The Founder’s Loneliness Is a Phase

The first buyers in a new estate spend their early months as the entire community. Their house is finished, the rest of the street is empty stands with survey pegs in the ground, and at night the only other light is the developer's site office.

There is nobody to ask about refuse day, and nobody to share a complaint about the road the building trucks keep breaking up. The homeowners' association, where one exists yet, is mostly the developer, so every complaint goes to the same people selling the remaining stands. Visiting friends ask, kindly, whether the family is sure about the move.

It is a phase, and it ends gradually. Another house goes up, then a handful more, and the first neighbour knocks to ask where the water meter is. In time there are enough owners to hold a proper meeting and elect people of their own, and the estate starts speaking in its own voice rather than the developer's. The first owners end up knowing the place better than anyone, having watched it fill, and later arrivals tend to come to them to ask how things work.