Dan P.
[NOT] A breath of fresh air!
[UPDATE] Things did not continue on such a high note. Of course, COVID played a part in making things challenging. However, Jerry Conti and LuxHomePro did not uphold their end of things. They negotiated a predatory deal and pulled the property out from under us in the second year after we put $20k+ into improving it, earning superhost status, and greatly improving the visibility and profitability of the property on multiple listing sites. Dave Bynum is great, and I believe he was taken advantage of as well by LuxHomePro and Jerry Conti.] My experience in working with LuxHomePro has been like a breath of fresh air in the business world! This is a top-class organization that really does things right. You won't find a more genuine or giving person than Dave Bynum - he wears his heart on his sleeve and really pours everything into his students. The entire leadership team in this company displays a tremendous "servant leadership" ethos that carries through everything they do, and they are always pushing to make things even better. Are they perfect? Far from it! Like every company, LuxHomePro has it's shortcomings, and I'll talk about a few of those in more detail. But the genuine compassion for people and humility to accept feedback and improve make it easy to forgive the small faults they do have. The online training platform is excellent, and getting better every week. The instructional courses are very detailed and walk you through each phase of launching a luxury vacation rental business. And if that isn't enough, there are live calls to get your questions answered, have deals reviewed, and even live classes to keep you accountable and ensure you are taking daily action to build a serious business you'll be proud to share with your friends and family. Our first introduction to LuxHomePro was a live bootcamp my wife and I attended in Scottsdale after watching a webinar. There is always a certain level of skepticism when going into something new, but we believed in the opportunity and timing of the market, and talking to other students the first evening at the "meet and greet" gave us a sense that if we were willing to put in the work, there was no reason we couldn't be successful at this, too! A few things were not ideal. Session times were adjusted from day to day, and didn't hold to the pre-published schedule, which made it difficult for my wife to juggle some remote work responsibilities. Time management of sessions (some went too long, others were rushed) could have been handled better. And although we were asked about special dietary requirements beforehand because of allergy concerns, no one followed up with us at the event to make sure we knew where and how to get safe food. One of the activities we did felt like a waste of time. And aspects of the event could certainly be improved. But overall, the tremendous value we got from the event far outweighed any of these minor inconveniences. LuxHomePro truly valued our feedback and suggestions, and I'm sure the next bootcamp was that much better. The sessions were highly informative, and the hands-on learning where we all piled into vans and went out to assess several properties together was invaluable. It really made doing this business something tangible. We were scheduled to ride along and observe Dave work some deals with other students to give us some first-hand experience. But when it became clear we were the only ones scheduled for those days, Dave opened up a tremendously generous opportunity for us and said, "If you want to work, I'll work your deals with you while you are here." It took some months of negotiating, and some potential deals fell through, but in October we finally took control of the house that was my first choice out of all the deals we looked at during that trip. LuxHomePro Holdings was established and through that facet was able to negotiate on our behalf and strike a deal with an owner who was otherwise hesitant about having an out-of-state operator. The transition into taking over the property was done on a very fast timeline that was far from ideal. And the communication was at times not as clear as it could have been, which party in the deal was responsible for certain things was changed on very short notice, and certain aspects around the flow of money from the property and funds distribution were not disclosed beforehand - normal hurdles of doing business that should probably be expected when communicating back and forth through a third-party. But despite these shortfalls, the LuxHomePro team really went out of their way to make the transition as smooth as possible and take as many things off our plate as they possibly could, enabling us to focus on the critical time-sensitive tasks involved in getting the property up and running.