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Millionaire holiday home swap: The inside track · The Money Puzzle

0:09
Speaker 1: Hello one, Welcome to the Australian's Money Puzzle podcast. I'm
0:12
Speaker 1: James Kirkby. Welcome aboard everybody. You probably guessed by now.
0:15
Speaker 1: The way our show works, one thing leads to another,
0:18
Speaker 1: and we had a really interesting conversation in the last episode,
0:22
Speaker 1: last Property episode last Tuesday, with Shane Smollen. He's a
0:26
Speaker 1: luxury property developer and I opened my eyes. Basically, there's
0:30
Speaker 1: a two tiered property market that we have and they
0:34
Speaker 1: basically almost run to some degree autonomously. At the big
0:40
Speaker 1: real estate conference on the Gold Coast Hora conference, where
0:44
Speaker 1: I had talked to Shane Smollen, I also met an
0:47
Speaker 1: American property operator by the name of Wade Sheile. You
0:51
Speaker 1: may not know of Wade, but he is the man
0:53
Speaker 1: who invented and created Third Home, which is an exchange club. Basically,
0:59
Speaker 1: he'd explain all this in a more it's an exchange
1:01
Speaker 1: club for residential holiday properties around the world. I wanted
1:07
Speaker 1: to get him on the show because it's a really
1:09
Speaker 1: original idea, and original ideas in any business are rare.
1:14
Speaker 1: In property, I think they are particularly rare. And ideas
1:18
Speaker 1: are easy, but execution is the issue, and here we
1:21
Speaker 1: are with his venture. He started in two ten, so
1:25
Speaker 1: he's on his fifteenth year. It is now if I
1:27
Speaker 1: remember correctly, he'll tell me all this. But twenty thousand
1:30
Speaker 1: properties folks, one hundred countries around the world, of which
1:35
Speaker 1: more than five hundred are in Australia. How are you, age, Chiley?
1:39
Speaker 2: Doing very well, James, thank you for having.
1:41
Speaker 1: Me, Thank you very much. So the essence of this
1:44
Speaker 1: was an idea you had, and you had been in
1:46
Speaker 1: real estate in Carolina in the US and you noticed
1:51
Speaker 1: a pattern. And this often comes up on the show
1:53
Speaker 1: economics of the holiday home. And the one thing that
1:56
Speaker 1: does seem to be in issue, apart from the sort
1:59
Speaker 1: of unproductive in many ways, it is where people have
2:02
Speaker 1: a holiday home, they don't use them. They're empty most
2:05
Speaker 1: of the time. But there's also that issue that people
2:09
Speaker 1: get tired of going down to wherever it is. It's
2:11
Speaker 1: lovely the first time. Then they realize they've done everything,
2:13
Speaker 1: They've been to the little restaurant around the corner forty times,
2:16
Speaker 1: it hasn't got better, and they need they want to
2:20
Speaker 1: perhaps somehow leverage it. So tell us your story briefly.
2:25
Speaker 1: What happened in two ten, What was your idea and
2:27
Speaker 1: how did you begin.
2:30
Speaker 2: Well, it started before twenty ten in my mind, because
2:34
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty four I went to Hilton Head Island,
2:36
Speaker 2: South Carolina to sell real estate, and I got pretty
2:41
Speaker 2: good at it. I was in the first year. There's
2:43
Speaker 2: about a thousand real estate agents there. In the first year,
2:46
Speaker 2: I think I was in the top three of a thousand,
2:48
Speaker 2: So I got pretty good at answering objections that people
2:51
Speaker 2: would come up with before they went by. But there's
2:55
Speaker 2: one objection I noticed that it was just almost impossible
3:00
Speaker 2: for me to answer, and that was that people would say,
3:04
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know if we want to buy here,
3:05
Speaker 2: because if it makes it feel like we're committed to
3:08
Speaker 2: all of our vacations coming to this one place, and
3:11
Speaker 2: we liked one so many different places around the world
3:13
Speaker 2: and doing different things that we just don't know if
3:15
Speaker 2: we want to commit to always going the same place
3:18
Speaker 2: over and over. You know. I felt that way when
3:21
Speaker 2: I traveled too. You know, we wouldn't want to be
3:23
Speaker 2: just committed to one place. So that was a hard
3:26
Speaker 2: objection for me to really overcome with people. And I
3:30
Speaker 2: understood their concerns the ones that I could get past that,
3:34
Speaker 2: and they did purchase there in Hilton Head from me,
3:37
Speaker 2: and later I had a large real estate company there,
3:39
Speaker 2: and it was this way for everybody that worked in
3:42
Speaker 2: our company. We noticed that no matter how happy they
3:45
Speaker 2: were when they bought that property, that typically within five years,
3:50
Speaker 2: every one of them would be back in our office saying, hey, wait,
3:54
Speaker 2: I want to I want to sell our property. I'd say,
3:57
Speaker 2: I thought you loved Cheltonhead. Oh wait, we've loved that.
4:00
Speaker 2: We've come down here so much and we just want
4:03
Speaker 2: to try somewhere new. We just feel like we've done
4:05
Speaker 2: everything here, We've seen everything, We've eaten at every restaurant
4:08
Speaker 2: a few hundred times, and we just want to go
4:10
Speaker 2: somewhere new. And so what they would do is they
4:13
Speaker 2: would sell their house there, and then they'd go somewhere
4:16
Speaker 2: else and probably buy there, and then probably five years
4:18
Speaker 2: later go by there. And so this has always been
4:22
Speaker 2: in the back of my mind that why couldn't someone
4:24
Speaker 2: create a platform that allowed all these people that on
4:29
Speaker 2: these vacation homes to not have to sell their home
4:32
Speaker 2: to go somewhere else. They don't have to pay rent
4:34
Speaker 2: to go stay, because that's a terrible feeling when you're
4:37
Speaker 2: paying a mortgage, taxes, insurance, maintenance, upkeep on the property
4:41
Speaker 2: and then go rent somewhere when you got your setting empty,
4:45
Speaker 2: why not create the platform? And so really, James, it
4:48
Speaker 2: was the advent of the Internet, the ability to create
4:52
Speaker 2: platforms like this, the shared economy companies like Uber coming out,
4:58
Speaker 2: Airbnb and your that's made all this successful to allow
5:02
Speaker 2: people to take an empty asset like a third a
5:05
Speaker 2: second home they're sitting empty most of the time, and
5:09
Speaker 2: convert that unused asset into something very valuable for you
5:14
Speaker 2: and their family to use to go travel somewhere else
5:16
Speaker 2: and stay in another beautiful home and not have to
5:18
Speaker 2: pay rent. So our members when they traveled our homes
5:22
Speaker 2: go from a million US dollars to about sixty million
5:26
Speaker 2: US dollars yachts and catabarians and castles all over Europe,
5:31
Speaker 2: and on average, our members only pay to the club
5:34
Speaker 2: about nine hundred dollars for a week's stay in one
5:37
Speaker 2: of our homes.
5:39
Speaker 1: We'd get into how it works in a moment, but
5:41
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you when I mentioned at the
5:43
Speaker 1: start of the show, there is that you could have
5:47
Speaker 1: pitched this in various ways. You had the idea, it
5:50
Speaker 1: was a very strong idea. You were in a position
5:52
Speaker 1: to start it. It didn't mean it was going to work,
5:54
Speaker 1: but it has worked so well done. But also you
5:58
Speaker 1: pitched it up market, and it seems to me, even
6:00
Speaker 1: as it's growing in any sort of iterations of the
6:03
Speaker 1: business that you're thinking of, they move up market. How
6:05
Speaker 1: do that in mind that it would be and it's
6:07
Speaker 1: the luxury market world to some extent of its own,
6:10
Speaker 1: a million dollar US plus market, which is what you're
6:13
Speaker 1: alluding to there.
6:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we made the decision on a couple of reasons.
6:17
Speaker 2: One is a home exchange has been around for seventy years,
6:22
Speaker 2: but it's been a traditional home exchange. It was started
6:25
Speaker 2: by teachers about seventy years ago. Teachers had the summers
6:28
Speaker 2: off and they didn't have much money, so they would
6:31
Speaker 2: swap houses with each other. And what they would do, James,
6:33
Speaker 2: is you come to my house, I go to your house,
6:35
Speaker 2: and we do it the same week, and it's my
6:37
Speaker 2: primary home and your primary home. That has been around,
6:40
Speaker 2: and there's companies like Home Exchange that do that, but
6:42
Speaker 2: the hard thing with that is it is a peer
6:45
Speaker 2: to peer. You come to mind, I come to yours.
6:46
Speaker 2: We do it at the same time. And most of
6:48
Speaker 2: those homes out there are primary residences where people live
6:51
Speaker 2: all the time. My background has been in luxury and
6:54
Speaker 2: has been in second home ownership. I felt like that
6:56
Speaker 2: the platform for us would be not people's primary homes,
7:01
Speaker 2: but it would be people's vacation homes that were sitting
7:03
Speaker 2: empty most of the time. That way, we could create
7:05
Speaker 2: the platform that did not have to be a simultaneous exchange.
7:09
Speaker 2: In other words, if you come to my house, James,
7:11
Speaker 2: I'm probably not going to go to yours. I mean,
7:13
Speaker 2: there's one in twenty thousand chants, then I'm going to
7:16
Speaker 2: go to your house. I'm going to go wherever I
7:18
Speaker 2: want to, whenever I want to go, because.
7:22
Speaker 1: It's not one to one yes for our listeners, I
7:25
Speaker 1: know you say million dollars US plus, but that's it's
7:30
Speaker 1: more accessible than that, isn't it. It doesn't have to be
7:32
Speaker 1: what is your minimum threshold that if I have a
7:35
Speaker 1: holiday property I'm listening to the show, if I aspire
7:37
Speaker 1: to have one, what's your minimum threshold that I can
7:39
Speaker 1: join this exchange club?
7:42
Speaker 2: Well, on our website we say half a million dollars US.
7:46
Speaker 1: That's maybe seven hundred and seventy thousand Australian yeah, yeah, okay.
7:52
Speaker 2: Our average in our club right now, company wants about
7:55
Speaker 2: two and a half a million in US and then
7:57
Speaker 2: we go up. We have a higher tier that starts
7:59
Speaker 2: at about fifty million and goes up to sixty million,
8:01
Speaker 2: and that's called the reserve, and that's our super high
8:04
Speaker 2: hand yachts.
8:05
Speaker 1: And that's your fantasy your fantasy strata.
8:10
Speaker 2: And people can go there. They just have to give
8:12
Speaker 2: us more time in their house. Let's say they have
8:13
Speaker 2: a five million dollar house. They can go to a
8:15
Speaker 2: fifteen million dollar house, but they may give us two
8:18
Speaker 2: weeks of their house to go up. I see, I see.
8:22
Speaker 1: Very interesting. All right, we'll take a shortbreak and we
8:24
Speaker 1: back in a moment on how this works. Folks. Hello,
8:36
Speaker 1: welcome back to the Australians Money Puzzle podcast. James Kirby here,
8:40
Speaker 1: and I'm talking to Wade Chiley, who's the founder an
8:43
Speaker 1: operator of the Third Home group, which he's just starting
8:46
Speaker 1: to explain to us how about how it all works.
8:48
Speaker 1: But it's basically an upmarket holiday home swap operation. When
8:53
Speaker 1: you started this, I find it such an interesting idea.
8:56
Speaker 1: As I say, it's so rare that someone comes up
8:59
Speaker 1: with a completely new idea. What they called blue ocean,
9:03
Speaker 1: the management theory that you didn't need to compete in
9:05
Speaker 1: a market. You created a market. No one did this before,
9:09
Speaker 1: are you how because and the advantage of that, obviously
9:13
Speaker 1: is it's blue sky, right, But the disadvantage is you
9:15
Speaker 1: have no rails to follow. Did it just morph as
9:20
Speaker 1: it went on? Did you sort of layer on these
9:22
Speaker 1: ideas up, for instance, an extra layer or the mathematics
9:25
Speaker 1: of how people would stay or not stay, or how
9:27
Speaker 1: long they could stay for. Did you create all this
9:29
Speaker 1: yourself or had you something to guide you?
9:32
Speaker 2: You know, you're exactly right. I mean oftentimes and very
9:35
Speaker 2: often people say, you know, I had that same idea
9:38
Speaker 2: to do something like that. I always think to myself,
9:41
Speaker 2: you know, the idea was the easy part. The execution
9:44
Speaker 2: of getting the twenty thousand homes in one hundred countries
9:47
Speaker 2: is the more difficult part. So how do you scale
9:48
Speaker 2: something when you start with zero or one? You know,
9:52
Speaker 2: and I'm you know, I'll give you an example. I
9:54
Speaker 2: got to know in Memphis to see a gentleman named
9:56
Speaker 2: Fred Smith who started Federal Express. You start a delivery
10:01
Speaker 2: service that's going to go all over the world. You know,
10:04
Speaker 2: when you don't get two planes, you know, so you
10:07
Speaker 2: know it's a hard thing to scale. However, I have
10:11
Speaker 2: to say that it was you know, me getting on
10:15
Speaker 2: the phone talking with people originally saying, hey, I've got
10:17
Speaker 2: two homes in the club. I got three homes in
10:19
Speaker 2: the club. Trust me, we're going to get more. And
10:22
Speaker 2: as we got more and more members traveling, that meant
10:25
Speaker 2: they were telling their friends about it, and so it
10:27
Speaker 2: started growing organically just by word of mouth. And so
10:31
Speaker 2: really we got to first fifteen hundred the first year
10:36
Speaker 2: by just getting people to tell their friends about it.
10:39
Speaker 2: Once they got back from there, you.
10:40
Speaker 1: Got fifteen hundred sign ups as such the first year.
10:43
Speaker 1: So and in your mind, did you have a number
10:45
Speaker 1: that you knew was feasible?
10:48
Speaker 2: You know, I just knew that we had to reach
10:49
Speaker 2: a certain scale because people didn't want to have just
10:53
Speaker 2: three options. They wanted to have hundreds of thousands of
10:56
Speaker 2: options of where they can go. And still even to
10:58
Speaker 2: this day, you know, we run across place is that
11:00
Speaker 2: people may want to travel to that we just have
11:03
Speaker 2: a limited number of homes there because it's a big
11:06
Speaker 2: it's a big world, you know, so we have to
11:08
Speaker 2: cover it. But we try to be in places the
11:11
Speaker 2: majority of places that we are where our luxury tier
11:14
Speaker 2: people like to go. For example, in the United States,
11:17
Speaker 2: we don't really have any homes in Brandson, Missouri. Now
11:20
Speaker 2: Brandson's and Missouri is a famous place for people to go,
11:23
Speaker 2: but it's not our members don't go there, you know,
11:26
Speaker 2: our members want to go to New York City, Paris, France, Aspen, Colorado,
11:31
Speaker 2: and so we can not target so like, for example,
11:33
Speaker 2: we do have about six hundred properties in Aspen, Colorado
11:36
Speaker 2: because people love going to Aspen.
11:39
Speaker 1: What are the Australian parts with Aspen and what do
11:43
Speaker 1: you think I'm guessing to the obviously some Byron Bay
11:45
Speaker 1: parts of northern Sydney. But you tell me where are
11:49
Speaker 1: the properties in Australia do you think that people really like?
11:53
Speaker 2: You know, Australia has a lot of areas. I mean
11:56
Speaker 2: the entire East Coast where our office opened in the
11:59
Speaker 2: Gold Coast, and so we're focused right now on the
12:02
Speaker 2: Gold Coast and the Sunshine you know, Sunshine Paradise, all
12:07
Speaker 2: those areas. But you know we're also at properties out
12:10
Speaker 2: on the West Coast in the Perth area and of
12:12
Speaker 2: course down in Victoria, Melbourne, Sydney. Last year when we
12:15
Speaker 2: were here, we stayed at a beautiful apartment overlooking Bandai Beach
12:19
Speaker 2: in Sydney, and so we try to get in the majors.
12:24
Speaker 1: How do the prices seem to you? Do they seem
12:26
Speaker 1: reasonable by global standards or on the steep end. We
12:30
Speaker 1: think they're on the steep end. Certainly, residential property is
12:33
Speaker 1: by most measures. What's your view?
12:35
Speaker 2: You know it's the same in the US, James, im,
12:38
Speaker 2: same all over the world. Depends on where you are.
12:40
Speaker 2: Some of our prices in the US. I mean, Debbie
12:43
Speaker 2: and I have a home in Aspen, Colorado, and the
12:46
Speaker 2: average home in Aspen, Colorado is sixteen million.
12:49
Speaker 1: That's the average, right, Yes, that is an exceptional place.
12:53
Speaker 2: Of course, I'm sure there's like that here. If you
12:57
Speaker 2: go to Palm Beach and side of Sydney, I'm sure
12:59
Speaker 2: the homes are very expensive there. If you go, you know,
13:02
Speaker 2: certain markets, they're more expensive than others. And you know,
13:06
Speaker 2: people often say, well, if I if you put my
13:09
Speaker 2: home there, it'd be worth this much. I go, well,
13:11
Speaker 2: it's not there, you know it is. You know, you
13:16
Speaker 2: didn't do that because part of the reason the houses
13:19
Speaker 2: are sixteen million on average and aspens because of the
13:21
Speaker 2: town of Aspen. So if you take a house in
13:24
Speaker 2: West Virginia, in the mountains of West Virginia, that's not
13:26
Speaker 2: the same as being in Aspen, Colorado.
13:28
Speaker 1: So that scarce to be value. So for in Australia,
13:32
Speaker 1: then tell us you've got roughly five hundred people signed up,
13:36
Speaker 1: is that right? And they have mostly come in the
13:39
Speaker 1: last year or.
13:39
Speaker 2: Two, yes, last year.
13:41
Speaker 1: Have you any sense of the nature of any thing
13:44
Speaker 1: you could tell us about the nature of people listening,
13:46
Speaker 1: the nature of the properties that you that were successful,
13:48
Speaker 1: or the price range that was common.
13:54
Speaker 2: So they again they ranged apartment in Sydney to you know,
14:01
Speaker 2: sixteen We just had one ad this week that was
14:04
Speaker 2: a sixteen million dollar house in New Zealand that an
14:07
Speaker 2: agent with Forbes real Estate Agents up there and Wellington
14:12
Speaker 2: added to the club and so you know, they all range.
14:16
Speaker 2: We have wineries, we have Wahika Island off the coast
14:20
Speaker 2: of Auckland. We have one of the most beautiful homes
14:23
Speaker 2: in Wahika Island there in the club. And an other
14:27
Speaker 2: aspect of the club that we've found is that it's
14:31
Speaker 2: more than just a travel club. James is also a
14:33
Speaker 2: little bit of a social club. That we get our
14:36
Speaker 2: members together, like when we were in Auckland a couple
14:38
Speaker 2: of weeks ago, we had all of our members from
14:41
Speaker 2: come have dinner with us. In Auckland. We had a
14:43
Speaker 2: closed off part of the restaurant and had all the
14:45
Speaker 2: members there and they got to know each other and
14:47
Speaker 2: people say, oh, I stayed in your house, and they
14:51
Speaker 2: talked about where they stayed in the club. We do
14:53
Speaker 2: these events. Last year we did one in Sydney, we
14:56
Speaker 2: did one in Melbourne, we did one in Cape Town, Singapore,
15:00
Speaker 2: London Pairs and we try to get all of our
15:02
Speaker 2: members together so they can actually meet each other. I
15:04
Speaker 2: have what my farm and outside of Nashville, Tennessee, October
15:07
Speaker 2: twenty sixth we has two hundred members who I am
15:10
Speaker 2: for the day for all over the world just to
15:12
Speaker 2: meet each other. And we have live music. And one
15:15
Speaker 2: of our members is the Kenny Loggins and he performed
15:18
Speaker 2: for us. There you go, there you go.
15:21
Speaker 1: All right, Well, look, I think most our listeners would
15:23
Speaker 1: now be very clear what the offering is as such.
15:26
Speaker 1: And of course there's a glamour aspect here and it's
15:28
Speaker 1: highly attractive. I want no one could doubt that. In fact,
15:31
Speaker 1: in some ways this it's going to prove, and that's
15:33
Speaker 1: been translated into television show folks, which you may or
15:35
Speaker 1: may not have heard of, called Millionaire House Swap. But
15:38
Speaker 1: you are really at that glamor I won't say fantasy end,
15:40
Speaker 1: but you're at that glamour end of the market where
15:43
Speaker 1: it's particularly aspirational. So what I want to do in
15:45
Speaker 1: the last part is to actually ask Wade how it works,
15:49
Speaker 1: tell us how it really comes together for people who
15:52
Speaker 1: participate or wish to participate. We'll be back in a moment. Hello,
16:02
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Australians Money Puzzle podcast. I'm James Krabin.
16:06
Speaker 1: I'm talking to Wade Chile, founder of the Third Home group.
16:10
Speaker 1: Twenty thousand properties, one hundred countries, five hundred of those
16:14
Speaker 1: properties in Australia and growing very interesting. So the elevator pitchway,
16:20
Speaker 1: if I knew nothing about it, tell me in a
16:22
Speaker 1: paragraph how it all works.
16:25
Speaker 2: Or a private club for lecturer second home owners. You
16:28
Speaker 2: have to have a second home or lecture second home
16:29
Speaker 2: to get into the club. But once you're in the club,
16:32
Speaker 2: you can give up an empty or unused week at
16:35
Speaker 2: your house that you're not using or runting and for that,
16:38
Speaker 2: you get a week somewhere else in the club whenever,
16:41
Speaker 2: wherever you want to go, and you don't pay rent
16:43
Speaker 2: to go. You simply pay a nominal fee to the
16:46
Speaker 2: club for the club to operate, which averages about nine
16:50
Speaker 2: hundred US.
16:50
Speaker 1: Dollars for the week wherever you may be.
16:54
Speaker 2: And so there's no cost. There's no cost to join
16:57
Speaker 2: the club. Your entry levels, your property. You have to
17:00
Speaker 2: be approved. We vet all the members to make sure
17:02
Speaker 2: the issues with backgrounds on our members. But once the
17:05
Speaker 2: members are in the club, they can deposit as many
17:08
Speaker 2: weeks in the system as they want. They choose the
17:10
Speaker 2: weeks they want to put in based on whether they're
17:13
Speaker 2: using it that week or if they're not running it
17:17
Speaker 2: that week. Some people, about half of our properties do
17:19
Speaker 2: short term letting and so they deposit a week and
17:22
Speaker 2: they get credits. So what we call keys in the club,
17:24
Speaker 2: and your keys are based on two factors, James. One
17:28
Speaker 2: is the value of your property and the second is
17:30
Speaker 2: the week that you offer into the system. Because all
17:34
Speaker 2: places have a seasonality to them, some not all weeks
17:38
Speaker 2: are the same at that property. It depends on you know,
17:40
Speaker 2: for example, and asking Colorado keep give them that as
17:43
Speaker 2: an example, if you give us Christmas or New Year's
17:47
Speaker 2: or what we call spring break, that's a high season
17:50
Speaker 2: and so you get more keys because for that. So
17:53
Speaker 2: every member gets to decide what they want to offer
17:55
Speaker 2: at their house and for that they immediately get their credits.
17:59
Speaker 2: So you could deposit the week today, it could be
18:02
Speaker 2: a year out and you would go ahead and get
18:05
Speaker 2: your keys today into your account, so that tonight you
18:09
Speaker 2: could book a house in Italy. You don't have to wait,
18:12
Speaker 2: it doesn't depend on somebody booking yours. You get your credits.
18:16
Speaker 1: And the key is the unit of value that you
18:18
Speaker 1: created inside the system. It's very interesting, right, Okay, consequences
18:23
Speaker 1: for the Australian participant.
18:26
Speaker 2: So the great news is there's no money changing hands, James.
18:30
Speaker 2: I mean, you don't get any money, but there's no
18:33
Speaker 2: access too because there's no money exchanging hands. And the
18:36
Speaker 2: other great thing about it is that you know it's
18:40
Speaker 2: you're letting people use your house that are also doing
18:43
Speaker 2: the exact same thing with their house. So there's a
18:46
Speaker 2: level of trust. And so as I mentioned, about fifty
18:49
Speaker 2: percent of our members do some type called short term letting,
18:52
Speaker 2: where fifty percent would never consider that they just don't
18:55
Speaker 2: want somebody running in their house, but no third home causes.
18:59
Speaker 1: Other people will participate in third home, but they wouldn't
19:01
Speaker 1: generally rent. Yeah, I get it. Tell me, what if
19:04
Speaker 1: someone has a party and they fall off the balcony.
19:06
Speaker 1: What's my insurance situation.
19:08
Speaker 2: All the members secured their own liability insurance, you know,
19:12
Speaker 2: and they should have liability insurance anyway. If you had
19:14
Speaker 2: friends over for dinner and they drank too much and
19:16
Speaker 2: fell off the balcony, I hope you got insurance for that,
19:19
Speaker 2: you know. So it's the same thing. So our members
19:21
Speaker 2: are like guess guests coming to your house. And like
19:24
Speaker 2: I said, we typically try to leave a gift, you know,
19:27
Speaker 2: when we stay. We encourage our members to leave a
19:29
Speaker 2: nice gift for the host. My partner that travels with me,
19:33
Speaker 2: she's here now, is Debbie Fields. She started a cookie
19:36
Speaker 2: business years ago called Missus Phil's Cookies.
19:38
Speaker 1: Missus Bear's Cookies. Of course that's what that's your partner. Yes,
19:42
Speaker 1: I meant to mention that, and of course they were, Yeah,
19:44
Speaker 1: the franchise right, yeah, many a shopping center Missus Spears Cookies,
19:49
Speaker 1: So she's Missus Speer's Cookies and you're mister third home.
19:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, right. The Debbie leaves, she always leaves cookie dough
19:56
Speaker 2: in the freeze, or she makes cookie dough while she's there.
19:58
Speaker 2: She leaves it with a nice note for the owner
20:01
Speaker 2: of the house that she made cookie dough. Missus Fields
20:04
Speaker 2: made cookie dough for the people and left it for him.
20:06
Speaker 2: So that's usually our gift to the host.
20:08
Speaker 1: I see what an entrepreneurial pair you are. Tell me
20:12
Speaker 1: what if things go wrong? And I don't want a
20:15
Speaker 1: good burrow too hard, but things will go wrong in
20:17
Speaker 1: an enormous enterprise like this. Do you have some sort
20:19
Speaker 1: of mediation elements where you know, someone said I thought
20:24
Speaker 1: this was going to be X or whatever. I can't
20:26
Speaker 1: even conceive, but there would things will go wrong.
20:29
Speaker 2: I give you an example. Over dinner last night, the
20:32
Speaker 2: member told us that he when they first joined the club,
20:37
Speaker 2: they went to book something and they booked it online
20:40
Speaker 2: and then they realized after they booked it it was
20:42
Speaker 2: the wrong week, and they felt terrible they made a mistake,
20:45
Speaker 2: but they got the confirmation the book in had gone through.
20:47
Speaker 2: So they immediately called our office and talked to la
20:50
Speaker 2: works with us named Meghan, and they explained to Megan,
20:53
Speaker 2: I made you know, made a mistake, and Meghan immediately said,
20:56
Speaker 2: don't worries. I'll take care of that, and she got
20:58
Speaker 2: on the phone within just about two minutes called them
21:00
Speaker 2: back and said, no problem, we canceled that and you know,
21:04
Speaker 2: if you want to book another week, you're welcome to.
21:05
Speaker 2: And so they took care of it. And so our
21:08
Speaker 2: goal is that we take care of our customers number one,
21:10
Speaker 2: our members, and so if we can help you any
21:13
Speaker 2: way to move some dates around for you or anything
21:16
Speaker 2: like that's what we have a team of people here
21:18
Speaker 2: to do to make sure it works out for you. Now,
21:20
Speaker 2: there's certain things that happen that you know, we can't handle.
21:23
Speaker 2: You know, hurricanes come through and things like that are
21:27
Speaker 2: of our control. We try and move people around best
21:29
Speaker 2: we can and rechange some dates for people, but there
21:31
Speaker 2: are certain things out of our control that we just
21:33
Speaker 2: can't change. But we always try and make sure we
21:35
Speaker 2: do the best we can to help accommodate our members.
21:38
Speaker 1: Okay, and just why before we run out of time,
21:42
Speaker 1: you mentioned at the start you have a sort of
21:44
Speaker 1: higher level. Again, you have this reserve level which is
21:48
Speaker 1: fifteen million plus US level. So how many properties are in.
21:55
Speaker 2: That so we've got about I think cross about four
21:58
Speaker 2: hundred properties in there right now. I think we'll end
22:01
Speaker 2: up about five hundred at the end of the year.
22:04
Speaker 2: We have a a fellow that's been working with me
22:07
Speaker 2: since I started the club in twenty ten at London,
22:11
Speaker 2: and his name is Giles Adams and Giles was the
22:16
Speaker 2: star on Holiday Holiday Home Swap Millionaire Holiday Home Swap.
22:20
Speaker 2: That there's a six hour TV show as you mentioned
22:23
Speaker 2: that's running around the world. But he handles that it's
22:26
Speaker 2: more of a white glove service too, so they do
22:28
Speaker 2: a lot for those people going to the castles and
22:30
Speaker 2: yachts and different things where they do a lot more
22:32
Speaker 2: concierge service for those members.
22:34
Speaker 1: Right. Interesting. So yes, so you are moving it to
22:38
Speaker 1: the extent that you are moving it even further upmarket
22:40
Speaker 1: on that tier. Terrific. Well, it sounds like a great idea.
22:44
Speaker 1: It sounds like it was very well executed. Lovely to
22:46
Speaker 1: have you on the show. Very original idea. Best of
22:49
Speaker 1: look with everything, Wade.
22:50
Speaker 2: Thank you very much and come visit us in the
22:52
Speaker 2: United States whenever you get a chance. We'd love to
22:54
Speaker 2: host you.
22:55
Speaker 1: I'd love to see some of those places in Aspen.
22:57
Speaker 1: They sound very nice. Okay, thank you everybody. Now listen, folks,
23:01
Speaker 1: James Gerard is back on Thursday with the Incentives Electric
23:05
Speaker 1: Incentives sequel. We had so much correspondence I couldn't get
23:09
Speaker 1: over about turning your home electric, the various grants that
23:13
Speaker 1: are there, and of course electric cars in the mix
23:16
Speaker 1: there as well, so we will be covering that on Thursday.
23:18
Speaker 1: You still have time to send in questions for that
23:20
Speaker 1: if you wish to do so the Money Puzzle at
23:22
Speaker 1: the Australian dot com dot au. Talk to you soon,