If you’re planning a family vacation or a solo getaway, you’ve probably considered using a home-sharing service like Airbnb or HomeAway. But have you heard of ThirdHome? This luxury home-sharing club offers travelers 90-95% savings compared to traditional rental programs and you get the chance to stay in some of the world’s most exclusive properties. This membership service has a difficult entry requirement, but for those who have access is it really worth it? Read on to find out.
What is ThirdHome?
ThirdHome.com is a membership based luxury home sharing club that provides members with a unique way to experience the world of luxury travel. Each member who joins must list a pre-approved short term rental property for a minimum of 2 weeks within a 24 month period. Once their pre-approved property is listed they gain access to a large database of homes they can book for a vacation. Registered members are granted exclusive access to an expansive collection of beautiful destination homes around the globe, ranging from ski chalets in Austria and beach villas in Greece to glamorous mansion retreats in Mexico and opulent penthouses in New York City. There are definitely some jaw-dropping homes listed on this site! Members can search for properties via location or dates available.
How does ThirdHome work?
With ThirdHome, you can travel the world without needing to do a direct exchange for your property by using their unique system where you earn keys for the weeks your property is available. As you begin accumulating these keys, you can use them as currency to explore thousands of properties around the globe!
When you join ThirdHome the property you list is assigned a “key value” which determines the key range you will earn when someone books your property. For example, one of our properties was given a “key value” of 2-6 keys. That key value range is then demonstrated on a calendar where you list your property availability with busy peaks earning the highest of your key range and slower periods earning the lower end. The beautiful part is you earn the “key value” on weeks you make your property available whether they book or NOT if you give availability dates more than 90 days in advance. For last minute availability less than 90 days out you can still earn keys, but the property must book. As you gain keys you gain the ability to book other properties on the site. So the more weeks you allow your property to be used by ThirdHome.com members the more options you have to book vacations or luxury homes that are valued at a higher key level than your own. The search feature on the website allows you to search by date and destination. You can also save properties you love and be notified if they add available dates to their calendar.
When you book a property you pay in keys and then an additional fee of $495 to $1395 for the week, not per night. This fee goes to ThirdHome itself, not the owner of the listing. Some listings, especially at hotels (Ritz Carlton Club listings is one we see this) do have additional daily resort fees you should be on the look our for as they do add up. But, we chose to avoid those properties to keep our expenses lower. You can expect a 90-95% savings compared to rental rates on Airbnb or VRBO! I also noticed you can find amazing deals right at the front or tail end of summer.
Another perk, is for each week you book your place you earn what is called a Keyless Token. This keyless token allows you to book last minute travel (within 60 days) on many properties without having to use any of your keys.
How Do You Qualify to Join?
Here is the catch. ThirdHome is a membership based club that requires you list a home worth over $500,000 to join. I know this eliminates a lot of people, but for those who have Airbnbs or VRBOs that qualify this program is truly incredible. When you apply the team will look at your property and decide if it is eligible for membership. There is also a $295 annual membership fee.
What We’ve Booked with ThirdHome
We just joined ThirdHome in 2022 and already can’t wait to go to the properties we have booked this summer. With our 2 properties listed on the site we quickly acquired 16 keys and 1 keyless token. For this summer we booked 2 incredible properties using 8 of our keys:
Catskills, New York
For this property we spent just 2 keys and $695 for the entire week. You can see the full listing here: Catskill ThirdHome Listing! Had we booked on Airbnb we would have been charged $12,000. We can’t wait for our upcoming stay and will share our trip on our social media channels!
Martha’s Vineyard
For this property, we spent 6 keys and $995 for the entire week with zero additional resort fees! You can see the full listing here: Martha Vineyard ThirdHome Listing. This is a huge savings as the property is located at the Winnetu Oceanside Resort and includes all of the hotel amenities. It would have cost us roughly $7,500 had we not used ThirdHome.
With both properties we were able to invite friends to join us allowing us to split the cost even further for each stay.
We can’t wait to see what we properties we will find to utilize our remaining keys!
Are There Any Cons?
You are definitely losing potential revenue (just for the weeks you allocate your property to ThirdHome) if you typically use your additional property as an Airbnb, but we believe the opportunity to explore new locations is worth it. Also, while the site has 1,000s of listings all over the world, it is nowhere near as expansive as hotel searches, so you need to be a flexible traveler. If you are traveling on specific dates there will be tons of incredible places to choose from, but maybe not at the specific destination you were hoping for.
Is It Worth It?
We just joined the ThirdHome club, so time will truly tell, but so far we are thrilled with the vacations we have been able to book and are excited for all of the future possibilities. We believe the program allows you to easily do equal home trades, or you can save up keys and have the ability to stay at some pretty incredible places!
If you want list your property on ThirdHome and join the club use our referral link to earn 2 free keys: Jet Set Third Home Referral
