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We took a somewhat unusual path to reach this point. Originally, Stig and I partnered to acquire a house plan company, the sale of which was offered through a broker. Unfortunately, the owner wanted too much and most of it at closing, so we were not able to reach an agreement on the price. However, we learned a lot through the experience and sent out about 40 (paper) letters to various house plan companies to reach potential off-market sellers. We had serious conversations with seven of them and made offers to three. Those did not work out, so we are pursuing others.
The industry plays on a basic understanding: building your home is the American Dream and a sign of finally making it. It ties strongly into status and basic human needs. The home industry is cyclical, but the desire for your own home is evergreen. The products (architectural house plans) are digital: designed once and sold multiple times. No inventory, huge market, and competitors come from an architecture background, not technology.
Over time, we gained insights into how people think about buying house plans. We found that of all people who decide to build a custom house, there is a bell curve of customization desire. A few people (<5%) are perfectly happy with the plan they purchase, exactly as it is. On the other extreme, a few people (<5%) don’t even want to think about having a “stock” house plan–they want it completely customized (and usually hire an architect to design it for them). The rest (>90%), however, want either a little bit of customization (e.g. make their bedroom two feet wider), add a room or two (e.g. a three-car garage instead of a two-car garage), or combine aspects/features of multiple houses.
We came up with a slew of ideas around AI-assisted house plan creation to help people design their dream home, starting with
- one house plan they select to modify,
- two or more house plans whose features they want to merge, or
if the customer is one of the <5% who does want to start with a blank slate, the AI assistant would look like the customer inputting a text description of their dream house to be generated from scratch (further down the line).
We are also considering automating the process from plan to permit - banking requirements, auto-filling applications, and AI-assisted replying.
To put them into practice, we decided to first open our own online store and get it to current best practices.
We would love your feedback on:
- (Ethical!) best practices to raise our rank in the search results.
- Feedback on the structure of add-ons and customization services offered (currently spelled out in the FAQ: https://finehomeplans.com/pages/faqs).
- Any experience you have had with designing your own home plan or buying a pre-made plan online.
- Any other advice you may have for us!
With gratitude, Andrew and Stig
