April 2026

tl;dr - Live Near Friends is pioneering a new category of housing. We help friends and families live next door to each other — unlocking a massive, untapped demand for proximity that today’s housing market doesn’t serve.

We recently launched “LNF Custom Compounds” helping people use recently relaxed “Missing Middle” zoning regulations to build 2-6 home compounds for friends & family from scratch. This new category of housing will reshape our cities. We’re hiring a Chief of Staff to partner with the CEO to build the systems, workflows, and partnerships that make this work at scale.

About Live Near Friends

The housing market sells you a box. Live Near Friends sells you a village.

We’re on a mission to help people live happier, healthier and more connected lives.  We believe that home is more than the walls of your house – it’s about the people in close proximity.

[https://twitter.com/naval/status/1730086239368602041](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/aZonRD6HgxJah_Jmy970IfwgXuCB7aBbJuZ2OzvivCeKaQXwNnndN2nwcozoZ7ayKHdrkMoAJSnSAoiXyePmcei6N-PwYivyZ-zmv2Brpx6Dqr71ylF9xmOqYdysqJyiJqFxlYFfrg4W8QmK7CfgMzU)

https://twitter.com/naval/status/1730086239368602041

Two-thirds of people say they want to live near their closest friends and family. Almost none of them do. Our job is to turn that fantasy into a reality.

Today, we help people make it happen with existing housing stock "in the wild" — purchasing a duplex with another family, adding an ADU, or buying homes on the same block. Next, we're helping groups design and build custom compounds from scratch. Eventually, we'll reshape the built environment itself: spurring developers (and likely ourselves) to build housing designed for groups rather than individuals or nuclear families.

We want fences to come down. We want neighborhoods reinvigorated. We want places to have meaning. We want cities in the next century to look nothing like the last one — and we want how people think about "place" to be inextricably tied to the people nearby.

Why now

• Regulatory unlock. Missing Middle Housing laws are passing across the country, making it possible to add homes to former single-family lots.
• Remote work. People are freer than ever to coordinate where they live with the people they love.
• Cultural moment. A reinvigorated national conversation around fertility, loneliness, and the cost of isolated housing has people hungry for alternatives.

CEO Phil Levin was a founding team member of Culdesac (the first car-free real estate developer in the US, $200m+ raised) and started Radish - a groundbreaking co-owned housing cluster with 20 people (and their 5 kids) in Oakland.