AI has both a light and dark side. Let’s focus on the biggest potential upside: efficient planning, estimating, and project management.
Artificial intelligence (AI)—the phrase that now seems to be on everyone’s lips in every conversation and in every industry—leaves some people hot with excitement and others cold or confused. The majority of builders don’t currently use AI in their business, according to a survey by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), but some are beginning to adopt AI tools, and it’s likely that adoption will accelerate in the industry in coming years.
Thus far, the most popular way builders use AI (20 percent) is to generate advertising and marketing, while 11 percent use it to help analyze markets and plan projects. For builders, remodelers and homeowners, AI tools can speed up estimates to bid on jobs, generate suggestions for remodeling projects, evaluate their return on investment and even track home equity. The benefits of using AI in a variety of ways are clear—even when most of us don’t always understand exactly how these tools work.
AI for Homeowners
Whether you are new to homeownership or have owned multiple homes, it’s likely that you share the same dilemma: where to find the information and data you need to manage your home. Maybe you need the serial number from your water heater to request a repair, you can’t remember when you last changed the filter on your heat pump, or you need a solid estimate of your home equity. AI technologies have the potential to help organize and streamline this information in the home building industry going forward.
“Most homeowners have data about their homes scattered everywhere from a Google spreadsheet to a paper folder with mortgage documents and a binder of appliance manuals their builder gave them,” says John Bodrozic, cofounder of HomeZada, a digital home management platform based in El Dorado Hills, Calif. “We launched HomeZada in 2012 so that homeowners would have everything in one place, including a maintenance calendar, an inventory for their insurance company, data on their utility costs, property taxes, and more.”
For the past couple of years, Bodrozic and his cofounder, Elizabeth Dodson, have invested heavily in AI to create tools that help homeowners track and estimate their home’s value, and efficiently manage and improve their home.
“Our home inventory tool allows you to take a close-up photo for insurance of your equipment and appliances, which immediately uses AI to identify the brand and model of the item, its age and whether it’s under warranty,” Bodrozic says. “You can quickly create an insurance inventory this way, plus you can upload the manual. With AI, we can generate an estimate of how long the appliance or system will last and what it will cost to repair or replace it so homeowners can plan for that expense.”
Builders can use HomeZada to generate a digital binder for their buyers that aggregates all the information they need to maintain their home. They can also pay for a one-year subscription for buyers.
For homeowners, HomeZada has a $99 per year free version that provides additional support and information, plus a $189 per year subscription to cover multiple homes.
“With the help of AI, we can even send a reminder to homeowners that their appliance is about to fall out of warranty after nine years or more,” Bodrozic says. “The tool automatically generates a maintenance list that sends digital reminders to homeowners. There’s a ‘how to’ button that provides instructions and a list of tools needed to perform basic maintenance tasks, plus an estimate of what it costs if someone wants to hire a contractor instead.”
Homeowners considering a remodel can use HomeZada to generate estimated costs of a project and ROI based on their specific location and current market conditions.
“AI lets you have a conversation, so the results are based on whether you want a basic new bathroom or want a high-end remodel with specific fixtures,” Bodrozic says. “You can save the estimate to create a budget for your project.” ROI estimates are based on searches of comparable homes by photos and property data.
“We can also generate a high-level analysis of energy and water saving projects to see how much you might save by investing in different projects such as solar panels, energy efficient windows, new insulation or a tankless water heater,” Bodrozic says.
Homebuyers can also use HomeZada before purchasing to get a forecast of future renovation costs to compare properties or prepare financially for homeownership.
HomeZada, a digital home management platform, provides buyers with the information needed to manage the house, such as product serial numbers, appliance maintenance dates, and an estimate of home equity. CREDIT: Courtesy of HomeZada
Remodeling Cost Predictor
For homeowners considering renovating to sell faster or for a higher price, or who just want to improve their home for their own enjoyment and to build home equity, Revive, a home renovation platform, offers AI-empowered tools.
“Our sales team analyzes projects all day long, but we also rely on comparable properties to see what sells, in what condition and at what price,” says Dalip Jaggi, cofounder and chief operating officer of Revive based in Irvine, Calif. “The key is to understand what the sales price would be if you bring a property up to the neighborhood standard and then to decide which improvements make sense at what cost.”
In addition to providing renovation insights and financing, Revive has a cash offer option for homeowners who want to sell without renovating.
“When you put in an address, our machine learning model uses computer vision to upload photos and look at 586 characteristics to check on the home’s condition,” Jaggi says. “When we match that with all the data about comparable home sales and their condition, we can generate a letter grade that shows whether something is a B or a C minus house.”
Within 6.5 seconds, Revive’s tool can estimate the cost of potential home improvements according to local material and labor costs. That tool is currently only available to real estate agents, but it will eventually be available to homeowners.
“Our vision is that homeowners will make smart decisions with the help of their real estate agent,” Jaggi says.
Revive recently launched a “RenoVision” tool that allows users to upload a photo, and a style such as “coastal” or “farmhouse” to generate images and cost estimates for each project. Later in 2025, that tool will connect with a catalog of products for greater accuracy.
“The idea is to help homeowners visually see options of improvements that would likely appeal to buyers to generate a higher offer, plus estimate the cost,” Jaggi says.
AI for Builders and Remodelers
While large national and regional builders have the funds and expertise to invest in AI to streamline their projects, small- and medium-size builders don’t have that same capacity, says Marissa Wagner, chief marketing officer of Buildxact, an estimating and project management software company with U.S. headquarters in Austin.
“At Buildxact, we’ve created a digital toolkit that smaller builders can use to control and scale their business,” Wagner says. “Small- and mid-size builders aren’t just builders—they are small business owners that don’t have the sales and marketing team, and administrative staff that larger builders have. They’re general contractors and project managers and sales professionals all in one person.”
Buildxact, which operates in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Canada, was founded 15 years ago. It has been in the U.S. since 2020. Its tools serve 7,000 construction companies, including remodelers, home builders and contractors.
In June 2025, Buildxact introduced “Blu,” a digital AI platform with four tools available now and more to be introduced in the future, Wagner says.
“The ‘takeoff assistant’ is an evolution of our core feature,” she says. “Builders can upload plans and measurements, and within 90 seconds Blu generates a complete takeoff list. Normally that process can take three or four days.”
The Blu estimate generator uses AI to create an estimate for a project based on basic information such as the size of the project, and some high-level information along with local material and labor costs, Wagner says. The tool can be connected with a builder or remodeler’s supplier. It can be used for everything from a single room, such as a kitchen remodel, an addition or an entire house.
“The Blu assembly assistant can be linked to the takeoff tool when builders provide specific measurements for their projects,” Wagner says. “It can quickly generate a materials list and estimated labor costs for an assembly for a specific project.”
The Blu estimate reviewer is particularly valuable to small and medium-sized companies who need to send a quote to a prospective client, she says.
“The reviewer tool provides an audit to make sure the builder isn’t missing any key elements,” Wagner says. “Labor costs are integrated into the estimate on a ZIP Code level with this software. For material costs, we can integrate with Home Depot’s live price lists in the U.S. for updated prices. The builders can choose what they do and don’t want to share with their clients and get updates throughout the project.”
Eventually, the Buildxact tool will allow builders to check availability and order materials directly. Wagner anticipates availability later in 2025.
Builders can choose between three levels of plans priced from $199 per month for the base plan to $599 per month for builders with a higher volume of work.
“We’re not looking to replace builders in any capacity—we just want to restore their time to them,” Wagner says. “These tools optimize their time by finding efficiencies in their workflow.”
Transforming Homebuilding with AI
Modular homes built offsite and finished onsite are not new. But a trio of former Amazon Robotics leaders aims to use AI and lessons learned from Amazon warehouse solutions to build resilient Zero Energy Ready Homes (ZERHs) that are attainably priced. The three cofounders—Aaron Small, head of operations, Felipe Polido, head of technology, and Vikas Enti, CEO—created Reframe Systems, based in Andover, Mass., a little more than two years ago.
Their strategy is to develop micro factories in multiple markets to build climate-resilient homes that match the zoning requirements in each location.
“Eighty-five percent of each home we build is completed in the micro factory,” Enti says. “They’re like giant Legos or shoeboxes that we can stack, so we can design and build single-family homes, [accessory dwelling units] and triple-decker buildings for multiple families.”
But despite their small size, the homes can’t be mass produced because there are 30,000 zoning areas that have various requirements, Enti adds. “Plus, you have different climates, different building codes and lots in different sizes and shapes,” he says. “Each factory will have local architects and engineers for local context.” Enti and his partners created software and algorithms to simplify and systematize the construction process for each module, and introduced robots into their first factory.
“The idea is that we want to be able to hire someone inexperienced in the morning and have them build modules in our factory that afternoon,” Enti says. “Framing a house is a pretty repetitive task, so we developed a system to print the instructions on the lumber itself like an IKEA furniture manual.”
Sixty percent of our workers are apprentices, some of them in high school or trade school, Enti adds. “They can do this work because it’s intuitive like other manufacturing processes.”
Currently, robots build about 60 percent of the walls, sheathing and insulation for each home. Enti anticipates robots will build about 80 percent of those parts in 2025.
Each module is typically 14 feet wide, 16 feet long and 10.5 feet high.
To keep costs down, Reframe offers precut parts that can be assembled 30 percent faster than parts that haven’t been precut. The roofs are predesigned and ready for solar panels. In addition, Enti says the use of robots and apprentices saves 20 percent on labor costs.
“We use light wood framing from a local lumber yard in Massachusetts, high performance triple-pane windows, and MDF composite flooring,” Enti says. “We’re trying to get away from using vinyl and nonbiodegradable materials, plus we’re continually looking for local sources for every product. We’re building foundations with as little concrete as possible—at least 50 percent less than a traditional foundation.”
In 2024, Reframe built a house in 48 days. Eventually, Enti hopes to get the build time from foundation to final finishes down to 30 days.
“We’re not a design-build firm, so we focus on partnering with developers who own land and want to build resilient missing middle housing,” Enti says. Reframe Systems has roughly 20 homes in the process of design or construction in Massachusetts this year and it is shipping modular homes to Los Angeles to help rebuild ones destroyed by the January 2025 wildfires.
“We plan to open our next micro-factory in Los Angeles in 2026 and then hope to be in five markets by 2030,” Enti says. “We want to develop these micro factories to be the size of a garden center in a Home Depot and in similar locations. Our goal is to develop the largest home manufacturing network throughout the country.”
Builders using Reframe Systems’ software and algorithms can simplify and systematize the construction process for climate-resistant microhome modules, which are designed to match an area’s zoning requirements. CREDIT: Courtesy of Reframe Systems
An AI Primer Without the Hype
AI has both a light and dark side. Let’s focus on the biggest potential upside: efficient planning, estimating, and project management.
Artificial intelligence (AI)—the phrase that now seems to be on everyone’s lips in every conversation and in every industry—leaves some people hot with excitement and others cold or confused. The majority of builders don’t currently use AI in their business, according to a survey by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), but some are beginning to adopt AI tools, and it’s likely that adoption will accelerate in the industry in coming years.
Thus far, the most popular way builders use AI (20 percent) is to generate advertising and marketing, while 11 percent use it to help analyze markets and plan projects. For builders, remodelers and homeowners, AI tools can speed up estimates to bid on jobs, generate suggestions for remodeling projects, evaluate their return on investment and even track home equity. The benefits of using AI in a variety of ways are clear—even when most of us don’t always understand exactly how these tools work.
AI for Homeowners
Whether you are new to homeownership or have owned multiple homes, it’s likely that you share the same dilemma: where to find the information and data you need to manage your home. Maybe you need the serial number from your water heater to request a repair, you can’t remember when you last changed the filter on your heat pump, or you need a solid estimate of your home equity. AI technologies have the potential to help organize and streamline this information in the home building industry going forward.
“Most homeowners have data about their homes scattered everywhere from a Google spreadsheet to a paper folder with mortgage documents and a binder of appliance manuals their builder gave them,” says John Bodrozic, cofounder of HomeZada, a digital home management platform based in El Dorado Hills, Calif. “We launched HomeZada in 2012 so that homeowners would have everything in one place, including a maintenance calendar, an inventory for their insurance company, data on their utility costs, property taxes, and more.”
For the past couple of years, Bodrozic and his cofounder, Elizabeth Dodson, have invested heavily in AI to create tools that help homeowners track and estimate their home’s value, and efficiently manage and improve their home.
“Our home inventory tool allows you to take a close-up photo for insurance of your equipment and appliances, which immediately uses AI to identify the brand and model of the item, its age and whether it’s under warranty,” Bodrozic says. “You can quickly create an insurance inventory this way, plus you can upload the manual. With AI, we can generate an estimate of how long the appliance or system will last and what it will cost to repair or replace it so homeowners can plan for that expense.”
Builders can use HomeZada to generate a digital binder for their buyers that aggregates all the information they need to maintain their home. They can also pay for a one-year subscription for buyers.
For homeowners, HomeZada has a $99 per year free version that provides additional support and information, plus a $189 per year subscription to cover multiple homes.
“With the help of AI, we can even send a reminder to homeowners that their appliance is about to fall out of warranty after nine years or more,” Bodrozic says. “The tool automatically generates a maintenance list that sends digital reminders to homeowners. There’s a ‘how to’ button that provides instructions and a list of tools needed to perform basic maintenance tasks, plus an estimate of what it costs if someone wants to hire a contractor instead.”
Homeowners considering a remodel can use HomeZada to generate estimated costs of a project and ROI based on their specific location and current market conditions.
“AI lets you have a conversation, so the results are based on whether you want a basic new bathroom or want a high-end remodel with specific fixtures,” Bodrozic says. “You can save the estimate to create a budget for your project.”
ROI estimates are based on searches of comparable homes by photos and property data.
“We can also generate a high-level analysis of energy and water saving projects to see how much you might save by investing in different projects such as solar panels, energy efficient windows, new insulation or a tankless water heater,” Bodrozic says.
Homebuyers can also use HomeZada before purchasing to get a forecast of future renovation costs to compare properties or prepare financially for homeownership.
HomeZada, a digital home management platform, provides buyers with the information needed to manage the house, such as product serial numbers, appliance maintenance dates, and an estimate of home equity. CREDIT: Courtesy of HomeZada
Remodeling Cost Predictor
For homeowners considering renovating to sell faster or for a higher price, or who just want to improve their home for their own enjoyment and to build home equity, Revive, a home renovation platform, offers AI-empowered tools.
“Our sales team analyzes projects all day long, but we also rely on comparable properties to see what sells, in what condition and at what price,” says Dalip Jaggi, cofounder and chief operating officer of Revive based in Irvine, Calif. “The key is to understand what the sales price would be if you bring a property up to the neighborhood standard and then to decide which improvements make sense at what cost.”
In addition to providing renovation insights and financing, Revive has a cash offer option for homeowners who want to sell without renovating.
“When you put in an address, our machine learning model uses computer vision to upload photos and look at 586 characteristics to check on the home’s condition,” Jaggi says. “When we match that with all the data about comparable home sales and their condition, we can generate a letter grade that shows whether something is a B or a C minus house.”
Within 6.5 seconds, Revive’s tool can estimate the cost of potential home improvements according to local material and labor costs. That tool is currently only available to real estate agents, but it will eventually be available to homeowners.
“Our vision is that homeowners will make smart decisions with the help of their real estate agent,” Jaggi says.
Revive recently launched a “RenoVision” tool that allows users to upload a photo, and a style such as “coastal” or “farmhouse” to generate images and cost estimates for each project. Later in 2025, that tool will connect with a catalog of products for greater accuracy.
“The idea is to help homeowners visually see options of improvements that would likely appeal to buyers to generate a higher offer, plus estimate the cost,” Jaggi says.
AI for Builders and Remodelers
While large national and regional builders have the funds and expertise to invest in AI to streamline their projects, small- and medium-size builders don’t have that same capacity, says Marissa Wagner, chief marketing officer of Buildxact, an estimating and project management software company with U.S. headquarters in Austin.
“At Buildxact, we’ve created a digital toolkit that smaller builders can use to control and scale their business,” Wagner says. “Small- and mid-size builders aren’t just builders—they are small business owners that don’t have the sales and marketing team, and administrative staff that larger builders have. They’re general contractors and project managers and sales professionals all in one person.”
Buildxact, which operates in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Canada, was founded 15 years ago. It has been in the U.S. since 2020. Its tools serve 7,000 construction companies, including remodelers, home builders and contractors.
In June 2025, Buildxact introduced “Blu,” a digital AI platform with four tools available now and more to be introduced in the future, Wagner says.
“The ‘takeoff assistant’ is an evolution of our core feature,” she says. “Builders can upload plans and measurements, and within 90 seconds Blu generates a complete takeoff list. Normally that process can take three or four days.”
The Blu estimate generator uses AI to create an estimate for a project based on basic information such as the size of the project, and some high-level information along with local material and labor costs, Wagner says. The tool can be connected with a builder or remodeler’s supplier. It can be used for everything from a single room, such as a kitchen remodel, an addition or an entire house.
“The Blu assembly assistant can be linked to the takeoff tool when builders provide specific measurements for their projects,” Wagner says. “It can quickly generate a materials list and estimated labor costs for an assembly for a specific project.”
The Blu estimate reviewer is particularly valuable to small and medium-sized companies who need to send a quote to a prospective client, she says.
“The reviewer tool provides an audit to make sure the builder isn’t missing any key elements,” Wagner says. “Labor costs are integrated into the estimate on a ZIP Code level with this software. For material costs, we can integrate with Home Depot’s live price lists in the U.S. for updated prices. The builders can choose what they do and don’t want to share with their clients and get updates throughout the project.”
Eventually, the Buildxact tool will allow builders to check availability and order materials directly. Wagner anticipates availability later in 2025.
Builders can choose between three levels of plans priced from $199 per month for the base plan to $599 per month for builders with a higher volume of work.
“We’re not looking to replace builders in any capacity—we just want to restore their time to them,” Wagner says. “These tools optimize their time by finding efficiencies in their workflow.”
Transforming Homebuilding with AI
Modular homes built offsite and finished onsite are not new. But a trio of former Amazon Robotics leaders aims to use AI and lessons learned from Amazon warehouse solutions to build resilient Zero Energy Ready Homes (ZERHs) that are attainably priced. The three cofounders—Aaron Small, head of operations, Felipe Polido, head of technology, and Vikas Enti, CEO—created Reframe Systems, based in Andover, Mass., a little more than two years ago.
Their strategy is to develop micro factories in multiple markets to build climate-resilient homes that match the zoning requirements in each location.
“Eighty-five percent of each home we build is completed in the micro factory,” Enti says. “They’re like giant Legos or shoeboxes that we can stack, so we can design and build single-family homes, [accessory dwelling units] and triple-decker buildings for multiple families.”
But despite their small size, the homes can’t be mass produced because there are 30,000 zoning areas that have various requirements, Enti adds. “Plus, you have different climates, different building codes and lots in different sizes and shapes,” he says. “Each factory will have local architects and engineers for local context.”
Enti and his partners created software and algorithms to simplify and systematize the construction process for each module, and introduced robots into their first factory.
“The idea is that we want to be able to hire someone inexperienced in the morning and have them build modules in our factory that afternoon,” Enti says. “Framing a house is a pretty repetitive task, so we developed a system to print the instructions on the lumber itself like an IKEA furniture manual.”
Sixty percent of our workers are apprentices, some of them in high school or trade school, Enti adds. “They can do this work because it’s intuitive like other manufacturing processes.”
Currently, robots build about 60 percent of the walls, sheathing and insulation for each home. Enti anticipates robots will build about 80 percent of those parts in 2025.
Each module is typically 14 feet wide, 16 feet long and 10.5 feet high.
To keep costs down, Reframe offers precut parts that can be assembled 30 percent faster than parts that haven’t been precut. The roofs are predesigned and ready for solar panels. In addition, Enti says the use of robots and apprentices saves 20 percent on labor costs.
“We use light wood framing from a local lumber yard in Massachusetts, high performance triple-pane windows, and MDF composite flooring,” Enti says. “We’re trying to get away from using vinyl and nonbiodegradable materials, plus we’re continually looking for local sources for every product. We’re building foundations with as little concrete as possible—at least 50 percent less than a traditional foundation.”
In 2024, Reframe built a house in 48 days. Eventually, Enti hopes to get the build time from foundation to final finishes down to 30 days.
“We’re not a design-build firm, so we focus on partnering with developers who own land and want to build resilient missing middle housing,” Enti says.
Reframe Systems has roughly 20 homes in the process of design or construction in Massachusetts this year and it is shipping modular homes to Los Angeles to help rebuild ones destroyed by the January 2025 wildfires.
“We plan to open our next micro-factory in Los Angeles in 2026 and then hope to be in five markets by 2030,” Enti says. “We want to develop these micro factories to be the size of a garden center in a Home Depot and in similar locations. Our goal is to develop the largest home manufacturing network throughout the country.”
Builders using Reframe Systems’ software and algorithms can simplify and systematize the construction process for climate-resistant microhome modules, which are designed to match an area’s zoning requirements. CREDIT: Courtesy of Reframe Systems
Publisher’s Note: This content is made possible by our Today’s Homeowner Campaign Sponsors: Whirlpool Corporation. Whirlpool Corporation takes sustainability seriously, in both their products and their operations. Learn more about building and buying homes that are more affordable and less resource intensive.
By Michele Lerner, Associate Editor
Michele Lerner is an award-winning freelance writer, editor, and author who writes about real estate, personal finance, and business.Also Read