The Happy House Experiment

Hello,

In the middle of 2011, I found my lease coming to an end. I had a landlord that wanted his son to live where I was living and a sudden attraction to new people and places in Raleigh while simultaneously in Durham Chapel Hill various friendships were ending along with my marriage.

One of my closest new friends is Jeff Del'Romero. He has a very straightforward approach to communication and resolving conflicts. I remember the first few months going out after work with him, we would get phone numbers from half the tables at a bar. It was exhilarating to face my fear of rejection from strangers and to have so much success.

I started looking for a new place about 3 months before my lease ended. Davie Circle was such a wonderful place to live that I wasn't interested in settling for a whole lot less. I could walk to downtown Chapel Hill or University Mall from there. I also wanted to live with roommates. Jeff's roommates were some of his closest friends and they all enjoyed playing board games and going out together and playing pool and other group activities. I wanted something like that, a living with friends situation. Jeff was already on a month to month arrangement with his landlord, and another roommate was leaving Raleigh to go to school back home.

Quickly, it was determined that a downtown Raleigh rental situation for Jeff and I would not be very accommodating. The rent was very high and usually came with pretty tough restrictions regarding pets and parties. I started expanding my search to see if there were any crazy deals on houses next to downtown Raleigh. I didn't want to be a homeowner, but I wasn't going to rent a spot with a roommate who sleeps lightly from 10PM onward. I wanted to be involved in the decision about who I would be living with. After a few weeks of searching, I found two houses that I liked. One was on Boylan Avenue near Western Blvd, but the list price was over $300k, and the other one was at the edge of a neighborhood with high crime rate. Because I was a 1099 contractor and hadn't been at my new job for very long, it took an amazing effort and several months just to get a pretty crappy loan for the cheaper house. Because of my separation agreement, I didn't have much to put towards a down payment.

Four of us occupy the four bedrooms of this 1300 square foot house and we pay into a pool from which food and alcohol are purchased. Its nice to be able to accomodate guests without unnecessary concerns about whose beer is being consumed. We also save individually because bulk prices tend to be lower than buying small amounts more frequently. We have a pretty late schedule at the house, and are grateful that the sound is well insulated from the outside of the house. We have had no noise complaints from neighbors so far.

There are interesting lessons here. First, incentives drive behavior. By providing food and alcohol from a pool, guests can be invited over trivially easy and entertained properly, but there is also an incentive to abuse the system. We've worked all that out because of lesson #2. Character trumps incentive. An honest worker will tend to perform well for a client regardless of hourly or fixed bid payment, and an honest client will pay what is owed when the agreed conditions are met.