Two nice young men came to Jim Boyt in 2003 and said they wanted to buy his buildings in the East Village. Well, they’re really not for sale, Boyt replied. But he didn’t want to discourage them, so he said they could come back.

As it turned out, discouragement was not an issue.

Tim Rypma and Zack Eubank, friends since middle school at St. Augustin’s, wanted to get involved in real estate together. They were still in college, their parents called the idea crazy and they had no cash – but on the other hand, they really, really wanted to give it a try.

Rypma, 25, is a bundle of energy who has competed in triathlons, once lived in Nepal and studied entrepreneurship at the University of Iowa. He also spent a summer as an intern at Knapp Properties Inc., whose president, Gerry Neugent, describes him as “a real go-getter, a real self-starter.”

Eubank, 24, studied finance at Marquette University in Milwaukee and now is working on a law degree and an M.B.A. at Drake University; Rypma refers to him as “the voice of reason” in their partnership.

Together they kept pursuing the idea of buying four old buildings in the 500 block of East Grand Avenue. Boyt, 78, bought the adjacent brick structures individually over a span from 1976 to about 1980; he began working on a revival of the downtown area east of the Des Moines River even earlier than that.

Rypma and Eubank – now operating as RE Properties – started with an offer of less than $650,000 and a 15-page purchase agreement. Boyt turned down the offer and didn’t bother to read such a hefty document.

“They kept coming back with different offers and finally worked it up to a figure I would accept, with provisions,” Boyt said. The final offer was $719,000 – wrapped up in two or three pages — and the provisions mainly dealt with preserving the historic nature of the buildings, which date back as far as 1878. “I would feel badly if someone modernized them,” Boyt said.

Rypma and Eubank established a line of credit at a bank and came up with 20 percent of the cash purchase. The rest came from two silent partners, including Zack Gaskell, who attended Dowling Catholic High School with the duo and now lives in California.

The buildings house 13 tenants, including ground-floor businesses The Bargain Basket, the Olympic Flame restaurant, the Collector’s Shop, JB Construction, Dunbar-Jones PLC, Kham’s Jewelry and James O’Malley Boyt & Co. Seven second-floor apartments probably will be converted into residential condominium units at a gradual pace. The buyers expect to spend $250,000 on renovation in the next few years.

The project isn’t their full-time occupation; both work at West Glen Town Center in West Des Moines, Eubank as an intern and Rypma as an assistant leasing manager.

Selling his buildings was a “tremendously emotional thing for me,” Boyt said, “but I think it’s just as well to get some bright young chaps involved. They’re the kind, I think, who will make good things happen.”

“All of our friends are leaving (Central Iowa),” Rypma said. “We really want Des Moines to be a fun place to live, and attract people to the East Village. Des Moines has huge potential.”