Groundwork is the podcast from Dan Ventures, hosted by founder Daniel Kaufman. Every other week we talk housing, building and starting things: conversations with founders, builders and town leaders, plus short briefings on what is moving in attainable housing and early-stage ideas. Nothing here is investment advice or an offer of securities.
Transcript
In Winter Park, Colorado, seven out of every ten homes sit empty most of the year. They're second homes and vacation rentals. Meanwhile the people who run the lifts, teach the lessons and cook the food have a hard time finding a place they can afford in the town they keep running.
That's not a ski problem. It's a housing problem, and you can find a version of it almost anywhere people want to live.
This is Groundwork, the Dan Ventures podcast. I'm Daniel Kaufman.
This is the first real episode, so it's just me. I want to tell you where I come from, why I started Dan Ventures, what the numbers say about housing in the places I care about, and what we're doing about it. Then I'll tell you what this show is going to be, and how you can be part of it.
Where I come from
I grew up in Massachusetts, and like a lot of kids in New England, I spent my winters on the mountain.
I loved it enough that I went to Vermont to study ski area management. Not skiing, the business of running a mountain. Lifts, snowmaking, lodging, staffing, the whole machine. After school I went to work for American Skiing Company. [What you saw there of the side guests never see: the people who make a resort work, and where they lived. A person or moment that stuck with you.]
In the mid-2000s I moved to New York and started my career in real estate. That's where I learned how buildings actually get bought, fixed, financed and run, and how much of what makes a place livable comes down to decisions about housing. I started it for three reasons. To build in places I believe in. To make a real difference on housing that working people can afford. And honestly, to build my working life around the mountains I've loved since I was a kid.
Dan Ventures is self-funded, and that matters to me. It means we pick projects because we believe in them and can do them well, on our own timeline.
What the numbers say
I wanted to see the problem clearly, so we built something called the Mountain Town Housing Index. It's free on our website. It ranks 66 ski and mountain towns in 10 states by housing pressure, using public Census data, the American Community Survey's 2020 to 2024 estimates.
It looks at three things. How many homes are held for seasonal use instead of lived in year-round. What a typical home costs compared with what a typical household earns. And what rent costs compared with income.
Here's the top of the list right now.
Number one is Winter Park, Colorado. About 71 percent of its homes are held for seasonal use, and the median home costs about 11 times the median household income.
Number two is McCall, Idaho. About 59 percent seasonal, and homes at about 11 times income.
Number three is Keystone, Colorado. About 60 percent seasonal, and the median home costs almost 25 times the median income. Twenty-five times.
For comparison, a home that costs three or four times what you earn is usually considered within reach.
Now, this isn't only a mountain town story. Vermont's own housing assessment says the state needs 24,000 to 36,000 more year-round homes between 2025 and 2029. In Florida, about 905,000 lower-income renter households spend more than 40 percent of their income on rent.
One quick note: the index is public data for comparison. It isn't an appraisal or a forecast. But it tells you where the pressure is, and it's a good place to start the conversation. You can look up any of the 66 towns at dan-ventures dot com slash housing index.
Memo 4: What we're building
So what do we actually do about it? At Dan Ventures we're working on it from a few directions.
The first is Project Treeline. Treeline builds lodging and housing for workers in mountain towns, the people who keep those towns running.
The second is Common Frame. Common Frame is about building attainable and workforce housing faster, in Vermont and in Florida, using modular, robotic and 3D-printed construction. The idea is simple: build more of the home in a factory or with a machine, so it goes up faster, with less waste, and costs less to build. We want resident programs built in from day one, too. A neighborhood needs more than buildings.
The third is Project Counterpoint. Counterpoint improves residential and small mixed-use buildings in growing mid-size cities. We look for buildings where better management, repairs or layout make them better places to live, and then we hold them for the long term. We don't flip.
And then there's the Idea Lab. If you're working on an idea, a startup or a project, you can submit it on our website and get a free score out of 100 across five areas, plus your next three steps. I read every submission.
None of this works alone. We need towns that have land or zoning that allows this kind of housing, employers whose people can't find a place to live, and builders who want to try new methods. If that's you, I want to hear from you.
What this show will be, and the close
So that's why Groundwork exists. Here's how it works.
Every other Tuesday there's a new episode. Once a month I sit down with someone doing the work: a founder, a builder, a housing leader or someone running a mountain town. We skip the highlight reel and get into the hard part. What went wrong, what they did about it, and what you can copy if you're starting today.
In between, we'll put out a short briefing on what's moving in the Housing Index, what we're working on, and one lesson from the ideas people bring to the Idea Lab. Those briefings are read by an AI voice, and we'll always tell you that up front.
Two things I'll promise you. No hype. And no investment pitches. This show is about the groundwork: the unglamorous, necessary work that comes before anything gets built.
If you want to help, here's how. Follow Groundwork wherever you listen, so you get the next episode. If you know someone who should be a guest, someone building housing, running a town or starting something outside the big hubs, send them my way through dan-ventures dot com. And if you're working on an idea, score it free at dan-ventures dot com slash lab.
Next time, our first conversation.
Thanks for listening. This is Groundwork. I'm Daniel Kaufman. See you in two weeks.
Nothing in this episode is investment advice.