One Way to Live Near Friends
I was gonna say HACK but I pulled back
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Maybe you’re like me and say I’LL DO IT NEXT TIME, I CAN’T REMEMBER MY CREDIT CARD SPECIAL CODE, MY WALLET IS ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE ROOM. That’s deeply, hilariously relatable. Maybe this time you’ll go get it. I appreciate you and your huffy little “fine I’ll do it” walk because I, too, have done it so many times for the stuff I value and love.
When Phil Levin and I agreed it was finally time to do a Culture Study Q&A about his app/website, Live Near Friends, I told him plainly: we’ve got to make sure not to make this conversation sound like THIS ONE APP WILL SOLVE ALL YOUR COMMUNITY PROBLEMS. I am deeply wary (as I know so many of you are!) of anyone promising friendship “hacks”: there’s simply no shortcut to forging the sort of strong and loose ties that make us feel cared for.
But I also know that Phil has been doing the live-near-friends work for years. Years before he started working on this project, he and his wife and a bunch of friends figured out how to build the communal space they’d been dreaming of, which now includes five living spaces, a communal meeting space (“The Blueberry”), a fire pit/hot tub/sauna, a garden, and a sick guest RV. Altogether, their Oakland space is home to 20 adults and eight kids (with ten separate “homes” across six buildings).
Stuff like this is often so aspirational that it pisses you off that other people have it. MUST BE NICE, etc. etc. But the costs of creating these sorts of spaces are often far, far less than what it costs to live on one’s own with the same amount of space. And yet: they can feel utterly unimaginable. That’s where Live Near Friends comes in. It’s not a hack. It’s a real estate tool that makes living closer to your friends — and the sort of easy intimacy so many of us dream of — feel much more within reach.
So take a look at what this tool can do — and acknowledge what it’s can’t. It can’t change the real estate market. It can’t make all your friends’ jobs be in the same place as yours. But if you’re one of those people who’s wanted to take these sorts of conversations from theoretical to actionable — I’d take all the help I could get.
You and I have been emailing back and forth for several years now, back when Live Near Friends was just an idea, gleaned from your own experience trying to figure out how to live very near to your own friends, that you wanted to make a reality.
So for those reading who haven’t been emailing with you (and reading your newsletter Supernuclear) for years, give us your backstory: how did you get interested in coliving, and what did you want to create to facilitate the process for others?
This wasn’t supposed to be my career. I was working on something completely different. But then I met my (now) wife, Kristen, a professional behavioral scientist. Kristen deeply believed in one idea that has since shaped our life together: Your immediate environment is one of the biggest drivers of your behavior.
People tend to believe they can “will” themselves into changing their behavior, e.g. making a resolution to work out more. But the easiest way to get in shape isn’t to suddenly become a more disciplined person. It’s to move next to a gym: lower the barriers to the thing you want more of.
And yet, there’s one critical part of our environment that people completely overlook: the people who live nearby. Why surround yourself with strangers you never talk to when you could be near the people who make you a better, happier version of yourself? Home is not just your four walls, it’s the people in close proximity.
Kristen and I sometimes call this the “obvious truth” because it feels like a “well, duh, Socrates” kind of insight. But what I love about Kristen is that she’s willing to make big changes in her life to put that truth into practice.
So when we moved in together for the first time, she was very clear: we weren’t just going to rent a one-bedroom apartment — that would completely violate the obvious truth! Instead, we got a big house in San Francisco and moved in with nine other people we loved, admired, or were simply intrigued by. The people that made us feel most alive.
As our life stage changed — marriage, kids, no longer tolerating shared bathrooms — we built new living arrangements. Our current home is Radish in Oakland, a cluster of 10 homes, 20 adults, and eight kids under the age of four. We share meals, childcare, and a big yard, while still having our own private homes.
Word about Radish started to spread. At first, a few people reached out asking how they could create something similar. Then it was dozens. Then hundreds. That’s when I realized that people deeply want this, but there’s no company out there helping people do it.
And that’s also why I started Live Near Friends — to help people build their own Radish-like communities, but on easy mode.
We love projects like Radish, but communities on this scale are hard to pull off. It’s like taking on a full-time job. The insight behind Live Near Friends is that people don’t necessarily want to become real estate finance experts; they just want the core thing that Radish provides. They want to live next door to a friend or family member. They want social support. They want someone who can keep an eye on their baby monitor. They want a neighbor they feel comfortable borrowing a dress for a wedding.
So instead of building some big complicated project, we wanted to help people create smaller, simpler versions of Radish — a shared duplex, a backyard ADU for a friend, or even just buying or renting neighboring townhomes. How can you share a life with one or two other people with each having their own private space? There’s no search field for that on Zillow.
Right now, our service is available in the Bay Area, and we just launched in Seattle. We’re aiming for Los Angeles and Austin next.
We help people find the right real estate, figure out how to buy it (financing, legal structuring), and offer encouragement along the way — especially when it comes to having those vulnerable “Hey, do you want to live next to us?” conversations with friends.
There’s a world in which I could have worded that question pretty differently: you “saw a gap in the market” or “wanted to disrupt the coliving space” or something very tech-ish that might speak to a certain type of audience but definitely repels most of this one.
How do you make an app that isn’t engaging the most onerous parts of tech discourse, optimization, life hacking, etc. etc.? What was hard to avoid, where did you miss the mark, what feels like it’s working?
I think you’re absolutely right to be skeptical of tech-speak here. Home is deeply personal, effortful, and often irrational. Tech is minimalist, efficient, and robotically rational — the opposite of what makes a house feel like home. Home is a form of self-expression. And self-expression should go beyond just picking bathroom tile. It should reflect the texture of our social relationships.
That’s why we avoid the tech jargon and talk of changing the world. We called the company Live Near Friends — not FriendNestr.ai. We’re not inventing some bold new future. We’re just helping people make real the thing they’ve probably already talked about in their group chats.
We simply are not going to solve a real-world crisis like the loneliness epidemic with more screens. It’s going to have to be done in the physical world, and at the pace of human connection. So we’ve tried to make our job both difficult and simple: how do we make that happen?
If you optimize your living situation too hard on day-to-day convenience you strip the texture and richness out of your life. You end up being the human equivalent of Scandinavian furniture. We see a possibility for a different world, where the fabric of cities is woven by the tangled mesh of human relationships.
Okay let’s go back to the app: you fill out a short questionnaire with what you’re looking for, and then it presents you with a bunch of potential properties. I put in that I was looking for cohousing in “the center of things” in Seattle, that I personally didn’t have a family, and one of the properties it found was a building with 8 bed/8 bath main unit plus a 2 bedroom/1 bath basement ADU in Capitol Hill for $1,950,000. (Honestly, that price is not bad?) Also, it’s currently softly Game of Thrones themed?
For every listing, Live Near Friends writes a sort of mini editorial that posits what you could do with the space/who it’d work for: in this case, a reminder that it’s very easy to take down some Game of Thrones banners, but also: “A group of friends seeking an elevated house share in a coveted location could keep the existing configuration. (And get WAY more bathrooms and privacy than a share in a typical single-family home.)”
Or, on another listing: “Great for multigenerational families or a family buying with a friend/couple. An ADU of that size could even suit a small family with a young kid.”
One of the things I talk about a lot here in the newsletter (and in the book that I’m so close to finishing) is that sometimes we just need help making these scenarios *imaginable* — and the descriptions here do some of that work. How else does Live Near Friends make co-living imaginable, particularly when it comes to the financial component of living with/near friends, which is often the stickiest component?
I completely agree—we need to make new ways of living not just imaginable, but aspirational. That’s why both Live Near Friends and Supernuclear highlight real case studies of people who have made it happen. And it’s why I’m so excited for your book.
These stories put the idea on the menu. They give people something tangible to point to, something that makes the conversation with friends and family feel real. That’s the first step. But we also need to get specific about how to actually make it work in real-world conditions: for your specific friends, in your specific city, with your specific constraints.
A listing on Live Near Friend is a recipe for how you might actually live in it. We help people see exactly how a property can be split or developed. “How feasible is it to knock down that fence and create a garden?” or “What would it take for my sister to build her home in this yard?”
This is something traditional housing sites don’t offer because they’re only focused on the property, not the people who might live in it. We’re 100% focused on helping people live next door to each other. If that’s your top priority, we’ve already done the hard work of narrowing down the entire housing market — both on-market and off-market — to the properties where this is actually possible.
Another way to make this feel real is simple: go tour homes. Bring a friend and play the “Could we actually see ourselves living here?” game. This is when people’s true preferences and constraints start to reveal themselves.
We also want to tell more stories about people doing this successfully. Historically we’ve done a lot of case studies on Supernuclear of ambitious / zany projects. I actually want to tell more stories about people’s more modest yet very fulfilling experiences of community living. Did you move next to a friend? Did you go in on a property together? Drop us a line (hello@livenearfriends.com) and we can share your story to inspire others.
As a follow-up question: a common objection I see to scenarios like these is ‘well obviously I would like to live with my friends, but buying a $2 million house is off the table.’ But 20% down payment for that Game of Thrones house is $400,000 — divide it by nine, and you’ve got $44,000 a piece….much more reasonable starting point for most people. The mortgage payment would be around $10,000 a month with today’s interest rates, which would mean around $1110.00 a person in rent, plus everyone would be gaining equity. Obviously this isn’t accessible to everyone, but it’s a way more accessible entry point into the Seattle housing market.
You have these conversations all the time — what are the sticking points when it comes to money and accessibility? And how have you personally changed the way you talk/think about them?
Not everyone can afford to buy a home in this market, even when splitting with friends. And there’s no magical pixie dust we can sprinkle on things to change that. What we can do is try to surface opportunities to own more cheaply than you might otherwise.
Duplexes sell for about 30% less than the equivalent single-family home. And you get the benefit of a friend next door. People are spending upwards of half their income on housing in expensive metros. Getting 30% of that cost back is the equivalent of a 15% pay raise. That’s really meaningful.
An intentional decision we made is featuring properties on both the higher and lower ends of the market. And that’s because our focus is reaching people who want to live more communally. And that desire is equally valid (and feasible) in a fancy new townhome as it is a fixer upper.
You see people as rich as the Kardashians do this. They all live near each other in Calabasas. But you see working class immigrant families do the same. We think it’s just a better way to live.
The other thing worth mentioning here is what to do if you and your friend (or family) have different levels of income. A common scenario we see is the one friend with the tech job with a higher salary and the other friend with the non-profit job with a lower salary. A solution we’ve seen is for the friend with the higher salary to buy a place with two homes and rent to the friend with the lower salary. There’s no rule that says everything needs to always be 50/50 and it’s rarely the case that it actually happens that way. Instead one person who has more financial resources can make it possible for the person they want in their life. (AHP note: Yes this is complicated and requires a lot of conversations but that doesn’t make it impossible!)
I feel like this is also a good set-up for you to talk about the “Bestest Best Friend” Myth.
YES. Whew. Your friend next door does not have to be your BESTIE.
After living with hundreds of people across different communities, we’ve learned something surprising: The closest friends don’t always make the best neighbors. Some of our favorite housemates and neighbors weren’t lifelong friends — they are simply people who are most committed to living in community. Keep an eye out for the sort of people who voluntarily do the dishes at a dinner party without being asked. They tend to make great neighbors.
One mistake we see over and over is people waiting for their best friend to take the plunge with them. But that means leaving everything up to serendipity — your leases have to line up, you need jobs in the same city, and you need to find a property that magically works for both of you. That’s a lot to coordinate. And before long everyone’s bought houses on the other side of the city and the dream is dead.
If you can make it work with your bestie, amazing. But if not, expand your set of “who would be great to have next door.” Some of our best community members have been weak ties or friends-of-friends. When you put an intention out into the world, people will come and answer the call. And there are a lot of folks who want this.
We call our neighbor relationships “Other Significant Others” (it’s also the name of our group chat). It’s something different than pure friendship. It’s the people who’ve mutually agreed to take care of each other.
When I talk to people about their dreams of living with friends, I can’t tell you how many times the words “compound” come up: they envision a beautiful spread of houses on a plot of land (in the woods, on a farm, almost always somewhere rural). But the vast majority of coliving is so wonderfully un-spectacular.
This is a bit of a follow-up on the question about making things imaginable, but how do you / the app / Supernuclear try to emphasize how unspectacular your set-up can be?
I think the “tiny homes on a plot of land” vision is doing a big disservice to people. It’s a fun fantasy, but it rarely happens. Partly for zoning reasons. But mostly because it's hard to get a group of people to move out into the woods and live in tiny homes! There’s an escapist appeal to it but it doesn’t always reflect reality.
We try to nudge people toward the “un-spectacular.” At the end of the day, most people will end up living in a city or a suburb. The housing options there don’t have the Dwell Magazine sex appeal of the ecovillage, but they are probably where you and your crew are going to end up for professional, social, or logistical reasons.
If someone wants this sort of life within six months, there are some more straightforward ways of doing it:
Buy a home and build an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) in the backyard for a friend
Buy or rent townhomes next to each other and negotiate a bulk discount with the seller.
Buy or rent a place within a five-minute walk of a friend
Now, if you do have a BIG vision of building homes on a piece of land, I think that’s awesome too. Just know you are signing up for years of work and a lot of risk. But the world is changing to make this easier. Exclusionary zoning has historically made it hard to build multiple homes on a single property. States are now passing new laws that make it possible to build friend compounds for the first time. My wife and I are using a new law in California to build our next family-oriented community. For folks in Washington state, HB1110 promises to do the same.
Something I do want to see more of, and we want to encourage, is people having a hand in shaping their built environment.There seems to be a growing frustration that our built environment is being McMansioned and Fast-Casual Architected by developers who probably don’t even live in your city (Coby Lefkowitz has a nice new book on this). And I share this feeling.
One of the great joys of Radish is that we were able to leave our mark on some corner of the city and create something from our imagination that will be there for decades. I want to see a world where more enthusiastic amateurs get to imprint their built environment (rather than leaving that up to external real estate developers). So go shape your city in some small way. All of us should feel empowered to be microbuilders. And unlike a faceless developer from New York, you can actually incorporate the social web of your community into how you build. ●
You can find the Live Near Friends here — and subscribe to the Supernuclear newsletter below:
I also told Phil when I agreed to do this interview that he’d need to be ready for a lot of questions, including potential pushback — and he’s very game for all of it. And, to reiterate: no one — including Phil, including me — is saying that everyone must move close to friends to find happiness. It’s more like: if that’s something that feels like it’ll make your life better, but you’re stuck in the theoretical mode, how do we actually make it happen?
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