I don’t normally talk about myself in these articles, because I want these solutions to be something that can work for you. But over the past couple years I’ve been working on something that I think you might find interesting – if not for the subject itself, then for how my solution to this issue can help you find your own solutions to whatever challenges or opportunities you’re facing right now.
I’ll set this up as briefly as possible. For a long time (like a lot of people) I’ve been interested in figuring out how to do something about the affordable housing shortage. And for a long time (like a lot of people) I wasn’t able to think of anything to do. Until one day, in what felt like a burst of inspiration but was really the culmination of months of conversations and idle thinking, I asked a fairly simple question:
“What’s the effective difference between an apartment building and a condominium?”
Apartments and condominiums are essentially identical, except for the way they’re owned. Apartments are owned by a single landlord who charges rent to multiple tenants – but a condominium building is owned by the condominium association, which is made up of the individual owners of each unit. In short, apartment units can’t be purchased by individuals, but condominium units can. And that led me to wonder if there was a way to legally turn an apartment building into a condominium, and then sell those individual units at affordable prices.
I’ve spent a couple years looking into this, and I’m proud to be able to say that it can indeed be done. In 2024 I bought a fourplex apartment building, converted it into a four-unit condominium property, then sold each of the units to individual owner-occupants at prices significantly below the median home sale price. In fact, one of the new owners told me that their mortgage is actually lower than what they had been paying in rent for a worse place. (You can visit www.havenshomes.com if you’d like to learn more.)
I’m bringing this up partially because I’m excited about the potential this has for creating new, purchasable housing at genuinely affordable prices. But more importantly, I’m bringing it up because the question I asked was not an especially amazing or complicated question – but asking it led to an innovative solution to a problem.
And honestly, I think that’s how it almost always works. The questions we need to be asking aren’t difficult ones. But asking them, and then really thinking about how to answer them, can unlock some transformative ideas.
Take this super-common, nearly universal question, for example: “How much money do I need to save for retirement?”
We’ve all asked ourselves that question before. The answer for most of us tends to be some version of “more than I have right now.” But that’s not an honest answer to that question. Because if you really ask that question, it leads directly to a bunch of others:
- What do I actually want my retirement to look like?
- What kind of legacy do I want to leave to my children?
- How much do I enjoy my work, when do I think I’d like to stop doing it – and what will I do with my time when that happens?
None of these questions are difficult questions to ask. But the answers they can lead to have the potential to entirely change how you choose to live your life.
In my case, a simple question about what differentiated an apartment from a condo has led to the creation of a business that I hope will one day help a lot of people buy their own homes. And in your case, I’m confident that there are a handful of simple questions fluttering around your head right now, and some of them are going to take you down some incredible paths if you take the time to really think about them.
