Real estate software development company Cedar announced this week that it has secured $3 million in seed funding to create a product that would help developers locate urban infill properties for potential development into housing.
The company said it believes urban development complexities are pushing the construction of new housing further out of urban centers, contributing to an imbalance between supply and demand and, by extension, affordability challenges.
“Not only is the U.S. not building enough housing to support our population growth, we’re not building homes in the right places — urban centers where current and future generations want to live and work, and be closer to their friends, family and cultural amenities,” said Cedar co-founder Kyle Vansice.
Caffeinated Capital led the funding round, while Tishman Speyer Ventures also participated alongside individual investors Maria Davidson (CEO of Kojo), David Rubenstein via Shorewind Capital and Alumni Ventures.
Cedar says its platform’s functionality includes using “generative algorithms and a mix of public and proprietary data to quickly generate a broad array of building designs, accurately predicting the development yield on any parcel in a city, and converting complex land-development regulations into real development scenarios that maximize a property’s financial potential.”
The opportunity for developers is to focus on places “that were previously built for largely single-family development, but offer the potential to dramatically densify to create more livable and walkable neighborhoods,” the company said.
