Alan Watts was famously quoted as saying “The essential principle of business, of occupation in the world, is this: Figure out some way in which you get paid for playing.”
You may see that quote a few times, as it was the spark for Laurian Club and continues to inspire our mission. We wanted to create an opportunity that would provide a variety of luxury travel options with minimal expense. We wanted ownership; familiar places we could call home, have control of our environments, and profit from as partners in a thriving investment company. And, as we work on reconnecting, we wanted to build a community of like-minded travelers.
As a celebrity estate manager, I’m a bit spoiled because my work entails an abundance of luxury travel. I’ve been acquiring, setting up, and managing homes for my clients in the best cities and most sought-after resort destinations for decades. Many are new primary residences, some are 2nd (or 10th) homes, and some are short-term properties that we stage as a home base while clients are filming on location or playing with a new team.
With work and travel looking so different now, I started looking at investing in properties for our team in the cities where our clients are so we could have a little more control over our environment; not just for health and safety, but to enjoy the high standards of service, and the quality of décor and amenities that we provide to clients.
It made sense to move money into real estate during this volatile market period, knowing real estate could offer stability, potentially higher returns, and diversification of an investment portfolio. As a real estate broker, I’ve handled every aspect of the investment process; identifying properties, analyzing deals, and managing the portfolio, so I knew how to get the deals done. The challenge was buying at least 6 homes to cover our most frequented locations.
Considering all of the options, a shared ownership portfolio checked all the boxes; there just wasn’t a good fit in the marketplace. The current opportunities focus on sprawling vacation properties at exotic locales with week-long minimum stay requirements. They cater to multi-generational family trips and a less professionally-engaged lifestyle. They require investments in funds or memberships that don’t offer any actual ownership of the real estate or provide income. They’re essentially luxury timeshares or pre-paid vacations. Not what I had in mind.
I reached out to the best people I’ve ever worked with and put together a highly qualified team of hospitality, travel, and property management professionals to build something new. We created something exclusive, luxurious, and flexible; something in destinations we actually go to, and something that provides low-risk capital growth and income as well as profits from a defined exit event. We created Laurian Club.
It’s everything we wanted from a real estate investment and meets our luxury travel needs. Our private offering provides accredited investors a unique opportunity to co-own a portfolio of high-value, revenue-generating real estate assets in some of the most sought-after luxury travel destinations in the US. We’re proud to present Laurian Club to our friends, colleagues, and investors old and new.
