About
Twenty years of building housing, and building the tools to build it.
The record behind the idea
Housing Automation Ai was created by Jason Van Sickle, a real estate analyst turned developer turned Ai company founder. The story runs in two parts: decades of developing apartments and building tools around a prototype design to save costs, then Ai, which turned the savings of prototypes into the far larger time and cost savings of automation.
- 2005
Hired by Jack DeBoer, founder of Residence Inn, Candlewood Suites, and WoodSpring Suites, to build the Research and Project Planning Department at WoodSpring Suites.
- 2008
Became Wichita State University's first full-time real estate analyst, at its Center for Real Estate.
- 2009
First apartment project: converting a former high school into apartments.
- 2011
Built a 216-unit apartment complex using an automated project planning methodology he developed himself, in Excel. The method was the beginning of Housing Automation Ai.
- 2012
Began work on a prototype approach to apartment development: a standardized, amenity-rich live/stay/work community priced for the average renter.
- 2013
Started turning the planning methodology into software, beginning with HousingData.com and HousingModel.com.
- 2015
Launched a property management company and expanded into design-build, operating the buildings he had developed.
- 2019
Sold the real estate ventures, then spent a year traveling the country to study homelessness and housing development efforts, followed by a year in Silicon Valley studying advanced programming and Ai to build better tools for housing.
- 2021
Founded Insource Ai, an applied Ai company that builds Ai-native platforms to automate complex professional work.
- Now
Housing Automation Ai: the prototype design, built through Ai-native platforms that do much of the design and engineering work under licensed professionals, with a construction management platform in development.
From prototypes to Ai
The prototype came first. Designing one proven building and repeating it took real cost out of every project, and the planning tools built around it took out more. But a prototype only saves what repetition can save. The design, engineering, and construction management work still had to be done by hand, project after project.
Ai changed the size of the opportunity. Insource Ai builds Ai-native platforms that work like a junior assistant to architects and engineers: given instructions, they do much of the design work, and they learn from every project how that professional works. A companion platform for construction management is in development. The time and cost savings are far larger than prototypes alone could deliver, and that is what Housing Automation Ai is built on.
Insource Ai
Insource Ai is based in Wichita, Kansas. Its housing platforms, including HousingData.com and HousingModel.com, are the foundation of Housing Automation Ai, and the same approach is applied in other industries where the work is complex, regulated, and expensive.
Work with us
Housing Automation Ai is a development process, not a software product for sale. These are the people it is built for.
Architects and engineers
Licensed professionals who want a tireless junior assistant rather than a competitor. You give the instructions and stay in responsible charge; the platform does the work and learns how you work.
Cities, housing authorities, and landowners
Bring a site. We will show what the model produces for it: unit mix, massing, pro forma, and a schedule, before anyone commits to anything.
Builders and trades
Contractors who want projects that arrive with complete, coordinated documents and a schedule that was built from real data.