Honest Buildings Secures Financing to Strengthen its Service Offerings

Honest Buildings, an online marketplace and discovery engine for building professionals that seeks to improve the built environment by streamlining the process for building upgrades, has secured $5.5 million in Series-A Financing from investors Westly Group and RockPort Capital. The financing will enable the company to continue to strengthen its service offerings, including HB Match, an online platform that pairs building owners with qualified building solution providers.

By providing a simple tool for building solution providers to create free, online portfolios of their work, Honest Buildings is able to produce detailed evaluations of these companies based on the unique project criteria of real-estate decision-makers in search of experienced specialists. The result is a process that quickly and thoroughly compares, vets and selects the best solution provider for the specific requirements of the project, saving valuable time and resources.

During the past five months, approximately $25 million in contracts were originated through the Honest Buildings platform, which hosts the portfolios of thousands of building solution providers and features nearly 1 million researched building profiles.

“The world is in the midst of a fast-moving, dramatic global shift towards urbanization, creating a growing need for smarter, more flexible and advanced building solutions,” says Riggs Kubiak, co-founder and CEO of Honest Buildings. “The professionals responsible for creating this new urban landscape can be found on the Honest Buildings Network. By utilizing our HB Match solution, real estate decision-makers can connect with the right service providers through an efficient, in-depth and customized process, maximizing value for both the building and project stakeholders.”

Honest Buildings’ platform has served the real-estate project needs of a number of the industry’s most prominent firms, including Cushman & Wakefield. Sitt Asset Management, a New York-based real-estate investment firm, recently used Honest Buildings’ HB Match solution to compare qualified service providers for multiple capital improvements at 450 Broadway, a turn-of-the-century commercial building in Manhattan for which Sitt is currently executing a complete façade restoration and modernization program in preparation for first-class retail tenancy.

The Series-A Financing follows the New York-based company’s launching of a London office to expand HB Match’s reach to the United Kingdom. Additionally, Honest Buildings has announced that Norbert Young, former president of McGraw Hill Construction and a 40-year veteran of the design, building and construction industries, has joined the company as an active advisor.

“As design and construction processes evolve, so too, must the way we do business within the industry in order to meet the increasing demand for high-performance buildings,” Young notes. “Honest Buildings is uniquely positioned to truly make a difference in the way the real estate industry partners to produce enhanced built environments.”

In addition to its HB Match solution, Honest Buildings’ scalable technology is addressing the broader need for more efficient and adaptable cities by providing municipalities and utilities with the power to foster the development of next-generation buildings and communities.