From Dream to Reality: Democratizing Luxury

A hallway conversation, a wellness thesis, and an eight-figure term sheet—sometimes momentum finds you when the vision is ready. We open the door on how a chance encounter in Canmore crystallized a faster, smarter path to luxury ownership and why we moved from idea to action in days, not quarters. The story begins with pent-up demand: people crave a second home and richer experiences, but the old models—timeshares, clubs, and operator-marked-up fractional plays—strip out equity, flexibility, or both. We lay out a model that treats you like an investor, not a passenger.

Here’s how it works. Each property sits in its own clean entity, giving co-owners direct deeded participation in land, building, and operating income. Our platform handles the heavy lift—KYC/AML, banking, reporting, taxes, distributions—while local best-in-class partners deliver white-glove hospitality that actually moves the numbers: stronger occupancy, pricing power, and happy returns. We dig into why Canmore’s fundamentals (appreciation, occupancy, tourism spend) and Costa Rica’s Guanacaste market make sense now, and how research on Portugal, Spain, and select Middle Eastern hubs will widen both lifestyle variety and portfolio resilience.

But the secret weapon is community. A network of like-minded owners creates liquidity from the inside out, with a transparent marketplace for units and time exchange across homes. It’s luxury that values use, not vacancy—sustainable by design, with local partnerships and a giveback pledge that supports the places we love. And it’s a blueprint that extends beyond villas: once you build rails for trust, compliance, and governance, you can co-own almost anything worth sharing.

If the idea of owning less but living more resonates, join us. Subscribe, share with a friend who’s dreaming big, and leave a review to help others find the show. Then visit luxara.ca to see the model, the markets, and the movement we’re building together.

Chapters

• 2:54 The Canmore Spark At Basecamp
• 9:46 The Case For Luxury Co‑Ownership
• 15:23 What Existing Models Get Wrong
• 19:23 How Luxara’s Model Works
• 27:53 Community, Movement, Legacy
• 33:47 The Bigger Vision

Transcript

Vladlen Stark: 0:10

Welcome back to the Immigrant Hustle, an unfiltered CEO's playbook on how to build a business with AI. I am your host, Vladlen Stark. Over the past few weeks, I've taken you inside my journey from late nights building something after my kids fall asleep to the daily discipline and sacrifices that ensue when you try to build something from nothing. We've talked about the why, the how, and the who. And today we're going to be talking about the what. What are we actually building? What is the problem that we're solving? And why Luxara isn't just another real estate venture. It's a movement that's redefining how people own and experience luxury. I finished my last episode with gratitude. And I want to take another moment in this episode to once again express my gratitude to the people along my journey. And more specifically, once more, I want to give a huge shout out to the listeners of this podcast that have tuned in across the world into this new cool thing that I'm doing, which is really fascinating. I haven't really done any promotion for the podcast beyond LinkedIn posts that mention that I'm doing this and how it relates to my daily journey and me building Luxara. And I had no expectations whatsoever. And yet, I'm looking at the stats right now. I've got listeners in six different countries, 31 different cities all over the globe. Now that is cool. And I can't wait for the moment when I'm able to reach that many more people and share this journey with everyone and hopefully be that support network and that inspiration to somebody out there who's thinking about taking that next big leap into entrepreneurship and into building their dream. So huge shout out to folks in the US, Japan, Germany, Australia, United Kingdom, and of course across Canada. Like I said, 31 different cities, all kinds of different time zones, different languages, different geographies, different cultures. I'm so grateful and I'm so excited to keep building this. And I hope that I am delivering that value that you're looking for. Because all of this is for you. Thank you again. So if we jump back to the episode at hand, I want to take a moment and talk about one evening, maybe a month or two ago, that really changed everything in terms of direction of Luxara. I was at a Basecamp event in Canmore, Alberta. And for those of you who don't know, Basecamp, this really neat company that started out here in Alberta, led by a very impressive entrepreneur named Sky. And Sky has really grown this venture from nothing to hundreds of millions of dollars of assets under management and developed projects. And I was at their event when they were raising their latest fund towards the construction of some Nordic spas in the region. At the event, they were talking about how wellness is a next big growth opportunity in the luxury sector and just in general across the spectrum, and how they are certainly seeing the writing on the wall and they're trying to capitalize on it. Now, if I'm being honest, me being there had a dual intent. One, I certainly was interested myself as a potential investor into the Basecamp fund and trying to again get access to this opportunity that they were exploring. But two, it was also a homework assignment from my friends and partners down in Costa Rica because one of the other projects that I'm working on is helping them transform one of our park assets beyond the cultural tours and horseback riding and zip lining that it currently offers and into a full wellness experience, including a boutique, five-star hotel by a flagship brand. Let's just say we're in agreement when it comes to seeing the opportunity in a wellness sector. So before the event started, there was, of course, a little welcome, now working time, and I was walking around as you do at these things when they drink in hand, trying to be friendly and meeting people. And I meet this couple, Sean and Donna, and we start chatting, and I'm sharing the story of what I'm doing, the projects that I'm working on in Costa Rica, Luxara, the company that I'm building, and the ideas that I have around it and thoughts about expanding Luxara beyond the Costa Rican market. Sean and Donna were talking about the work that they're doing in Canmore. And then I realized that Sean is a real estate agent in Canmore, Alberta. And I've actually been a subscriber to his newsletter for years at this point. So when I connect the dots and I share this story with him, we have a nice laugh and we certainly start getting even more connected and deeper into our conversation about the opportunities in Canmore beyond what Basecamp is doing. And we start talking about different projects that are under development, the different challenges that the market is facing when it comes to access, when it comes to occupancy, when it comes to service offering in the region. And by the end of that conversation, really the light bulb goes off, in my head at least. And on my drive home from Canmore to Calgary, I certainly couldn't help the idea that maybe there is an opportunity for me in Canmore, an opportunity for Luxara in Canmore. And I sat on that idea for a little while. And then a few weeks later, I actually had a coffee with a friend of mine and a classmate from my ICD class a few years ago. And we were chatting about what I'm doing in Costa Rica. And he had mentioned that he has a property in Canmore himself. And we got chatting about that and the same challenges that came up in my conversation with Sean earlier, the high upfront cost of a down payment, the high property prices of detached homes in Canmore, even as it is today, challenges with financing on the secondary home, challenges with managing it from afar, and the list goes on and on. You know, basically all the problems that Luxara is trying to solve. So right after this, I thought this is too much of a coincidence. I leave that meeting and I immediately email Sean. Within 48 hours, we're on a call and we're talking about what a deal in Canmore could look like. Within two weeks, I have a law firm engaged, two people engaged to actively start raising capital. We've identified the property. We're talking to lenders about financing an $8 million deal, and things are just moving and moving fast. Jim and Julianne, my partners in Costa Rica, were on vacation in Europe with their families. And in the handful of weeks that they were gone while all of this was happening, when they came back, they came back to a completely different company. We pivoted Luxara at an absolute record speed. And there's something to be said there about being a solo founder or part of a small team with a stack of AI tools that lets you pivot exceptionally quickly as long as you have a very clear vision in front of you. Large companies just can't do this. They have several layers of management to get through. They have budget approvals, they have committee meetings and this and that and the next thing. In my case, I had a coffee on Tuesday, I had a follow-up call on Thursday, within two weeks, we were boots on the ground doing the work. Now that's the hustle. When the opportunity knocks, you're ready to sprint through the door. And even though I've been presented with more walls than open doors in the last four weeks, I have been crashing through those walls like I'm in a Kool-Aid commercial. Unstoppable. So let's talk about why Luxara exists in the first place, in numbers. 84% of Canadians find it worthwhile to own a home. And while we don't have the exact numbers on a second home ownership across Canada, what we do know is that one in ten Canadians in large urban areas, so Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton, own multiple properties. What we also know is that about 45% of Canadians who are considering their home purchase would consider a property that can generate rental income to offset some of their costs. And I think that's pretty telling about the perception of home ownership and generally asset ownership by the up-and-coming demographic. And it also gives me a little bit of a sense of where the market is heading in general when it comes to asset ownership, real estate ownership, and especially luxury real estate ownership. And that's certainly not just a Canadian phenomenon. About 74% of respondents in the US said that they aspire to own a second home at some point in their lifetime. They imagine waking up in that mountain cabin, sipping a coffee on a beachfront terrace and building memories with their families in a place that feels like home. And yet, that dream is unattainable to most. The luxury vacation homes in America sit right around a million dollars and up. And certainly, if we look at more resort places and more high traffic tourist areas, there are multiple of that number. In Canada, the numbers are pretty similar. If you look at a market like Canmore, where a detached property averages around $1.5 million Canadian, similar numbers appear in places like Costa Rica, where we have our Vista Bahia property, where a beach front villa or a villa with an ocean view would probably start around that 1 million US mark and then go only out from there. And even if you could afford to own one of these places on your own, the math unfortunately doesn't make a ton of sense unless you're actively managing the property yourself. A study that was done by Picasso in the US suggested that the vacation homes sit empty about 89% of the time. So imagine you have one of these properties, you're paying all the maintenance, all the property taxes, electricity, landscaping, so on and so forth, and the property sits empty 325 days out of the year. If we look at the financing factors, which are often a barrier to owning some of these properties, especially in foreign markets, in 2023, the demand for vacation home mortgages dropped 40% year on year, and it was down about 65% since 2021. Now we do know that in 2021 there was a huge COVID-type boom for vacation properties, and that maybe created a bit of a market spike. But nonetheless, the drop of 65%, I think, is a little bit beyond normalization of that curve. We also know that many of these secondary loans come at higher interest rate. And in some places like US, there is specific mandates by the lenders to have higher rates on these vacation properties compared to the primary home mortgages. So we have this massive pent-up demand. 84% of Canadians value home ownership. 75% of Americans aspire to own a second home, and yet the path to the ownership of these second homes is certainly broken. And that's where Luxara really shines. I've shared a story of me dreaming of buying that piece of paradise in Costa Rica a few years ago, and I've run up against all of these challenges. The financing was unavailable, and what was available would have taken me months to get and would have been astronomically expensive at 10.5% or 11% type interest rates from the Costa Rican banks. The upfront costs certainly astronomical as well. And managing a property in a country that's a seven-hour flight away from your home is certainly no picnic. So I thought to myself then, and I thought to myself again, time and time since then, is there a better way? What if you could truly own a piece of luxury property? Not a timeshare, not a right to use, but true deeded equity, all while sharing the costs with like-minded co-owners. What if you could remove a lot of these financial burdens and turn these properties into smart investments? What if you could remove the barriers that prevent people from living the life that they dream about? And that's the founding philosophy for Luxara. Democratizing luxury ownership for those who dream big enough. Now, before I tell you what Luxara does, let me tell you what in a market today doesn't work. Because I didn't just wake up one day and invent this entire new concept out of thin air. I did my homework, I did research on all my competitors, both direct and indirect, and I took meticulous notes with help of AI on every single negative feedback that I could find about the existing models. What I did then was I try to reverse engineer that feedback into something that Luxara can solve. And I think that framework is actually quite valuable for any business that you're looking at. Business in general, you need to be solving problems. And looking at the feedback of your competition and solving those problems can only mean good things for you. First, there's Pacaso. Pacaso in the US is an 800-pound gorilla in a fractional ownership space. They're well funded, they're well marketed, they have celebrity endorsements, they have banking relationships all across the U.S. And they've done a lot to legitimize the fractional ownership category. But there's one fundamental flaw that I perceive with Picasso, and that is they purchase the properties themselves, they decorate them, furnish them, they mark them up quite heavily by 12%, and then they sell you interests in the asset that they own through an LLC structure. So effectively, you're buying ownership in their asset. And because they control the asset, they ultimately control everything from the pricing of the asset to the management fees to the exit clauses and exit opportunities, and of course, everything day-to-day. They operate in the ultra-luxury segment from $2 million to $20 million in terms of asset value. So it's certainly expensive. It appears to be quite inflexible. And in my opinion, it's just another spin on timeshare with better marketing. Second, there are vacation clubs, which are a pretty interesting model. There are companies like Destination M here in Calgary on a global scale. There's a company called Inspirato, where you're basically buying a membership and then paying annual dues in exchange for access to their portfolio of properties. I mean, there's certainly upsides because they've been able to establish quite a bit of variety. The downside, though, is that you're not really buying into anything because you have this membership that you pay for and then you have your annual dues. And your membership may appreciate with time as they expand and develop their portfolios and those assets appreciate, but it may not. And at the end of the day, if you were to then sell your equity, you're selling the membership, you're not selling real estate. So it's a little bit different, but there's certainly room, I think, for those businesses out there, and I think they've got their market share. Third is the traditional timeshare. I don't think I need to spend a lot of time on that. They are notorious for depreciating the second you buy them, losing as much as 70% of their value in the first handful of years. They are very strict around exits, which then spawned an entire business of companies that specialize in breaking timeshare arrangements. Certainly not something I would advise a friend. And that brings me to Luxara. And I think Luxara is different than the three other types that I've mentioned. Luxara, we don't buy the properties. You do. We create an environment that allows you to buy those properties. We create the legal structures, we create the agreements, we create the platform, the banking, the compliance, the marketing around it. But at the end of the day, you're the one buying into a specific asset of your choosing on your own timeline, both when it comes to the purchase and when it comes to the exit. We're certainly not a vacation club. We are most definitely not a timeshare. We're different from Picasso and others in a fractional ownership space because what we are is we're a co-ownership platform that treats you like the intelligent investor that you are. So how exactly do we do this? Well, there's a few steps in our process. So step one is we identify exceptional properties in exceptional markets. Costa Rica, Canmore, expanding into the Rockies, into places like Invermere, Fernie, Revelstoke, Golden, so on and so forth, looking at markets in Portugal, Spain, Middle East. These are the markets where we've done significant research and identified very strong fundamentals in the marketplace where we believe there's a long-term appreciation and there's a long-term trend for profitability when it comes to tourist demand and tourist short-term accommodations. So let's talk about Canmore, for example, and why we pivoted so quickly to Canmore. In a Canmore market since 2019, the average appreciation of a detached home is about 76%. Now I say average because the median home price increased by about 55%. And what drives the average up is actually a very heavy market trend in appreciation for luxury real estate over $2 million. That brings that average transaction value up. The other statistic that is quite promising is that given the current inventory in Canmore, the average occupancy rate across all properties is 77%. Last year, the tourists spent $14.5 billion in the Canadian Rockies, a 12.5% increase from a year before. We talk about all this in the white paper that we published that you can check out on our website at luxara.ca white papers. And there's certainly many other statistics that we've looked at, but there is a lot of fundamentals that are certainly working in our favor, and we have a very strong conviction about Canmore as a market, and we certainly have similar convictions about the other markets that we're looking at into expanding after this flagship property in Canmore is all said and done. Similar story for Guanacaste region in Costa Rica, and we published a white paper about that. We're well into our research on Portugal, both mainland and the Portuguese islands. We're looking at Spain, we're looking at the Middle East, and again, we're seeing a lot of really strong fundamentals that we are going to be executing upon. So step two is structuring the co-ownership through a clean legal entity. Unlike real estate investment trusts or other real estate ventures, we have a dedicated entity for every project that we take on. For example, in a case of our Canmore project, we're structuring a Canadian limited partnership that will own only that one project. And you, as a unit owner in that project, have that direct deed ownership into the land and the building that we're purchasing and get the participation rights on all the rental income that we generate as the property. Step three is we provide the platform and the team that handles everything. And we really do mean everything. So that's from the initial due diligence on the property to structuring the legal entity to investor selection on boarding, KYC, AML, and everything else that comes with compliance of bringing investors in, whether they're individuals or institutions or corporations, then going into the record keeping, so preparing things like financial statements, tax returns, annual reporting, and compliance that comes with operating structure like this. And then, of course, the distribution of the dividends or of the profits to our LP unit owners. Of course, I can't forget about the property management, which is the step four. So we identify and partner with leading property management companies in the markets that we operate. So in the case of Costa Rica, we have a strong partnership with a company called Zindis Hospitality Group that is the top property management company and hospitality company in the Guanacaste region. And they handle everything from property management, white glove care to concierge and tours and experiences. When it comes to Canmore, again, we're taking a similar approach there. We're partnering up with a leading company in the Canmore region called Vacations in Canmore. And we're actually going to help them build up that luxury experience component that we couldn't find in the Canmore marketplace right now. And we believe there's a gap there that we could fill with this great partnership and build up a next level of service offering that would do things like a private chef, a private yoga instructor, a private gym instructor, other experiences in town, limo driver, airport transport, all of these things that just simply don't exist in the marketplace today. And honestly, the best part about it is that with our model, both in Costa Rica and certainly in Canmore, by design, all of the costs of providing these services and giving you that luxury experience, everything is covered because we also manage the rental of these properties. And the rental income actually provides funding, not just for things like property taxes and your tax returns and your utilities, but it also has enough of a reserve pool to build up the property reserve, pay for things like insurance, and of course have pretty generous distributions to our LP unit owners. And it's not something that's theoretical. We've done this on a personal level since 2022. Vista Bahia was owned and operated by myself outside of Luxara. And we entered into a partnership with Zindis in 2023. From that point on, we've realized 70 plus percent occupancy in the high season, annualized occupancies of 40% or so so far, and it's been growing year over year. We've increased our nightly rates, and we've been able to provide really neat experiences to our customers, including a membership in a private club, a full concierge experience, guided tours, access to a lot of the other hospitalities assets that the group operates. And we've received phenomenal feedback from both our guests and also from the few investors that were early investors in Vista Bahia in 2022. And now we have that asset up for recapitalization and offering some equity in that asset to our new investors that are coming on board while we're also trying to grow in that market by bringing other assets on board in both Costa Rica and in Canmore. The other aspect certainly is around community, movement, and legacy. I mentioned in my last episode that we're building a community. In practical terms, we're building a network of investors who are like-minded investing in different properties within our portfolio, diversifying themselves, de-risking themselves, and really realizing opportunity of this new innovative model of ownership. When you own through Luxara, you're not just buying a share in a property, you're joining a network of investors who share the same values as you do. Entrepreneurial spirit, curiosity, a love for experiences that matter, and spending time with your loved ones in a place that feels like home. Now imagine this. You fly down to Costa Rica, you arrive at Vista Bahia, you get greeted by the same concierge that met you there last year. And imagine you're at one of the local events, or maybe you're having dinner at my favorite restaurant called Mar Azul that's just down the street from Vista Bahia that serves the best seafood you'll ever have in your life. You meet another Luxara co-owner there. Within a few minutes, you're sharing this beautiful food. You maybe have a couple of drinks and you're swapping stories. That's not transactional, that's tribal. And to support this even further, we're building a point exchange system where co-owners in a particular property can swap their points or swap their time basically for stay at a different property. So for those of you who saw the movie Holiday a handful of years ago with Cameron Diaz and Jack Black, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. There are home exchange platforms out there and they have their own place, but we're certainly stealing that idea from them because I think that's a wonderful experience to add to our community and to really let our co owners experience the entire network of our properties and To build on that experience that we're trying to deliver on. Second is certainly the environmental angle. And I mentioned in one of my LinkedIn posts that we're trying to build Luxara the right way right from the start. That comes with our environmental commitments. And one of the biggest ideas, I think, with co-ownership is certainly increasing the occupancy of the existing properties. So by creating these co-ownership opportunities and by making sure that all of our assets remain in the rental pool for short-term rentals and that we're attracting guests to stay in our properties versus forcing additional development that comes with ecosystem destruction, deforestation, and so on and so forth. We're doing our small part in trying to preserve the nature and the communities that we operate in. We certainly go beyond that by trying to partner with local vendors, trying to partner with properties that are built in an eco-friendly way that are using things like solar panels and other energy saving systems. And of course, we have our 2% pledge, where 2% of all the revenue that we generate as Luxara is contributed to the local nonprofits in the areas where we operate to fund things like the preservation of those areas, fund education, and fund other programs for the local communities where we operate in. And third is the liquidity. One of the largest problems with any type of luxury real estate ownership and even fractional real estate ownership through a platform like Picasso is the liquidity of that investment. So by having a network and a community of like-minded co-owners, we believe that we can solve the liquidity problem by accessing that network. It is notoriously difficult and time consuming to sell a lot of these properties, especially in the ultra-luxury segment. And that's just the nature of the business because those properties don't churn very quickly. So we're building this internal network and a platform around it to facilitate a quick, transparent sale of your unit to a different investor in our network. No months of waiting, no real estate commissions, no headache. Liquidity is freedom, and we're building that right into the DNA of our company and our platform. So where is all this going? Well, right now we have our proof of concept property in Costa Rica, Vista Bahia, that we're actively syndicating. We are closing the deal on our flagship property in Canmore, Alberta. Then again, we're actively syndicating to investors right now. And we're very keenly doing our research and doing our due diligence and building the frameworks to expand across the Canadian Rockies into BC potentially, and then setting our sights onto that international expansion. We're going to start with Portugal. We already have some feelers for properties out there and doing some initial market research. We're also looking at Spain as our next market. And after our little family trip to Abu Dhabi and Dubai earlier this year, I think there's also a really tremendous opportunity in the Middle East, whether it's in UAE or some other market around there. But there's a bigger vision at play. Luxara becomes a platform for intelligent co-ownership of any asset, not just real estate. Villas, yachts, planes, private islands, impact projects, really anything where traditional ownership model no longer makes sense. Because once you build the infrastructure for trust, transparency, and community, you can apply it infinitely. We're not just using technology to build a business, we're using technology to democratize access to extraordinary experiences. We're creating a community of dreamers who believe that luxury and access to paradise isn't just for the ultra-wealthy. It's for anyone who's dreaming big and willing to think differently about ownership. That's the hustle, that's the mission, that's the legacy. If you're listening to this and thinking, I want to be part of something like this, we certainly welcome you. Check us out at luxara.ca. Even if you don't intend on investing anything right now, just join us, be part of the community, see what we're building, see how we're innovating. We always welcome any feedback, of course. And for those of you building something on your own, working on your own dream, remember this. You don't need a perfect plan. You need a clear vision, a dedication to show up every day, and the courage to sprint through the door when the opportunity knocks. Nothing is ever easy, and I do want to give you a real unfiltered look on the roadblocks that we faced up to this point. Next week we're getting real honest about the roadblocks from the $250,000 legal quotes that almost stocked me in my tracks to the securities challenges, to the legal hurdles, the tax structuring, everything that made me doubt that this was ever possible. Building a business is a journey of a thousand steps, and very rarely that journey is in a straight line. This is certainly one of those journeys that took a lot of turns up to now, and I know it will take a thousand different turns before we're done with it. If you want to support the hustle, whether it's mine or somebody else's, I ask you that you lend them that helping hand. I ask you that you pay that forward. We're building this community together. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next week.