Kylie Davis: (00:01)Welcome to the Proptech Podcast. It's Kylie Davis here and I'm delighted to be your host as we explore the brave new world where technology and real estate collide. I passionately believe we need to create and grow a sense of community between the innovators and real estate agents, and sharing our stories is a great way to do that.

Kylie Davis: (00:19)Now the aim of each episode is to introduce listeners to a proptech innovator, who is pushing the boundaries of what's possible and explore the issues and challenges raised by the tech and how they can create amazing property experiences.

Kylie Davis: (00:32)And my guest in this episode is Anycie Barakat from Archistar, a big data and AI platform that is a game changer for property development, design and even planning. Now Anycie has a master's in architecture and is the lead computational designer at Archistar, a business that was founded by her brother, Dr. Ben Coorey.

Kylie Davis: (00:54)And in this interview, we talk about the extraordinary power of generative design, how it's being turbocharged by aggregated data sets across council planning laws and extended property data sets. And the extraordinarily exciting opportunities that it's opening up, not only on how to save significant costs in developing property, but coming up with better design outcomes that are more efficient, more creative and better for us to live and work in. So, Anycie Barakat, welcome to the PropTech Podcast.

Anycie Barakat: (01:25)Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Kylie Davis: (01:26)It's great to have you on the show. I've been trying to get you or your brother on for a while. And I'm so excited about Archistar. So tell us what is the Archistar elevator pitch?

Anycie Barakat: (01:37)Okay. So at Archistar we've developed a web-based subscription platform that helps anyone work out what you should buy, anywhere in Australia. So pretty much we run with finding feasible development sites, quickly, understanding sites and detail. We have automated planning rules gathered from relevant planning sources nationwide and then we use these rules to generate compliant building designs a tailored to each site.

Kylie Davis: (02:04)Awesome. So you make it sound really, really simple, but this is an extraordinarily sophisticated piece of technology.

Anycie Barakat: (02:12)It is. It definitely is. So it's been about five years in the making and currently we have about 60 people working on it, day to day. About 80,000 man hours of people trying to gather all our rules nationwide, keep them up to date and so on. So it's a big job. It's a big job.

Kylie Davis: (02:30)And so just to give the listeners a bit of a ... there's an amazing video or demo of it so we'll share that in the show notes. But to give everyone a bit of an idea, you can basically look up any address, either by address or on a map, and you can then identify whether the existing building is built to its full capacity, or potential, under the building guidelines for it, and you can identify if it's for sale or not, and regardless you can then play with that block and see what you could build on it, and do that in real time. Right?

Anycie Barakat: (03:12)Definitely. Yeah. That's exactly what we do.

Kylie Davis: (03:14)Yeah. Let's go into a little bit more of a deep dive. So then on top of that, there's also the ability to see shadowing and ...

Anycie Barakat: (03:24)Yeah. So for every building design that we generate, and it ranges from ten to hundreds, to even thousands, depending on how big your site is and what rules that you input but, for each one of those designs, we deep dive into analytics.

Anycie Barakat: (03:40)So we have automated analytics systems and, pretty much, they tell you if you comply or not. So this is in terms of overshadowing, sunlight, ventilation, privacy spacing. We even have a crack at car parking and so on. So we do have quite a bit.

Kylie Davis: (03:58)So what's the problem that it's solving? Why do we need a product like Archistar?

Anycie Barakat: (04:04)Yeah. So pretty much what it does ... what we try to kind of get across is, we really try to speed up that pre-DA design process. So what we do is we're saving you hours, days, or even weeks in that initial design process by bringing all the issues that you would find later in the design process, right to the beginning. So with a few minutes, you can see, "Okay, firstly, what can I build on the site?" Or actually, firstly, before that, "What site is good for me? Secondly, what can I build on this site? Thirdly, is this feasible?"

Anycie Barakat: (04:36)So we allow you to generate designs, see if they're compliant. Can you build a compliant design on this site? And if you can, "Is it worth my time? Am I going to make enough money out of this? What's going to happen if I go ahead with this process?" And you could do all that in 10 minutes. So you're saving, not just one person, maybe even a team of people weeks or maybe even the month in terms of time. So you're kind of getting this process, understanding where you're going to be going right at the beginning rather than waiting for a month or a few weeks, at least, to get to that point.

Kylie Davis: (05:11)It's almost like being able to try on a site, isn't it? Like an outfit. You can work out, is it for you or ... and is it going to give you the result that you want or?

Anycie Barakat: (05:21)Exactly. Yeah. It's really exciting. Again, it's fast. It's good.

Kylie Davis: (05:25)Yeah, it is. So what can it do right now? So what are the things that it's doing for its clients right now?

Anycie Barakat: (05:31)Yeah. So at Archistar, what we've done is we've spent, like I said before, over 80,000 man hours gathering all local and state regulations into our platform. So it's kind of a one-stop shop in terms of planning data. And so, because we have that, what it is, it's based around a mapping system. And with that data, we're able to use it in kind of new and novel ways.

Anycie Barakat: (05:54)So we're able to show you on the map ... you're able to filter finds and assess which development site is right for you. So we can tell you which site is used for apartments or which site is used for mixed use. All those kind of stuff. Which ones are above a certain planning rule, FSR, all that kind of stuff. All the kind of information you need to make a decision on design. And then once you actually select a site, we give you extra ad-ons.

Anycie Barakat: (06:21)We partner with a few big companies that really help us in terms of finding the correct site for you, like Domain, CoreLogic, BCI. All that data we've all incorporated into our system. So when you're trying to find a site, you want to see if it's for sale, you can check it on our system. You want to see what development has been around it. You can check it in our system. So all this kind of stuff is there for you to see. What's going on in the area. What's the best site for you.

Anycie Barakat: (06:47)And then, once you're on that site, you say, "Okay, well what can I build on it?" And because we have all that data incorporated into our system, it's easy for us to say, "Okay, well, we can generate designs using this data." So we know what your front and your side setbacks should be. We know what your maximum building height is. Maximum for space ratios. All that kind of stuff you need to know to actually generate a design. And we give you a quick [inaudible 00:07:10] in the internals, as well, just to see ... because we can really, to see how many apartments you can do, how much retail can you fit in this space, car parking, all that kind of stuff to go.

Anycie Barakat: (07:23)And that ranges across housing, townhouses, duplexes, [inaudible 00:07:27] housing, terraced and even all the way up to apartments, commercial mixed use and hotels, which is our latest, which has been pretty cool. Something different. Even further, we go to feasibility. So you can kind of see, "Okay, is it feasible or not?" In depth cost estimation and that sort of thing.

Kylie Davis: (07:44)And you can push the envelope too, can't you? You can say, "Well, look, I know the planning rules only allow for 20 stories, but I want to go up to 25." You can start to test that out, can't you?

Anycie Barakat: (07:56)Definitely. So, because we have the rules, we actually, if we have the rules for one site, we show all of them and we pre-fill in everything. However, you can change it. So it's not static at all. It's completely customizable. If you know, for example, that a new set of rules is coming and they're going to be 80 metres tall instead of 20, you can tap in 80 metres and keep going from there.

Kylie Davis: (08:22)Okay. Awesome. So who are your major clients? I'm assuming they're developers, but are they big building companies or?

Anycie Barakat: (08:29)Yeah. They actually range quite a bit around the market. So you're right, we do have a lot of property developers, small and large scale. So your mums or dads all the way up to your [inaudible 00:08:42] people like Woods Bagot, Aurecon, Frasers Property, all that kind of larger scale places.

Anycie Barakat: (08:50)However, we do also meddle with real estate agents, local council, even government bodies, like New South Wales Transport, New South Wales Customer Service, Property New South Wales. And just a few like City of Melbourne. We're kind of all around Australia right now, and also moving into the US and the UK soon. So, that's on our roadmap coming up.

Kylie Davis: (09:11)Wow. Okay. So for councils. What's the value for councils in, in having a system like Archistar?

Anycie Barakat: (09:18)Yeah. So generally with councils, what we find is the main part they like is the idea of compliance.

Kylie Davis: (09:25)Well, I guess it shows them and they haven't had to do the work. It's all been done for them.

Anycie Barakat: (09:30)Exactly. So we're working with one of the councils right now to kind of get that DA process and the pre-DA process really streamlined. So if people are able to submit their DA's or their pre-DA's into our system, we can analyse that automatically, and they can submit that directly to a council and that process is really streamlined.

Anycie Barakat: (09:52)And we are kind of working with that now, working with a few government spaces but, in the meantime ... so that's kind of like a work in progress but, in the meantime, they're currently using it to find and assess sites mainly. So sites that are good for them. We find that they have a lot of excess sites around like train stations and kind of like the main roadway areas and they kind of want to see, "Okay, what can I do with this? How can I use it most wisely?"

Kylie Davis: (10:18)Yeah. Okay. Awesome. So the use case for developers kind of completely make sense because you're working out, should you buy it and what can you put on it? But I guess from a council point of view, the end outcome is is that this could really radically speed up, safely, DA processes or approval processes because they are notoriously slow in some areas, aren't they?

Anycie Barakat: (10:43)For sure. For sure. So definitely. So definitely about the idea of, "Are you compliant with sunlight? Are you compliant with ventilation?" And actually having specific percentages calculated on the fly, that really helps as well. So it should definitely speed up that entire process quite a bit.

Kylie Davis: (11:01)And so do you think that we'll see ... is that going to impact on the cost of some of these buildings, do you think?

Anycie Barakat: (11:07)Yeah, I definitely think it definitely is going to reduce costs.

Kylie Davis: (11:10)Reduce cost, not necessarily reduce the price, but reduce maybe the cost.

Anycie Barakat: (11:15)So at least some admin costs, I guess. Staff. But it's good. So I think it definitely will reduce, I guess, overall project costs in terms of ... you don't want to make a mistake where you have to chop and change apartments out and, three quarters of the way down the design process, you're like, "Ah, crap. It's not feasible. It's not compliant either." So it really is important to get that information right at the beginning and, having that, it really is saving time and a lot of money.

Kylie Davis: (11:45)Awesome. So how are real estate agents using it? I'm kind of curious to?

Anycie Barakat: (11:50)Yeah, so we actually have a lot of real estate agents using our platform. It's surprising. Well, it's not surprising, but it's-

Kylie Davis: (11:56)Oh, no. They're smart.

Anycie Barakat: (11:59)It is exciting to see it so many. We have Harcourts and a lot of big agents using it. So what they generally do in a few different ways they use it. So some of them are interested in development themselves. So they're seeing a lot of sites. They kind of want to see what's happening, but a lot of agents want that extra knowledge to be able to comment on a vendor's home development potential. So they find a lot of value in our tool because of that.

Anycie Barakat: (12:25)But a lot of people also like just having all the information in one platform. So we have a few reports that we generate and, one, we call a due diligence report, triple D. And that really kind of does a whole breakdown of what you can develop on a site. It's about 30 pages, but our agents also love our one pager information report and, what that is, it just tells you everything kind of about that site. What you can build on it. What's the potential. A quick feasibility on it and all the information, like planning information, they need as well.

Anycie Barakat: (12:56)So when they're going out, when they're trying to sell, they have that information on here. Then that's is a quick one click button to get that, which is really cool. So in that, also, I nearly forgot to mention, we have a lot of integration partners that we use. SO Domain, CoreLogic, Pricefinder, BCI, Cordell. And even Nearmap, so high resolution imagery. And they love all that kind of stuff. So it really helps them sell.

Kylie Davis: (13:22)Okay. Fantastic. So tell me a little bit about your background.

Anycie Barakat: (13:27)Yeah. So my background's in architecture.

Kylie Davis: (13:31)As most of your family's is, is it?

Anycie Barakat: (13:33)Yeah. Yeah. It's a bit crazy? So there is four of us in the family. Three of us that work together, which is good. But my background's in architecture and I did a master's at UTS, so in Sydney. My brother, Ben, Dr. Ben actually, he started this whole thing. The whole of Archistar and he was a university lecturer at Archistar and he's also in architecture. Also in generative design. So we're kind of in the same ... definitely in the same field, which is cool. And he started this whole process off, really.

Anycie Barakat: (14:09)So what he did was ... We actually started off as a learning platform. So our original, and we're still going today, and are still going quite well, is Archistar Academy. And we're an e-learning platform and you can kind of learn all courses relevant to generative design. And it ranges from architecture to interior design, all the way to engineering and rendering processes. So it's quite big. So I joined up at that point, about five years ago. And we started generating courses. So a few of us have been generating courses, outsourcing courses, that sort of thing, and they're being using in universities all around Australia, currently and internationally, which is great.

Anycie Barakat: (14:55)But from there, Ben at the time, was actually studying his PhD and that was in generative design. And from there, this is where we grabbed our other brother, and he came in. And so, at the time, we were kind of using those tools. So using computational design tools to speed up that design process, back then.

Anycie Barakat: (15:19)So we were using Rabbit plugins that we created ourselves, Rhino plugins and speeding up that quick feasibility process. And we, at the time, we [inaudible 00:15:27] said, "Okay, let's just get a few customers at a time." Clients came to us and said, "What can I build on our site?" And we had a thing going back then saying, "Oh, we'll get this back to you in 24 hours." And we used to do it all kind of manually and use our tools. We thought were really fast at doing it.

Kylie Davis: (15:43)Oh, you probably were.

Anycie Barakat: (15:44)We probably were at the time.

Kylie Davis: (15:44)Comparatively.

Anycie Barakat: (15:47)So it was really hard. It was good in terms of accuracy but, at the same time, we were just starting out so it was a bit tricky to kind of get it all underway and keep up with the pressure of the time limits and that sort of thing. So our third brother came in and he said, "Okay-"

Kylie Davis: (16:03)And what's his name? Sorry.

Anycie Barakat: (16:04)He's Rob.

Kylie Davis: (16:05)Rob. Okay.

Anycie Barakat: (16:07)So he come in and he's like, "Okay, you know what? We need to commercialise this. You can't do it manually all the time." And he'd say, "Get more people in and build something out of this." And that was the beginning of Archistar, what you see today. And it's just grown and grown. And now we're up to, I think, about 60 people.

Kylie Davis: (16:22)Awesome. So Ben, Anycie and Rob, as the family getting behind it as a concept.

Anycie Barakat: (16:29)Yeah.

Kylie Davis: (16:30)Fantastic.

Anycie Barakat: (16:31)We have one more brother but he's in finance.

Kylie Davis: (16:33)He's in finance. He's the black sheep of the family.

Anycie Barakat: (16:35)Black sheep, yeah. There's four of us.

Kylie Davis: (16:40)Awesome. And now, let's hear a word from our sponsors. For almost 16 years Direct Connect has made moving easy for over 1.2 million renters and homeowners by arranging connections to a wide range of services from electricity and gas to internet and pay TV. With a national team of local account managers who are experts in the industry, Direct Connect are there to support your real estate business with competitive rewards for every successful connection plus an industry leading rewards programme.

Kylie Davis: (17:10)The connection process is simple and Direct Connect's Always On Guarantee ensures your customers will be connected on the day they move in. Direct Connect offers a range of market-leading suppliers and Direct Connect has now made it even easier than ever to send connections, directly integrating with MRI softwares property tree. So in just a few clicks, while processing a tenancy, you can send the connection details through and get your customers connected. To make the right connection and find out how Direct Connect can make moving easy for you and easy for your customers, visit agents.directconnect.com.au, or call 1300-558-169.

Kylie Davis: (17:50)So let's talk a little bit about generative designs because, I guess, one of the criticisms that I can imagine you would get levelled at you is that this creates kind of cookie cutter designs or it makes things really homogenous. Do you think ... is that true?

Anycie Barakat: (18:10)I don't think so. Generally I do agree in terms of that a lot of the government regulations do ... the output of it is a lot of cookie cutter designs. But I think that's really where we try and make things a bit different here. So we take in those government regulations but, what we do is, we generate hundreds of designs from these. Firstly, we kind of take in the site and we see, "Okay, what's around it? What are your rules?" And then we generate designs that are customizable to that site. So they take in each kind of ... angles, all the slopes, all the kind of setbacks and a lot of things you need, and we generate from there.

Anycie Barakat: (18:48)But also we don't just leave it there. So when we generate designs, our customers can choose out of the hundreds that we have, but then they can also edit them. So they're fully customizable. They can select on a building. They can change it and move it around. And we generally just kind of ... we kind of just tell them if it's compliant or not. We're not really giving them the final ... we never say we're giving them a final building, but we generally give them that first, that big first step into what could fit on that site.

Kylie Davis: (19:17)Yeah, which is a big one. When we were talking, before, you mentioned that by having transparency around all of the compliance codes, that actually makes it easier to start to test them and get more creative with them.

Anycie Barakat: (19:37)Definitely. Definitely. So I think it really allows our customers to push the boundaries and with quick feedback. So you say, "Okay, what happens if I drag level three to eight in by five metres or out by five metres? What if I cantilever it out?" And then you can see immediately what that result is. So all our analytics will update. You'll see if you're overshadowing the guy next door or whatever you're doing. All that stuff is immediate, which is awesome.

Anycie Barakat: (20:06)So it really does allow for that quick flexibility. And we generally say, "All our stuff can be exported out of the system or imported in. So if you have your own custom designs, you can bring that in. We can test that for you and have a look around for you." It really is all about a quick design process.

Kylie Davis: (20:23)Yeah. And I guess when we talk about a quick design process ... I mean, background's in local newspapers. So the whole NIMBY thing and panic and terror around development proposals because they would mean something terrible for the local community. But do you believe that one of the reasons we have so much cookie cutter building going on, at the moment, is because of conservatism around what the design is allowed ... or what the regulations allow?

Anycie Barakat: (20:52)Definitely. Definitely. I know, for example, when you look in these design guides, you see a lot of buildings literally replicated from the images in those guidelines and you think, "Well, where's the creativity in it?" You know? And I think a lot of people really just want to kind of speed up that design process. They say, "Okay, if I submit this, they'll probably accept that DA faster."

Kylie Davis: (21:16)It won't take nine months to approve.

Anycie Barakat: (21:18)Yeah, exactly. And it's all about that kind of approval process. So if we can speed up that design process from say, whatever it is, six months to six weeks even, or less, that can really help. But I think, if people had that safety of having that pre-DA checklist, "I'm compliant with my sunlight, I comply with my privacy, my ventilation," all that kind of thing. So if they have that information ahead of time, I think they won't be as nervous to submit something a bit more creative.

Kylie Davis: (21:54)Yeah. And I'm interested too with the idea that if councils are adopting this, then they will be able to see how other councils are solving design challenges. Talk a little bit about that.

Anycie Barakat: (22:07)Yeah. So a big aim that we do at Archistar is able ... I'm just trying to explain how [inaudible 00:22:13]. So I think a lot of what we do is being able to create better designs globally. So if councils in Australia are picking this up and, generally, in the US, in the UK, initially, what we get is a lot of data about the different types of building designs that are coming through. And the more data we get, I guess, the better our recommendations for designs on sites will become.

Anycie Barakat: (22:41)Because it's an AI system and it can learn according to what you kind of put in here. So I think the more access to different designs, and different compliant designs, I think that will really kind of improve what designs we offer and also kind of widen the ideas and the creativity levels for people coming onto our site, and people designing buildings these days. So I think it's definitely an exciting process in terms of widening that level of creativity coming in.

Kylie Davis: (23:17)Yeah. And then also if you've got sort of design challenges in your suburb, you being able to see ... or see what's happening in UK with similar sites, and be able to see how they're doing it, and start to really get some creative responses go into that.

Anycie Barakat: (23:38)Yeah. So some of the data layers that we have in our system are 3D buildings, and we do ...we partner with a lot of integration partners that have a lot of rich data in all these countries. So, for example, if I wanted to look at ... I wanted to filter sites out for sites under 500 metres squared or under 600 metres squared, and they want to put an apartment block on there. So it's tricky. Yeah. It's tricky. So a lot of people do [inaudible 00:24:05]. So they come and they say, "How do I do this?" And we say, "Okay, let's try it out." They go in but you can do the exact same thing in the UK or the U S or anywhere in the world. You can draw up whatever site you want and kind of go and do that.

Anycie Barakat: (24:19)So it's really cool. And I think being able to see all the development information around your site, so development applications in your area, what's in construction, what got approved, what didn't get approved, all that information, I think it really helps. And I think it gives you a lot more confidence in when you're submitting your DA. Seeing what's around you, you say, "Well, you approved it for that guy over there right next door to me. And, look, he popped up through [inaudible 00:24:49]." So it's interesting. It's interesting. It's kind of a pre-approval process, I guess.

Kylie Davis: (24:57)Is this going to make it easier or faster for buildings to become sort of smart and green?

Anycie Barakat: (25:05)Definitely. Yeah, for sure. So in the future, what we're kind of looking towards is a lot of modular design. So prefab, modular buildings. That sort of thing. And a lot of those buildings they can be pre-approved with Green Star processes. All that kind of stuff. So I think the more we're able to get built into our system, more sustainable designs, the easier it will be and the better living, I guess, the better designs we'll be outputting for people to take on.

Kylie Davis: (25:40)Awesome. What's the pricing ... how do you charge Anycie? How does that work generally?

Anycie Barakat: (25:45)Yep. So currently we're at 295 a month, upwards. So a minimum 295, and it all depends on what data sets, design generators, and analytics that you want us to incorporate into your mapping system. So that's generally for month to month. If you sign up for 12 months subscription, we generally reduce it by 10 to 15%, which a lot of people do take on, which is good.

Kylie Davis: (26:09)Yeah. And are there any competitors in this space? Is there anyone else doing? Yeah?

Anycie Barakat: (26:15)There are. So generally they kind of tackle the architecture generators alone, but none of them actually link to planning regulations on a map. So we have people and companies like Spacemaker, TestFit, Matterlab, [inaudible 00:26:32]. They're kind of the big ones. And they're all awesome. They produce really cool stuff but, generally, they don't touch government regulations. So we have spent that time. We got whole database of planning rules and we generate directly off those. So.

Kylie Davis: (26:47)Yeah. Okay. Awesome. As a real estate agent, you know you need to be doing more content marketing, but creating posts for social media, creating videos and reports, is hard work. Lots of hard work and it takes time. So that's why you need HomePrezzo. If you're a typical agent posting one or two social media posts a week, HomePrezzo can save you between 75 to a hundred hours a year. How many more properties could you sell if you had that time back.

Kylie Davis: (27:17)HomePrezzo can help you create engaging, informative videos about how the property market in your local suburb is performing. Plus it makes creating suburb reports, rental videos for landlords and social media infographics an absolute piece of cake. If you can type in a suburb or type an address, you can create a Prezzo using HomePrezzo in just a few minutes.

Kylie Davis: (27:39)Listeners to the PropTech Podcast receive a 14 day free trial. Now that's twice as long as the normal free trial. So go to homeprezzo.com.au and click the signup button and use the code PropTech to get your extended free trial or click the link in our show notes.

Kylie Davis: (27:56)You guys recently got some funding coming through. What's your roadmap look like? What's your development road map look like and how big can this puppy go?

Anycie Barakat: (28:08)It's big. It's going to be huge-

Kylie Davis: (28:11)And when are you listing on the stock exchange so we can all invest?

Anycie Barakat: (28:15)It's exciting. And our roadmap. Like I said before, we're looking at editing designs. So the more you're able to edit and customise your designs the better, we feel. So currently, from now to the end of the year, we're looking really hard at having your own custom designs on our site, downloading it, changing it, re-putting it on there, or editing it within our own system in the first place. So, that's kind of like a big thing this year. We're going to be doing a little more integrations with grav plugins, like [inaudible 00:28:47] rabbit. Things like SketchUp, AutoCAD, whatever people are using, we'll be getting those into our system and being able to go back and forth.

Anycie Barakat: (28:56)And, in terms of where we're going with this, like I said before, we're really interested in kind of precast fabrication, building materials, robotics. So spitting out that design process. What's the best way to do this? How quick can we do it? And with that, we kind of become a one-stop shop for many housing designs. So building materials, costs and construction, time estimations, all that sort of thing, all kind of in-built in this one platform.

Anycie Barakat: (29:23)And in terms of the stock exchange, we still, like I said, we have so much to achieve. So right now we have a lot of investors lining up to fund this roadmap and our goal and vision is to how to take this, what we call human plus AI tech. Our goal is to take it globally. And right now we don't really need time to list at the moment, but I won't say never. So we never know. Yeah. We never know.

Kylie Davis: (29:47)Awesome. So over the next five years in this ... I mean you'll bring together the best in sort of AI and transparency and big data and all these things together, but what do you see are the trends that are going to drive your growth further?

Anycie Barakat: (30:06)Definitely fabrication. So precast, that sort of thing. I guess what we really like to see is getting a lot of that information at early stages of the design process. So the way that we operate is we're very geometric, like geometrically based. So when we generate designs, we know exactly how much of the facade is there, we know how many apartments are there, how much retail space you have. We can collect all that information and provide that to you on a silver platter. And I think what's so great about that is that, once you get to that point, and once you have that definitive data in your hands, you can kind of go anywhere with it.

Anycie Barakat: (30:49)So you can say, "Okay, well, I have a warehouse of this size. How much steel will I need to create the structure out of this?" Or, "I have a house. A two story house with a garage here. What's my construction cost? What's the estimate for that? How much building material will I need? What's the flooring space?" All that kind of stuff we can hand that to you straight away, which is really cool. So I think that is what we see will drive this next property industry. That kind of definitive data all about kind of numbers, I guess. Numbers and also the speed at which we can build faster, better, more sustainable designs.

Kylie Davis: (31:31)I'd be fascinated to see how much cost you're able to sort of cut out of the building process in the reduction in sort of that time to plan and conceive and assess sites. But then also just the cost that you'd be able to pull out of a building through lack of wastage, because you'd be able to estimate much more accurately.

Anycie Barakat: (31:54)Definitely. Yeah. So it's a big difference. A few pallets of tiles here, you know.

Kylie Davis: (31:59)It adds up pretty quick.

Anycie Barakat: (32:00)It's adds up really quick. So having those numbers ... and especially we have a whole section of our business called Archistar Homes. And that's really cool because it does exactly what I've said just then. So we have pre-built home designs from a lot of big home building companies like Rawson. Who else do we have? We have a whole bunch of people coming in. Frasers Property. A whole bunch of people that they say, "Okay, well, here's a pre-built design. What can fit on your site?" And they have these designs already. They have all their construction cost, estimation cost already in the bag for those sorts of things.

Anycie Barakat: (32:37)So for us, we can of fit whatever you're doing on a site, check if it's in a planning envelope and then, I guess, you can almost add to cart in terms of those things. So you can shop around. We can give you a whole bunch of different competitors. And what's the best pricing? What's, you know, this and that? So I think having that is ... it's going to be really interesting for the future of these sort of spaces.

Kylie Davis: (33:01)So it's even going to change the knockdown, rebuild or domestic, individual resident market.

Anycie Barakat: (33:08)Yep. Definitely. Definitely.

Kylie Davis: (33:10)Awesome. Look, Anycie, it has been absolutely wonderful to talk to you. Thank you so very much for your time. And it's been great to hear about Archistar. I'm so excited about it.

Anycie Barakat: (33:21)Thank you so much. Thanks for having me Kylie.

Kylie Davis: (33:24)So that was Anycie Barakat from Archistar. It's one of the most exciting proptech businesses in the country. Ever since I saw a demo of Archistar about a year ago, when it was only about a quarter as powerful as it is right now, I've been really excited about this business. Archistar really is the perfect storm of big data that is being intelligently analysed and visualised and its power to radically change our built environment. And even in that description, I don't feel like I'm doing it proper justice. So I'm going to include in the show notes a link to the Archistar website. Do check out the videos on what it can do.

Kylie Davis: (34:00)In being able to assess sites quickly, iterate design ideas and demonstrate compliance, Archistar is freeing up an extraordinary amount of time. It's removing risks and saving a huge amount of costs around development and, as real estate agents, it's allowing us to demonstrate extraordinary value. Now, what I love about Archistar is that, in its ability to quickly show us what's possible, using current rules, it encourages us to be curious about what else or what could come next, and what kind of world do we want to build. Archistar's offering the best of AI and human creativity to help us realise those dreams.

Kylie Davis: (34:37)So, now, if you have enjoyed this episode of the PropTech Podcast, I'd love you to tell your friends or drop me a line either via email kylie@realcontent.guru, LinkedIn or on our Facebook page. You can follow this podcast on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Anchor and Apple iTunes. I'd like to thank my audio support, Charlie Hollands and the fabulous Jill Escudero. And our sponsors Smidge Wines, official wines of the PropTech community because everyone deserves a Smidge. And HomePrezzo, now part of ActivePipe, making email marketing amazing. And, of course, Direct Connect, making moving easy. Thank you everyone. Until next week, stay safe and keep on PropTeching.