A new startup with plans to expand into Greater Washington is looking to upend the world of land analysis and real estate due diligence.
Earlier this year, civil engineer Luke Perkins launched Swift Sites in Raleigh, a technology firm that uses software to automate the due diligence process. The site scrapes data from websites for the state, counties, towns and cities to provide users with extensive reports on land parcels, including sales and value information as well as development data on zoning, restrictions, overlays and anything else a buyer or developer may need to know before moving ahead with plans for a property.
Today, Swift Sites covers Wake, Durham and Mecklenburg counties in North Carolina, with plans to expand in the state's Triangle area as well as to cities including Wilmington, North Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee; Atlanta and Washington D.C. before going nationwide.
Perkins spent six years working in civil engineering at Raleigh-based Stewart where he became acquainted with the frustrations of the often tangled world of land analysis.
“I got my professional license at Stewart and pretty quickly identified this painful process a lot of the real estate industry was going through,” he said. “Doing due diligence on land and land development is a time consuming process that requires a lot of knowledge in a lot of different jurisdictions.”
Initially, he talked to Stewart about developing the project in-house but ultimately realized it would require his full attention. He left his role at Stewart to pursue the project on his own.
Not long after leaving Stewart, Perkins brought on the second member of the Swift Sites team, Pat Moore, a Raleigh-based real estate broker and businessman. Moore had been connecting with a number of people looking into the world of technology and real estate entrepreneurship before he came across a post by Perkins and decided to reach out.
After putting together a pilot product on his own, Perkins outsourced the software development to a third party and soon found interested companies and engineers to try the beta products and give feedback.
“Most of the feedback we get is (asking for) more locations,” he said. “Johnston County and some places are really blowing up development wise now. A lot of people have asked if we can work in those places.”
The company currently has around 30 users paying between $250 and $500 a month. Moore said that with the current overhead, they’ll need around 50 users to reach sustainability. Perkins hopes to add 10 to 15 new metro areas to Swift Sites coverage next year.
“That’s the biggest thing for us right now,” he said.
Still in its bootstrapping phase, the company has three full-time staffers including Perkins, Moore and a developer that’s yet to be publicly brought on.
The company has so far been funded by investments from family and friends and has yet to actively pursue any larger institutional investment.
