We Made Forbes. More Importantly, Here's What They Got Right About the Housing Crisis.
Forbes contributor Jennifer Castenson recently took a close look at the innovators working to change that, and we were honored to be included in the conversation.
The numbers are stark. A family earning the median US income of $104,200 needs to spend 34% of it just to cover the mortgage on a median-priced new home. For families earning half that, it jumps to 67%. The starter home — that first step into homeownership, the foundation of generational wealth — is disappearing from the American landscape.
Forbes contributor Jennifer Castenson recently took a close look at the innovators working to change that, and we were honored to be included in the conversation.
The article highlights several approaches to the problem: employer-sponsored down payment benefits, fix-and-flip investors bringing distressed properties back to market, intergenerational communities on college campuses, and zoning reform templates for local governments. Each tackles a different piece of a very complicated puzzle.
Our piece of it is the one that happens before any of that. Before a builder breaks ground, before a permit is filed, before a homeowner calls a contractor, someone has to answer a basic question: is this lot even feasible for the project I have in mind?
Historically, answering that question meant weeks of research, calls to municipal planning departments, and wading through thousands of pages of zoning documents. For a builder evaluating dozens of potential infill lots, that process alone could kill a project before it started.
As our co-founder and CEO Nitzan Achsaf told Forbes: "Within five seconds, a builder can know if it is even worth their time. This is cutting 98% of the time it takes."
That speed matters for ADUs and home additions — the kinds of modest, attainable housing that can be added to existing neighborhoods without new infrastructure, new land, or years of permitting battles. These are exactly the starter homes and starter-home alternatives that the market desperately needs more of.
FutureLot's AI-powered zoning analysis now covers 21 states and 10,000 municipalities. That means builders can move faster, homeowners can understand what is possible on their property without hiring a consultant, and projects that might have stalled in the feasibility phase can actually get built.
The starter home crisis is a big problem. It will take many solutions. We're glad to be one of them.