The Power and Beauty of Incrementalism

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I’ve seen a lot of our readers get blocked in their live-near-friends dreams by the size of their visions.

They want a “bestie row” - a single block filled with 10 their friends. Or they want a rural compound on a hill with 10 houses.

Getting from dream to reality can feel like a chasm too wide to cross.

• You have to find a large number of people ready to jump on the vision all at once

• You have to find a rare property or properties that fit the bill

• You have to raise a lot of money all at once

• … and once you’ve done that, you have to get everyone to agree

If your idea of how this might work is to assemble 10 people, get them to hold hands, come to consensus, and simultaneously empty their bank accounts, I’m sorry but you have the wrong idea!

If you want to do an ambitious project, you need to think about it in incremental steps. How do you start small and expand?

The good news is that once you’ve planted the flag and have a small core, gravity is in your favor. Two people living near each other will soon become three. Three will become four. The gravity will be too strong.

Radish was built incrementally

I’ll use my home at Radish as an example. Six years into the journey, we have our bestie row – there are 20 adults living in 10 neighboring homes and a dozen or so more people living within a short walk in their own homes they’ve purchased.

… but, it certainly didn’t start that way. We were able to do this incrementally. Here’s how things played out for us.

We were able to grow through three methods:

• Constructing new buildings - we built 2x 1000 sq ft ADUs in 2020 and 2022

• Acquiring neighboring properties as they organically became available - we nabbed two neighboring buildings as they came on the market. This was lucky … but if you plan to be somewhere for a while, homes do become available.

• Subdividing existing space to accommodate more people - we turned a living room into a bedroom suite and a multi-story home into a “duplex”

4 tools to be incremental

Want to have a setup with 10 of your friends? Instead of asking “how can I coordinate and find a compound for 10 people all at once” ask this:

“How can I get 1-2 more friends in 1-2 more homes nearby every 1-2 years”

Then one day, not too far in the future, you'll look up and have your bestie row.

So how do you land and expand? There are four powerful tools in your toolkit.

1. Use “Live Near”

The first is “live near.” For every one home next door there are X homes within a 5 minute walk, and Y homes within a 15 minute walk. Pulling off “live near” is significantly easier than pulling off a big friend compound. You have more options and more flexibility to adhere to people’s natural timing and preferences. You might not be able to find your friend a 2br house within their budget right next door (or on the same property) but you have a much greater chance of finding it close by. And close by gets you a lot of the benefit with more ease.

In our neighborhood in Oakland, ~1 home goes for sale each month within a 5-minute walk and ~5 homes within a 15 minute walk. Along with the 20 people who live at Radish proper, we have another dozen or so who have rented or purchased within walking distance.

1. Rent to strangers before renting/selling to friends

It can be hard to get the timing exactly right. You might have the perfect duplex, triplex etc before you have the people lined up. In this case, you don’t need to let it go. Just buy it and rent it out to someone else for some period of time until you’ve found the right friends in the right moment.

Example: Xander and Colby bought a duplex and plan to rent to strangers until their friends are ready.

1. Leave room to build

Big lots allow you to expand incrementally by doing an addition, an ADU, or a subdivision. Properties with room for expansion are great for friends. Because at a later date you can (optionally) add more space later. If you want to plan for incrementalism, have some room to build up or out.

1. Be flexible on your ‘requirements’

Over and over we hear people say they can’t compromise on square footage, a kitchen with perfect lighting, etc etc. It turns out that people will compromise on their ideal space to be part of a special community. We have friends who inititally declined for space/location reasons who ended up joining to live in a less-than-ideal home when the gravity become too strong.

In our recently published Case Study on the Chalet and the Cottage, Kat describes how she and her co-buyers changed their ‘requirements’ in the face of what was available, and the benefits they found.

So … make it easier on yourself. Take the first step. Get one person to move near you. And then the next year, get one more. And then one more. And then …. you’ll look up and 5 years later, you’ll have your bestie row.

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