TestFit Celebrates 10 Years and Launches Free Platform Access for Cities Ready to Build More Housing
Dallas, TX — April 9, 2026 — TestFit, the real estate development decisioning platform used to evaluate more than 3,200 deals per week, today marks its 10th anniversary with an offer of free one-year platform access for cities working to address housing supply through smarter zoning. For a limited time, qualifying cities can apply at no cost.
Built Different From Day One
TestFit was founded in 2016 by Clifton Harness, who trained as an architect and worked for a developer before building the technology to solve the problem he lived firsthand: feasibility was slow, disconnected from financial reality, and almost entirely manual.
The platform he and co-founder Ryan Griege built runs on a single principle — Generate → Edit → Decide. Where earlier generative design tools required specialists to script custom workflows in programs like Dynamo or Grasshopper, TestFit delivers a zoning-compliant, financially grounded site layout in seconds. Every output is the result of a purpose-built solver working through real constraints — actual zoning rules, real parking ratios, code-compliant circulation — not a pattern suggested by a model. The result is geometry that is auditable and defensible at the moment a capital decision has to be made.
Users then iterate in real time: adjust unit mix, move buildings, change parking assumptions, and watch the pro forma update alongside the geometry.
That loop runs 30x faster than prior automation approaches, not because of optimization, but because TestFit's building engine was designed from the ground up for real-time feasibility, not adapted from a CAD or BIM foundation built for later-stage design.
"We wanted to give teams a credible starting plan before they've even opened the zoning ordinance, then stay out of their way while they made it better," said Harness, CEO of TestFit.
Why that speed changes everything: when a tool takes long enough that teams have to context-switch, they run fewer tests, save "what if" questions for later, and stop experimenting. When the loop is fast, something flips. Feasibility becomes a live, creative, and decision-making surface — teams test ideas as they come up, compare tradeoffs while everyone is still aligned, and keep momentum through the messy middle of early planning. They don't just go faster. They go wider, exploring options they simply wouldn't have had time to consider before.
Over a decade, more than half of the top 10 U.S. multifamily developers have adopted the platform. Customers report saving more than $4,000 per feasibility study and redirecting an average of 17 hours per project to higher-value work.
Cities Are Already Using It
Forward-thinking planning offices discovered TestFit on their own. Jarrett Lash, the sole Township Planner for Upper Merion Township, Pennsylvania, uses it to test density scenarios, model stormwater impacts, and demonstrate zoning tradeoffs live in public meetings with elected officials.
"Policy should reflect the reality of getting things built," said Lash. "TestFit helps us meet in the middle between what we want for our communities and what pencils for developments."
Putting the Right Tool in the Hands of Planners
Upzoning, rezoning, and corridor planning decisions are too often made without a clear picture of what a policy change actually produces on the ground. TestFit lets planners visualize what zoning allows — not just on a single parcel, but across an entire corridor — modeling specific unit types, flexible parking ratios, and the financial relationship between the two. Adjust a parking minimum, see how the unit count responds. Shift density allowances, watch the pro forma follow. Planners can test dozens of configurations before a single text amendment is drafted, and arrive at the table with analysis that shows exactly what the proposed policy builds and whether it pencils.
"The housing conversation in most cities is stuck because nobody has a real answer to the simplest question: what can actually be built here, and will it work financially?" said Laura Paciano, Chief Growth Officer at TestFit. "Making TestFit free for cities means no planning office has to choose between getting the right answer and staying in budget."
Cities can apply at go.testfit.io/city
Dallas, TX — April 9, 2026 — TestFit, the real estate development decisioning platform used to evaluate more than 3,200 deals per week, today marks its 10th anniversary with an offer of free one-year platform access for cities working to address housing supply through smarter zoning. For a limited time, qualifying cities can apply at no cost.
Built Different From Day One
TestFit was founded in 2016 by Clifton Harness, who trained as an architect and worked for a developer before building the technology to solve the problem he lived firsthand: feasibility was slow, disconnected from financial reality, and almost entirely manual.
The platform he and co-founder Ryan Griege built runs on a single principle — Generate → Edit → Decide. Where earlier generative design tools required specialists to script custom workflows in programs like Dynamo or Grasshopper, TestFit delivers a zoning-compliant, financially grounded site layout in seconds. Every output is the result of a purpose-built solver working through real constraints — actual zoning rules, real parking ratios, code-compliant circulation — not a pattern suggested by a model. The result is geometry that is auditable and defensible at the moment a capital decision has to be made.
Users then iterate in real time: adjust unit mix, move buildings, change parking assumptions, and watch the pro forma update alongside the geometry.
That loop runs 30x faster than prior automation approaches, not because of optimization, but because TestFit's building engine was designed from the ground up for real-time feasibility, not adapted from a CAD or BIM foundation built for later-stage design.
"We wanted to give teams a credible starting plan before they've even opened the zoning ordinance, then stay out of their way while they made it better," said Harness, CEO of TestFit.
Why that speed changes everything: when a tool takes long enough that teams have to context-switch, they run fewer tests, save "what if" questions for later, and stop experimenting. When the loop is fast, something flips. Feasibility becomes a live, creative, and decision-making surface — teams test ideas as they come up, compare tradeoffs while everyone is still aligned, and keep momentum through the messy middle of early planning. They don't just go faster. They go wider, exploring options they simply wouldn't have had time to consider before.
Over a decade, more than half of the top 10 U.S. multifamily developers have adopted the platform. Customers report saving more than $4,000 per feasibility study and redirecting an average of 17 hours per project to higher-value work.
Cities Are Already Using It
Forward-thinking planning offices discovered TestFit on their own. Jarrett Lash, the sole Township Planner for Upper Merion Township, Pennsylvania, uses it to test density scenarios, model stormwater impacts, and demonstrate zoning tradeoffs live in public meetings with elected officials.
"Policy should reflect the reality of getting things built," said Lash. "TestFit helps us meet in the middle between what we want for our communities and what pencils for developments."
Putting the Right Tool in the Hands of Planners
Upzoning, rezoning, and corridor planning decisions are too often made without a clear picture of what a policy change actually produces on the ground. TestFit lets planners visualize what zoning allows — not just on a single parcel, but across an entire corridor — modeling specific unit types, flexible parking ratios, and the financial relationship between the two. Adjust a parking minimum, see how the unit count responds. Shift density allowances, watch the pro forma follow. Planners can test dozens of configurations before a single text amendment is drafted, and arrive at the table with analysis that shows exactly what the proposed policy builds and whether it pencils.
"The housing conversation in most cities is stuck because nobody has a real answer to the simplest question: what can actually be built here, and will it work financially?" said Laura Paciano, Chief Growth Officer at TestFit. "Making TestFit free for cities means no planning office has to choose between getting the right answer and staying in budget."
Cities can apply at go.testfit.io/city
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