March 2020 changed everything for GoForth founders, Brandon Dale and Adam Capes.

Brandon watched the private funding for his Atlanta-based real estate investment company evaporate as investors got spooked. Adam's business, helping charities raise money through luxury travel and live auctions, died overnight when the world stopped traveling and gathering.

"COVID wasn't friendly to either one of us," Brandon says.

Both men knew luxury real estate. Brandon had spent years flipping homes and managing properties. Adam co-founded Equity Estates in 2006. Two years later, he hired Brandon as fund manager. They worked together for eight years before going their separate ways in 2016. 

But now, in the spring of 2020, they were both starting over. 

They weren't the only ones rethinking luxury real estate. Most vacation homeowners used their properties only four or five weeks a year. Even wealthy buyers were questioning whether millions spent on an empty home made sense.

Brandon had been drawing fractional home ownership models for years, trying to devise a solution that would work for both investors and owners. "I left the industry in 2016, which I knew was going to be temporary," he explains. "But I've got stacks of paper just drawing out different models, trying to figure out how it works, so investors and owners are happy, but you can still run a business. I never really figured it out until I reconnected with Adam.” 

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Then a former Equity Estates member tipped off Adam about a Danish company called 21-5. The model worked with 21 families sharing 5 vacation homes. Adam researched it and started building the company as My5Homes. Then he called Brandon to join him..

Brandon said yes almost immediately. They had history, complementary skills, and nothing to lose. 

And they had Atlanta.

Both had chosen the city decades earlier. Adam moved here thirty years ago, drawn by what he saw as an amazing city for business. Brandon came twenty-three years ago to raise his family. They knew the business community and had deep roots.

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Now, Atlanta would make their model possible. “You can fly direct to South America, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa,” Adam explains. “Every major city routes through Atlanta.” The city sits within a few hours' drive of luxury destinations where GoForth now has properties. And Atlanta's wealth and business community gave them the market they needed.

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Their dynamic made it work. Adam throws ideas out, Brandon filters them. Together, they have more than forty years of experience in luxury real estate, hospitality, and property management. Adam is the visionary who co-founded Equity Estates and pioneered luxury fractional ownership before most understood the concept, and Brandon is the operator who ran funds and handled property management.

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"He's throwing things out and I'm swatting them away most of the time," Brandon jokes.

The chemistry worked. That's why Brandon didn't hesitate when Adam called.

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21 problems

They started by replicating the Danish model: 21 families sharing 5 homes. The model was successful in Europe, where luxury travelers gravitate toward Tuscany, Spain, and Greece.

But Americans were different. 

"Some people would say, 'I like two of those properties but the other three I'm not interested in,'" Adam recalls. One wanted Crested Butte, another wanted Aruba, someone else wanted Chicago. Getting 21 people to agree on anything proved impossible. After a year and hundreds of confused prospects, they knew the Danish model wouldn't work. 

“I knew there was something here," Adam admits. "But there were times when I was like, this model is way too hard to get to 21 families.”

Then Deer Valley rewrote the model.

Brandon remembers standing on a vacant lot at Deer Valley, staring at renderings of a 10-year development. They were selling a vision that wouldn't exist for two years. "We were at a little trailer on this huge patch of dirt, and nothing else existed," he says. "It was just renderings, and people were pointing out where certain things are going to be."

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While negotiating the purchase, developers told them their model looked like a timeshare. They couldn't have twenty-one owners. Only four were allowed. They already had four buyers lined up.

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"We were like, OK, we have four. Let's just do it," Adam recalls.

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"The more we thought about it, we started talking it through. It's like, wait, this actually makes more sense," Brandon says. "And it's easier to explain to people."

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The industry standard was eight owners per home. Four meant better availability and more exclusivity.

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Selling dirt and dreams

The pitch to those four buyers was simple: instead of spending millions on a luxury vacation home you'd use four weeks a year, split it with three other families. GoForth would handle the legal setup, property management, rentals, everything that makes second home ownership frustrating.

"We're just putting together groups of up to four families to share the home, so they don't have to go find them," Adam explains. "Because the problem is most people don't want to have to sell their friends on this.”

Most second homeowners use their property 4 to 5 weeks a year. "Why not split the cost with three other people?" Brandon asks.

The fourth buyer of the Deer Valley home was an attorney. They thought he'd buy one property, maybe use it occasionally, and that would be that.

Today, he owns five homes with GoForth.

“He was the fourth guy we signed up," Adam says. And now he has made significant returns on paper. Brandon jokes: "In his head somewhere, he's thinking, I could just live in my GoForth homes all year round and sell my primary home."

They never expected anyone to buy more than one interest. But this attorney revealed something: people wanted lifestyle and investment. 

That opened a new market.

Four Seasons for a fraction

GoForth started as a lifestyle company. But early owner success pushed them to evolve.

They added branded residences like Four Seasons, Dolce & Gabbana, and St. Regis, where entry points typically hit $4-5 million. Through GoForth, those properties become accessible at lower price points, offering "investment opportunities that people just couldn't get into otherwise," Brandon explains. A $5 million Four Seasons residence costs $1.25 million per share.

Now, lifestyle and smart luxury investment are equally important. Even owners who could afford to buy outright choose GoForth for different reasons.

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“The lack of frustration in the whole process from finding a property to negotiating to buying it to the legal setup to figuring out who's going to manage the property, how am I going to rent it?” Brandon says. “All that kind of stuff. It's just a pain in the ass to be honest with you for a lot of people.”

The relationship rule

But removing frustration isn't enough. One principle guides everything. 

"We wrote down very early: we will always have a relationship with every owner," Brandon says. "I know when we worked together in a previous business, as we grew, we didn't know all the owners. Looking back, there were some missed opportunities there."

They host events twice a month in Atlanta, tapping into the city's business community and CEO networks. They know every owner by name. Intimacy is the strategy.

By 2030, they see hundreds of luxury realtors referring business, thousands of owners, and a massive property portfolio. But even with those big numbers, they refuse to lose the personal touch.

Adam envisions nomadic living between fractional homes as travel gets easier. "People don't want to be in whatever destination where they live when it's hurricane season or wintertime and too cold.”

Every time they add a property, "it gets better for everybody," Adam says. "Not just the people buying in."

Two Atlanta luxury real estate entrepreneurs who lost everything in March 2020 are just getting started.

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