ThirdHome Makes Luxury Travel Feel Accessible

Like so many people, Michael Kologinski’s career came to a halt when the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020. A sales and marketing executive, Kologinski found himself without a job even though he had no immediate plans to retire. He quickly discovered that life on the other side of a nine-to-five was irresistibly sweet. When a company approached him six months after the pandemic began with a job offer, Kologinski, who is based in Toronto, declined the opportunity. He had decided to enter retirement permanently.

Part of the reason for this was that Kologinski and his wife, Ann Clarkson, are members of ThirdHome, a private, luxury home exchange club they joined in 2013. Through the club, they have spent their early retirement years taking trips at luxury homes in Cape Cod, Vail, and New York City, among other locations. In exchange, they let other members stay at their second home in Lake Placid, New York.

As members of ThirdHome, Kologinski and Clarkson can choose from over 18,000 homes, residence clubs and yachts in 100 countries. The listed properties, which must be second homes, have an average value of $2.4 million and a minimum value of $500,000. ThirdHome, in essence, is like AirBnb for the very wealthy, although Kologinski doesn’t necessarily feel like a member of the elite. In fact, ThirdHome gives him access to properties and locations that he might not have splurged on otherwise.

“Vail is not an inexpensive location,” Kologinski notes. If he had to pay the nightly fee for the condo he’s staying at this winter with his best friend, which is within walking distance to a ski lift, he likely wouldn’t go. “It’s fantastic, quality-wise,” Kologinski says. As a member of ThirdHome, all he’s responsible for is his airfare, lift tickets and a booking fee that averages less than $1,000 a week — and opening his own Lake Placid home to other members on the weeks he’s not using it. A pretty good price for rubbing shoulders with celebrities and billionaires on the ski trails.

I first met Kologinski and Clarkson at the ThirdHome’s Founder Circle Event, which was held in late October at Lucky Dog Farm in Franklin, Tennessee, just outside of Nashville. The private home of ThirdHome’s founder and owner Wade Shealy, the farm looks like the physical manifestation of a classic country song about the joys of country living. But one written by a country music star whose album has gone platinum, and now views country living through the rose-colored glasses only millionaires can buy.

Marked by rolling hills, fall foliage, a covered bridge and a swimming pond, Lucky Dog Farms also has a corral full of Palomino horses, a splattering of guest cottages with luscious bedding, and living plant wall near the garage. The jewel of the property is the main house, which consists of an 18^th century log-cabin and a 19^th century chapel joined in the middle by a mid-century modern inspired glass living space. Marked by a continuous interior, the luxury home tells the story of American architecture through the past three centuries.

The event was presided over by Shealy himself, who was never far from his big, shaggy brown dog, Buster, or his girlfriend, Debbie Fields, the founder of Mrs. Fields Bakeries. Shealy has the money and status to be aloof and uninterested in small talk, but he is the opposite. He lingers in conversations. His mien radiates warmth and openness. In a speech in which he welcomed guests, who included over 200 members and investors in the company, to the event, he spent very little time talking about himself or his accomplishments. Instead, he singled out each one of the members of the ThirdHome team and thanked them personally for their contributions.

Shealy first came up with the idea for ThirdHome when he was working as a realtor on Hilton Head in the 1980s. “One of the things I noticed was that people would buy these vacation homes that they’d be really excited about, and they’d come the first year a lot,” he said over a tumbler of Tennessee whiskey in the Bourbon Cabin, a one of the reconstructed log cabins on Lucky Dog Farms. “The second year a little bit less, the third year a little bit less. And usually most everybody would come back into my real estate company and want to sell their house.” When pressed why, Shealy said that they’d tell him, “We’re tired of coming to the same place over and over.” He thought, what if they could keep the properties, and use them as leverage to stay in other places?

In the wake the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, when many homeowners found the value of their properties much depleted, Shealy saw an opportunity to develop his idea. “People couldn’t sell their vacation homes for the same prices they had paid for them,” he notes. “If they had a $3 million house in the Hamptons, they didn’t want to go to Aspen and spend $40,000 to rent a house while the other house stayed empty.” In 2011, he founded ThirdHome in Nashville, a city where he lived— and grew to love — as a college student in the 1970s. At the time, he sold bibles door to door for the Southwestern Company, where he worked alongside people who went on to become notable politicians including U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn and U.S. Congressman Mike Johnson, who is currently the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Some of Shealy’s first employees for ThirdHome were bible salesman working for the Southwestern Company, which still operates today. “They’d been going door to door selling bibles, so travel was a piece of cake for them,” Shealy recalls. ThirdHome grew steadily via word of mouth over the following decade. In 2019, the company began offering Reserve properties, which are high-end estates, castles and villas that would otherwise rent for $25,000 or more a week. ThirdHome is in the process of rapidly expanding, and would like to have over 50,000 members in both the regular club and the reserve by the end of 2025.

Part of the appeal of the club isn’t only access to properties, but also, the promise of friendship with other members. Shealy sets the tone for this by traveling with members on curated tours, and renting houses through ThirdHome with Fields, including recent stays in Mendoza, Argentina, and the Cotswolds in the United Kingdom.

At the party, guests exchanged stories and made connections. Standing by the charcuterie table in what was deemed the “Party Barn,” I heard tales of members who watched out for each other during hurricanes or helped plan marriage proposals at their properties. Always, there was mention about a bottle of wine on a kitchen counter, or an liquor cabinet left open for guests to indulge.

Kologinski, who joined me at a picnic table overlooking the swimming pond, appreciates the hospitality other members have shown him. On a recent trip to New York, he was impressed when the owner of the apartment he was staying in changed her schedule to accommodate the early arrival of his flight. “She went out of her way to let us in, show us around and talk about the neighborhood,” he notes. Fostering a personal connection also encourages respect for the home. “Every, every person who uses a property at ThirdHome is an owner of a property on ThirdHome,” he says. “There’s an awareness that I’m going to treat this place like my own, right?”

As the light waned and temperatures dropped, guests at the Founder’s Circle event were ushered into waiting buses and taken to the Franklin Theater. There, they were treated to a private concert by Kenny Loggins, whose hits include “Footloose” (1984) and “Danger Zone” (1987), the theme song for the film Top Gun.

Kologinski was especially thrilled by Loggins’ opening act, which featured a set by Hunter Hawkins, a burgeoning singer songwriter. “As soon as Hawkins came out, I recognized the violinist and the cello player who were backing her up,” Kologinski recalled. “I turned to Ann, and said, you know, they were on stage with Joni Mitchell.”

The previous week, Kologinski and Clarkson had traveled to Los Angeles for Joni Mitchell & the Joni Jam live at the Hollywood Bowl. They had stayed, of course, at a ThirdHome, and caught two of Joni’s performances. That night in Franklin, Hawkins covered “Both Sides Now” by Joni Mitchell to the accompaniment of the same musicians. “We though, ok, that’s kind of a cool coincidence,” Kologinski says.

ThirdHome, more than just an investment or a vacation opportunity, is a company that just gets Kologinski. He was not alone that night. Looking around the theater, I saw a group of people who were comfortable in the setting of a classic American theater, enjoying live music by an artist whose soundtrack had accompanied the youthful years of their lives. Years that had brought them success, and led to the luxuries they enjoy today. They were at home.

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