We spoke earlier this month with a reader (a doctor from North Carolina) who joined BelleHavens about 18 months ago, and who shared with us his due diligence work – his level of research was very impressive.

Over two hours, we talked about his thinking and analysis – everything from home size and locations, to sales tactics of the clubs, to the business models, to the brand of soap in the homes, to whether he could give some of his allotted time to his parents to use.

In the end though, his short list was driven by a couple of key criteria—no transfer fee that netted an automatic loss, a desirable club location close to his home, and strong asset protection. He eliminated clubs that kept 20% of his deposit – he felt that this was too steep a cost even for a lifestyle investment. After an initial pass with the remaining clubs that met the basic criteria, he created a short-list of two clubs.

He then did a very thorough side-by-side comparison, staying in a home owned by each club, meeting the founders and executive teams, and even doing some independent web-based and telephone fact-finding on those individuals.

In the end he chose BelleHavens, based on his confidence that they could execute on the hospitality side of the business, combined with their unique business model – one that holds all the real estate in a separate member-owned entity, so that membership deposits are secured by property that is owned without any debt.

Helium’s take:

We will profile the BelleHavens model in more detail later this week – it’s a little more complicated than most (and there are pros and cons) – but it passed the rigorous scrutiny of this reader and his lawyer. But more importantly, this confirms what we have been saying: you need to decide what is important to you (philosophy, risk, size of club, location, you name it), and then begin to match the clubs to that. Our data and analysis should make it easier.