. It can also assess material conditions to assess damage and identify risks, such as the use of flammable materials or inadequate sprinkler volume ratios.
“Contractors and insurance companies don’t have nearly the same valuation,” says Hosta ai CEO and co-founder Henriette Fleishman MBA ’19, who founded the company with Executive Chairman and CTO Rachelle Villalon SM ’08, PhD ’17. “Our technology speeds up these processes and reduces friction for the regulator, the contractor and the customer. We help people renovate their homes faster so they can feel at home again.”
Hosta ai currently works with insurers, contractors and mortgage lenders to provide everyone with fast and accurate information about their built environment. The founders say they’re still looking at the possibilities unlocked by giving people a complete view of a property without forcing them to go on-site.
“I think there’s an opportunity to help the transition to more energy-efficient buildings,” says Fleischmann. “We can create an understanding of how heat moves through a room. There are many applications in industries that require an understanding of the embedded environment. “
Technology combines
Villalon worked as an architect, software engineer and consultant before founding Hosta. As a third-generation architect, he experienced early on the challenges of construction jobs, from documentation to project coordination, as well as the evolution of computer-aided design (CAD) systems.
At MIT, his research focused on applying artificial intelligence to problems in the built environment, including ways to teach machines architecture and ways to turn images into 3D maps and objects. He spent his time as an MSc and PhD student in the Design and Computation Group at the School of Architecture and Planning, as well as the Media Lab and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL).
“There were so many problems in architecture and construction, and I just remember thinking that I needed to strengthen my technical and theoretical foundations to challenge the boundaries of current industry practice,” says Villalon. “MIT has become this utopia of information and knowledge for me. It helped me develop a critical view of the industry and apply new creative technologies to it.”
Originally from Germany, Fleischmann worked for large companies in the automotive and fashion industries before attending MIT Sloan School of Management, where he earned an MBA focusing on AI and entrepreneurship.
“It was an amazing program,” says Fleishman. “It helped me re-energize and think about what was next. I loved how practical MIT was. I was having a great time [Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship] and gravitated towards technically heavy startups.”
By the time Fleishman met Villalon, the PhD student was looking for a co-founder to help commercialize the Hosta Ai technology. With a prototype in hand, a patent filed, and market testing underway with Hosta ai advisor Jose Pacheco MBA ’12, Villalon and Fleishman have made great strides at MIT.
“I remember sitting in a classroom at MIT and taking a picture of Building 9 without an app or special sensors, uploading it with our first API, and out came a list of results and floor plans showing all the elements, their measurements. And how big the spaces were,” says Villalon. “When I first saw this result, I just thought about how much time I spent as an architect trying to recreate spaces by hand, and now all I had to do was take a picture.”
The founders received funding from the MIT Sandbox and entered MIT’s startup accelerator program, including the School of Architecture and Planning’s MITdesignX, the MIT Industrial Liaison Program’s STEX25, and the Trust Center’s delta v accelerator. Hosta ai continued to work with MIT through the CSAIL Alliance program and Industry Outreach Program.
Today, anyone at home or at work can click a link and follow Hosta ai’s instructions to take photos with their phone. After uploading photos, Hosta ai uses artificial intelligence to automatically create floor plans and CAD models. Beyond the measurements, the software can classify all the objects and materials in the room to create a detailed bill of materials – key information for determining how much the project will cost.
“With our solution, you can just take a picture of the space. There’s no app, you don’t need any architectural knowledge, there’s no LIDAR or anything heavy involved, and you can extract all that information,” says Villalon. “We also build expert judgment in technology. This is truly a game changer in the industry. “
Scaling for impact
The founders say their solution cuts 80 percent of property appraisal time and avoids errors associated with manual appraisals.
“The insurance adjuster gets a package that allows them to create a loss estimate in minutes,” says Fleishman. “We realized that large insurance companies do thousands of appraisals every day. That’s a lot of time and dollar savings. “
Hosta ai initially struggled to scale, but personal challenges caused by the Covid-19 pandemic helped accelerate the business. The founders now say they are firmly in growth mode.
“At MIT, we’ve built momentum, but building a deep technology company is hard,” says Fleishman. “My advice to founders is to try to quickly create a minimum viable product to act as a market sensation and then build on it.
As Hosta ai continues to scale, the founders believe the technology promises to help companies reduce a significant source of greenhouse gases.
“Our vision is to reduce carbon emissions by moving the world to virtual property valuation,” says Fleischmann. “We’re looking to change the industry as a whole, not just in insurance, but the entire built environment.”
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