I have ideas all of the time and most of them are not worth the pennies of electricity my brain consumed making them. Lucky for me, Lindsey never holds back and helps sort the good from the not so much. When we started talking about the Del Boca Vista project, it was lightning.
We floated Del Boca Vista in conversations with friends and they seemed to like the idea too. Who wouldn't be interested in spending some of the post empty nest years living with friends in a fun place?
Then, I got involved with ANEW Apartments in Seattle, building micro apartments on Capitol Hill. When we toured the 49 finished luxury micro units at 1722 Summit we looked at each other and said - this is what we were imagined Del Boca Vista would be like -- just filled with all of our friends.
Getting from our idea to a real place to live is no small project. It might not be Everest, but it is at least Rainier. A large sequence of events that all have to go just right in order to get to the top. To get to the top of our project we have to assemble our group of friends, find the right site, design the improvements, arrange funding and financing, get permits and approvals, and build it. Chances of success seem minimal! Someone once said, doing a start-up is easy: it's like jumping out of a plane with the makings of a parachute -- all you have to do is sew them together before you hit the ground!
While we were joking around about Del Boca Vista, I was doing an analysis of the condo market in Seattle and trying to build a model based on the hypothesis that condo prices are more volatile than home or apartment prices, and therefore may be an early indicator of a change in the economy. And then the two ideas met and it was love immediately. Assemble Del Boca Vista one condo purchase at a time!
Our friends might be similar in age, but everyone is on a different timeline and nobody is ready to pull the trigger on retirement living just yet. So each of us buying a condo in the same building as they become available and their personal timing is right -- reduces the complexity of the project. Now we are climbing Mt. Si, no training required -- just pack a lunch!