About | Start Building Wealth Today

A woman with blonde hair wearing a beige hat, blue blazer, black top, and grey pants, sitting on a beige chair in a bright, modern room with large windows.

HI, I’M KATIE!

Hospitality veteran and short-term rental expert turning vacation homes into wealth-building opportunities.

I love showing people that with the right strategy, your second home can become a powerful tool for building real wealth while creating more freedom and flexibility than the conventional approach ever could. This is not your typical real estate advice, and that’s the point. If you’re interested in building wealth differently, while enjoying your life today, you’re in the right place.

WORK WITH ME

We found a vacation home about three and a half hours outside of the city near Lake George. The difference in cost alone made it feel immediately more accessible, with home prices significantly lower than what we were seeing in New York City. What drew us in wasn’t just the price point, but the lifestyle it offered. Lake George had always been sentimentally meaningful to us, having gone camping there every summer since we started dating. We wanted a place where we could gather both sides of our family under one roof, spend summer nights around a fire pit, celebrate milestones—a place we could enjoy life without the city-sized limitations we’d grown so accustomed too.

We also hoped to offset some of our costs by renting it out when we weren’t there. What we didn’t expect was just how well that would work. Quickly we saw we weren’t just covering all of our costs, but actually turning a profit!

A year later, we did it again, buying a home that we planned to move into after we had finished caring for my mom. Once we saw that house booked every single weekend from May through November, that’s when I realized—this wasn’t a fluke; it was a strategy. We were building equity, owning appreciating assets, and creating income, all while having a place where we could vacation for free.

The truth is, the future isn’t guaranteed. I’ve seen first hand that we don’t all get those “golden years.” Buying my second home first became a way to hold both things at once: building for the future while fully living in the present.

My Story

For a long time, I believed owning a second home was something only “rich people” could do. It felt out of reach for me, one of those things you hear about and quietly dismiss with a “must be nice.” But in doing that, I was also telling myself it wasn’t an option for me, which meant I never stopped to ask a better question: how did they do it? Or more importantly, how could I?

At the same time, the reality was hard to ignore. Homeownership, especially in major cities, felt increasingly unattainable. After 6 years of living in London, my husband and I decided to move back to New York City to be closer to my family following my mom’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis at just 59 years old. It was a season of a lot of change. We had just had our daughter, were navigating a big move, and felt the weight of so many unknowns. More than anything, we craved simplicity and flexibility, which led us to rent back in Astoria, Queens, a neighborhood we had loved before, rather than rush into buying. Once we got here, we realized buying a comparable home to what we were renting would cost over $1 million. So we made an unconventional decision...

We bought our “second home” first.

A two-story house with brown and white exterior, large windows with warm light inside, a staircase leading to the front door, surrounded by trees, with string lights in the yard and a black vehicle parked nearby

At Second Home First, we help you make homeownership not only possible but profitable by turning a vacation home into a short-term rental that works for you. It’s about building wealth for tomorrow while creating a space for you and your loved ones to enjoy today.

If you’re ready to create financial freedom and the kind of lifestyle flexibility you’ve only dreamed of, we’re here to guide you every step of the way. You don’t have to feel stuck in a job you don’t love or stretch to the top of your budget just to buy a home. With the right strategy, your next home can cover its costs, build equity, generate income, and give you a place to vacation for free.