Housing Innovation Trends from the 2025 Ivory Prize: Shaping the Future of Housing Affordability
By: Chad Reed, Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer
Each year, the Ivory Prize recognizes the most promising innovations in housing affordability. Our nomination pool provides a snapshot of the most promising, ambitious innovations from across the housing industry. While our recently announced Top 25 finalists are standouts in their respective niches, with over 230 nominees in 2025, our broader nomination pool reflects a more complete snapshot of the housing innovation landscape. Our vantage point allows us to identify not only category-specific breakthroughs, but also cross-cutting trends that signal where the industry is headed. In this post, we share a few of our insights from this year’s nominations.
Accelerating Housing Development with Artificial Intelligence and Automation
Artificial intelligence and machine learning are becoming increasingly integral across all facets of housing, with companies in virtually every niche leveraging these technologies. However, their impact is particularly pronounced in predevelopment, where AI-powered tools help streamline zoning, permitting, and entitlement processes—critical regulatory bottlenecks that drive up development costs. In the Policy & Regulatory Reform category, companies like UrbanForm, CivCheck, Infilla, and Fordje are using AI to simplify jurisdiction-level building codes, making project approvals more efficient for both developers and city officials.
Emerging AI Tools for Housing Feasibility
We've seen a surge in platforms designed to expedite development feasibility analysis. While past Ivory Prize finalists like Arx (IP ‘23) and DeepBlocks (IP ‘21) have made strides in this space, this year’s submissions did not present a major leap forward. That said, with at least a dozen competitors already vying for market share, we’re eager to see how this sector evolves.
Reshaping Home Realty with New Business Models
One of the most striking trends this year was the rise of self-service and fixed/discounted-fee brokerages for homebuyers. This shift is a direct response to the August 2024 NAR legislation, which prohibits Multiple Listing Services (MLSs) from displaying broker commission offers and requires written agreements between buyers and agents before home tours.
The Role of AI in Real Estate Innovation
The new regulations have fueled the emergence of startups like Bramble, which leverages video tours and AI-powered search to reduce reliance on traditional commission structures. Meanwhile, established platforms such as reAlpha have refined their models, introducing AI-driven tools like “Claire,” a commission-free buyer’s agent. Given the evolving nature of this market, our board opted to monitor the space rather than elevate any of these models to the Top 25 finalist group—yet.
The Next Wave of Off-Site Construction
Off-site construction has been a consistent focal point of the Ivory Prize, with past winners like Villa (IP ‘24) and Volumetric Building Companies (IP ‘22) demonstrating its potential. However, in the past year, we’ve observed a strategic shift among new entrants.
From Modular Factories to Flexible Production Models
Large-scale modular factories have faced high capital costs, prompting a rise in temporary production setups and micro factories—a trend exemplified by Reframe (IP ‘25). These flexible models allow smaller builders to leverage the efficiency of off-site construction while mitigating upfront investment challenges. As the industry adapts, we expect this approach to gain further traction.
Insurtech: Rethinking Natural Disaster Risk and Housing Affordability
With climate change exacerbating natural disaster risks, innovative insurtech models are rethinking how risk is assessed and priced. This emerging sector is exploring alternative underwriting models to stabilize insurance costs for homeowners and developers in disaster-prone areas.
AI-Driven Risk Assessment for Affordable Housing Insurance
FutureProof (IP ‘25), one of this year’s Top 25, uses real-time AI- and ML-driven underwriting to assess property resilience, allowing homeowners in hurricane-prone areas to qualify for coverage or lower premiums by strengthening their homes. Meanwhile, Delos, another 2025 nominee, employs satellite technology and machine learning to offer wildfire insurance in high-risk areas, ensuring homeowners who might otherwise be uninsurable can access private-market coverage.
Streamlining Voucher Processing for Low-Income Housing
For low-income households, obtaining and using Section 8 housing vouchers is a complex and often discouraging process. Long waitlists, bureaucratic paperwork, and landlord hesitancy make securing housing through the program difficult. At the same time, public housing agencies (PHAs) and participating landlords face administrative hurdles in processing applications and approvals.
Innovations in Housing Voucher Processing
Startups like Matrix Rental Solutions (IP ‘25), Unlock NYC, and Anthos Homes are tackling these inefficiencies by simplifying one or more parts of the process, making it easier for both renters and landlords to participate. These solutions have the potential to streamline access to housing for voucher holders while reducing administrative burdens on PHAs.
Conclusion: The Future of Housing Innovation
The Ivory Prize gives us a front-row seat to the changing dynamics shaping the future of housing affordability. Our unique perspective allows us to track emerging trends before they gain widespread traction and identify gaps where new solutions are still needed. While only a select few make it to our finalist pool, every nomination contributes to our broader understanding of where the industry is heading. We extend our gratitude to all of this year’s nominees for their participation and interest in the Prize, and look forward to continuing to track the evolution of housing innovation in the years ahead.