Gridics, the provider of a collaborative search tool for real estate agents and their clients, has clinched $1.1 million in a seed funding round, and has unveiled a new application designed to streamline the development planning and approval process.
The Miami-based startup wants to combine disparate real estate data into software that helps users make better investment decisions “while streamlining fractured processes in the real estate world.”
Its property search and analysis tool “Market Intelligence” can be integrated into multiple listing services (MLSs) to offer real estate agents a dizzying array of search filters, property data and market reports.
Agents can share access to the tool with contacts, providing for a collaborative search experience under which clients and agents can communicate inside the platform.
The Miami Association of Realtors (MAR) recently made Market Intelligence available to all members for free earlier this year. One thousand members have joined the platform since February. The company, which has raised over $2 million in funding to date, is seeking to form partnerships with other Realtor associations in the future.
In a press release announcing its funding round, Gridics called the most attention to a separate tool designed primarily for developers and city planners.
3-D visualization of a development plan built with Zonar.City
Zonar.City helps investors plan developments and assists city planners with deciding whether to approve them by allowing both to check development plans against zoning requirements, Gridics CEO Jason Doyle said in a statement.
Some commercial brokerages are also using the tool to help clients price and identify the hidden value of properties — potentially leading to higher closing prices for sellers, according to the company.
“Cities that integrate their code with Zonar.City will streamline their zoning approval processes resulting in faster approvals, improved transparency and significant reductions to backlogs,” Doyle said.
Development approval can take nine months or more, with zoning analysis often creating bottlenecks, according to Gridics.
Zonar.City property analysis page
Zonar.City digitizes zoning regulations and combines them with GIS (geographic information system) data layers that let users easily produce “use-specific and geo-specific 3D visualizations” of potential projects.
This saves “tens of thousands of dollars and months of analysis while improving the accuracy of their results and forecast models,” the company says.
“The Zonar.City application unshackles real estate professionals, and the municipal departments they interact with, from the zoning books they tirelessly flip through,” said Peter Richards, managing partner of Dune Road Capital, which led the funding round.
Other investors that participated in the round include John Dyett, managing director of Salem Partners, Robert Kall, CEO of Cien Inc. and Miami real estate developer Avra Jain.
