What do door-to-door Bible salesmen have to do with luxury real estate? For Wade Shealy, everything.
On this episode of Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered, James Dwiggins and Keith Robinson sit down with Shealy, founder and CEO of ThirdHome, the luxury home exchange club he started in 2010 with just two homes. Today it has more than 35,000 homes in over 100 countries. Shealy shares how selling Bibles and dictionaries door to door paid his way through the University of Georgia and how it led him to Hilton Head in 1984 to a career in resort real estate.
He explains why second homeowners kept coming back within five years wanting to sell and how that pattern became the idea for ThirdHome. He also walks through how he signed up his first 1,500 members and how the club’s key system works. Plus, he shares the biggest lesson he’s learned from his partner, Mrs. Fields founder Debbi Fields: Make everyone you meet feel important.
They also get into handling rejection, taking big risks and why Shealy believes very few people will buy a vacation home without a home exchange membership 10 years from now.
Highlights
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- What selling Bibles door to door taught Shealy about rejection
- How ThirdHome grew from two homes to more than 35,000
- How luxury home exchange and ThirdHome’s keys system work
- The lesson Debbi Fields, the Mrs. Fields of cookie fame, taught him about making people feel important
- How real estate agents can use ThirdHome to sell more homes
Shealy explains the luxury home exchange club model simply. Owners deposit unused weeks in their second home and earn credits called keys. They use those keys to book stays in other members’ homes, paying only an exchange fee of around $900 instead of thousands in rent. The club has now completed 100,000 exchanges, and Shealy says many members who would never rent out their home happily exchange it.
For agents, Shealy points to ThirdHome’s ambassador program. In Cabo San Lucas, developers began offering ThirdHome access as part of their sales pitch, and the club grew to roughly 8,000 properties there. He believes the next generation of buyers will expect mobility and experiences, not just a single vacation home.
His advice for agents: Look at what everyone else is doing, and do the opposite. Above all, keep changing, because if you’re marketing the same way you did 20 years ago, you’re already behind.
Connect with Wade Shealy on LinkedIn.
Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered is now exclusively on Inman. Tune in for agent- and team-focused content on Mondays and leadership interviews on Wednesdays each week. Listen on Apple or Spotify.
James Dwiggins is the president of NextHome, Inc. and co-host of Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered.
Keith Robinson is the president of strategy at NextHome, Inc. and co-host of Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered.
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The views and opinions expressed on Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered are those of the hosts and guests in their personal capacities and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of AGNT, Inc., eXp Realty, LLC, NextHome, Inc., or any of their respective affiliates, subsidiaries, officers, or directors.
