What is the Guild’s mission?
For now we believe that the mission of CityDAO’s Real Estate Guild is to help CityDAO execute on real estate matters, in concert with other guilds or 3rd Parties (CityDAO may stipulate those matters and may provide funding, human resources, etc.).
This question of “What is the Guild’s mission?” relies on the answer to the larger question of “What is CityDAO’s mission?” That is the biggest question for CityDAO right now.
Quoting from @DAOvolution’s draft proposal:
“A Vision for the Future
Aren’t we the ones who are walking away from Omelas? Perhaps we are not sure yet what sits outside the walls of the physical cities we are walking away from, but we are walking swiftly, and we are confident we are on the right path.
The purpose of any CityDAO guild should be to ensure that the ethos of the community - the idea of democratizing access to land and a self governed city on-chain being built without the problems of modern society - is held at the forefront of with respect to any and all key decisions.
“Needs over wants”
The wants might be your daily requests. They can be emails from others at work or they can be the things someone is asking you to do - or maybe they are the things you want to do, because there is a benefit in it. The wants are desirable - but not necessary.
The needs on the other hand are different - The needs are a “should” proposition. The needs are the things you should always be doing to act in your own best interests. The needs usually do not go viral on social media and are not things we often choose to think about because they are not cool, fun, or popular… But they are necessary.
The wants of the CityDAO community are important - Of the utmost importance. However, unlike the needs, the wants can be readily expressed using the governance processes, voting mechanisms and CIPs - e.g. through the democracy that has been intentionally designed into CityDAO.
The needs are much tougher to capture however. With the diversity of interests we find in the CityDAO community (as in the case of physical cities), there is a lot of noise, and it can be hard to funnel out the signals. Everyone has their own subjective biases and opinions. The needs can only be truly expressed through an understanding of the big picture - where CityDAO is today and where CityDAO wants to be in the future. The needs are actually very simple and objective for any matter once it is clear where the community would like to be in the future.
In the short run, CityDAO needs citizen leadership who has responsibility for ensuring that CityDAO’s mission to democratize use of and access to land remains at the forefront of our strategies, and in particular, CityDAO’s real estate strategy. We don’t yet know what CityDAO wants because we have not asked. With respect to Parcel 0 for example, it may be quite unlikely that the community would endorse VC ownership - but we do not know because the community has not spoken yet.”
Quoting from this forum post from February 1st, 2022: @MaxRealEsate - my professional experience, and my vision for CityDAO:
“A City DAO [could build] public goods at the intersection of local government and Web3.”
“I think CityDAO has an incredible opportunity to produce the open source primitives needed for a city or county to operate on Web3. I am most familiar with the real property systems and want to work on those.”
“I propose this as a direction rather than CityDAO purchasing more real estate (ironic from a guy who’s expert in real estate transactions). CityDAO’s treasury will not go far if CityDAO chooses a capital intensive operating model. The current treasury balance of $6,128,503 USD buys a lot more open source software and legal docs than it does real estate.”
Another word on real estate acquisitions: at the very least, CityDAO should be choosy about which parcel(s), if any, to buy, after forming a clear acquisition thesis, understanding of zoning classification(s), the permitted use(s), the business model(s), potential capital expenditures, likely operating expenses, and expected net operating income, etc. (not to mention debt service, as applicable). If CityDAO chooses to develop real estate it should do so in the spirit of Tony Goldman.
@MaxRealEstate: I’ve lost a lot of money in real estate that I like to call “tuition” and I don’t advise CityDAO expend any “tuition” to learn how to operate in real estate. In the alternative, CityDAO can rent my brain.