Announcing LiveNearFriends
Early access for Supernuclear readers: Try it now - Livenearfriends.com
Celebrities.
They are rich. They are attractive.
But did you know they also live near each other?
Jennifer Lawrence is neighbors with her buds Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher.
Conan lives next to Adam Sandler.
And of course Ben Affleck is a few doors down from his boy Matt Damon.
We can’t all be rich and attractive. But living near friends … that’s something we can all do.
LiveNearFriends: Make your friends your neighbors
I am excited to share LiveNearFriends (livenearfriends.com).
LiveNearFriends has one simple goal: Help you live within a 5-minute walk of a close friend or family member.
Typical real estate sites focus on amenities like square footage and kitchen tile. The amenity we focus on is proximity to the people who bring you joy.
Why? Because living near friends is that one weird trick that will simply make you happier. And the research backs that up: 50% happier, according to this Harvard study.
Maybe you’ve talked about making it happen. If you actually want to make it happen, this is the tool to use.
LiveNearFriends helps in two ways:
We make sure you are the first to know when new homes for rent or sale come available within a 5-minute walk. You (and your friend) get an email alert so you can pounce on that underpriced 1br apartment two doors down. You can customize these alerts to your preferences. No spammy irrelevant weekly digests. Just highly relevant homes a short walk from friends and family.
We help grease the conversational wheels. Coordination between friends can be tricky. It can feel weird to say “I want to live near you.” We give you a fun, low-pressure way of expressing the desire to live near certain people. And keep the flame burning as you search with each other.
This is not a new idea
The idea of living near friends is not a new idea. It gets written about a lot.
You’ve probably thought about it. Your friends have probably thought about it. But not that many people actually do it… we want to change that.
Two ways to use LiveNearFriends
Scenario #1 - You want friends and family to move NEAR YOU
You’ve set up shop somewhere you love and want to get more people to join.
It’s time to create a “LiveNearMe Link.”
A LiveNearMe Link is a personal invitation for your friends to move near you. All we need is your address.
With the link, they can subscribe to get customized listings within a 5-minute walk of your house. They will also get alerts when new homes (rental or sale) come available. And they can control exactly what types of homes they see: One friend might be looking to buy a 3br house, another might be renting a studio. Each can subscribe to what kind of home is most relevant, all a short walk from you.
Pass around the LiveNearMe link to anyone you’d want to have in your life in a more sustained way. Soon enough, you might have a cluster of your favorite people.
Scenario 2 - You are moving, and want to choose a place near friends
You are considering a move. You can live anywhere in a city. Why not near friends or family? You type in addresses of your friends and get customized listings clustered within a 5-minute walk of them.
You will get a consolidated email with new homes as they become available within a 5-minute walking radius of your friends. It makes a housing search across multiple locations as easy as possible,.
Why do we care about this 5-minute walk thing?
5-minutes is the magic low-friction distance that makes social relationships easy.
You can pop over in your crocs. Or pajamas. Or carrying a baby without worrying about that pesky car seat. You can stop in just to see if someone’s around without thinking twice.
Research shows: The benefits of living near friends starts to drop off after 1/2 a mile. And we truly want you to be happy. So we focus on 5-minutes.
Note: The radius will be automatically extended up to 10 minutes for less dense areas.
My story: Life surrounded by close friends
Over the past 4 years, I’ve had over a dozen friends move near me in the Bay Area. I did it by proactively sending them nearby listings. Did they say “Phil, please stop?” Yeah … sometimes. But a surprising number of them actually did move. And now we have a wonderful life a short walk away from each other.
We watch each other’s kids, we do impromptu drinks at sunset, we see each other randomly walking to the coffee shop, we play a whole lot of ping pong.
It’s been amazing for my life, and my goal in making this is to have you experience the same.
It’s your life, it’s your happiness
Believe it or not
You have a choice in the matter
Live near strangers or live near friends
All that lies in the balance is your happiness
What do you choose?
Feedback please!
This is an early beta for our dear Supernuclear readers (you can definitely share with your friends too…).
Please email me at phil@livenearfriends.com with any feedback on the site.