Santa Monica-based start-up company offers home plans for sale

Recently, a guy named Ramtin Ghaneeian reached out to me to tell me about a company he and his brother launched last November called LotPlans.  Based in Santa Monica -- the base of today's burgeoning "Silicon Coast" -- the Ghaneeian brothers launched their Web-based e-commerce service out of frustration when doing their own real estate deals and looking for custom home plans that were affordable and practical.

Although there are certainly other Web sites out there which offer ready-to-go plans for custom homes, LotPlans hopes to carve their own niche through a more detailed vetting process for submitted plans as well as the ability to customize and work with a network of experts they've assembled.  I asked Ramtin to tell me what makes his company different, and here's what he had to say:

"At LotPlans, we understand that there are other companies selling house plans. However, we are a boutique shop with a huge online presence. What that means is, at LotPlans, we cater to quality versus quantity. Because we can modify any plan that we have on our site, our vision is 'If you want to build it, we have it - or we can design it!'

That being said, we don't want to feature everyone's plans on our site. In fact, we've turned away some designers and architects that we thought weren't on par with our company.

My brother and I come from a development background. And, as we were very fresh in the business, we felt there was a need for a company like LotPlans that's more personable and caters to both architects and potential home-builders. In speaking with a lot of architects, they didn't necessarily have the best relationship with their plan publishers.

At LotPlans, we develop strong relationships with our partners because we we feel like we will showcase plans on our Web site that you won't find anywhere else, along with a heightened customer experience for our clients. After my brother and I paid the high cost in fess (and time) for house plans designed for development, we thought we would launch a more user-friendly, cost-effective, and efficient company to help developers, home builders, and home designers alike.

We are a newer company, and we have grown organically. We began by pounding the pavement, begging architects and designers to trust our vision (even though we didn't even have a functioning Web site at that time) to now, where we have designers coming to us to publish their plans.

We have strict quality control, meaning we don't just publish everything on our site. That's why I like to refer to us as the low-cost, high-end boutique of online plans - and a Web site that comes with great customer service. This has grown into our passion and our customers definitely feel that when they use our service."

So if you're looking to build your dream home, add a guest house to an existing property or even build your own homes for sale as a builder, LotPlans may have what you need.  I wish these guys the best of luck just as the housing rebound turns to the next phase in which more retail buyers (versus investors) come into the marketplace.