Home Team Luxury Rentals Review
A Clearwater, Florida luxury manager with a real published 15–22% fee and a 14-person leadership bench — but its next new market often launches as a templated landing page behind the same Tampa-area phone number.
Pros
- Publishes an actual fee range — 15–22% of rental revenue — on its own management page, with the first month’s commission waived for new owners, in a category where many competitors hide pricing behind a sales call
- Founded by two families (Elliott & Kylie Caldwell, Michael & Jill Elefante) who were self-managing short-term rental owners first — in Asheville, NC and Nashville/Gatlinburg/Fort Lauderdale — before building the company
- Unusually deep, named leadership bench for its size: 14 executives and VPs listed on its team page, including a dedicated COO, CRO, CMO, CFO, and separate VPs of Operations for the East and West regions
- A+ Better Business Bureau rating with a clean recent record — zero complaints closed in the past 12 months and only two total in three years, both answered
- Broad bundled service list — dynamic pricing, multi-channel distribution across Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com and Expedia, guest communication, maintenance coordination, and regulatory/compliance guidance — all under the single published fee
- Multiple named owner testimonials describe concrete performance gains after switching from a prior manager, including specific booking, occupancy, and rate increases
Cons
- Its widely repeated ‘560+ markets’ growth claim is a June 2025 press-release figure for markets newly added across four states in one expansion (346 in Florida alone) — not a running total of markets under active local management
- Opening the company’s own Naples, FL landing page directly turned up templated copy, a generic ‘all 411 vacation rental markets in Florida’ claim, no named local staff or office, and the same Clearwater/Tampa-area (727) phone number that appears sitewide rather than a Naples number
- No independent, owner-specific review trail exists to check against the company’s own testimonials page: Yelp and Trustpilot both blocked automated access during our research, and independent reviewer Fairly.com separately concluded there are “no reviews of the company on third-party websites from actual owners”
- The legal entity on file with the BBB is still “Home Team Vacation Rentals LLC,” registered June 6, 2022, even though the live site now markets exclusively under the newer “Home Team Luxury Rentals” name
- Leadership runs a cluster of adjacent, revenue-generating businesses under the same “Rise Collective” umbrella — including a property-sourcing and acquisition arm (BNB Turnkey, which states “we specialize in sourcing, designing, launching, and managing” investment properties), a construction arm, a lending arm, and a co-founder-run “Airbnb Investor Academy” course — worth asking directly how those relationships stay separate from unbiased management advice
Home Team Luxury Rentals is a full-service, luxury-only short-term rental manager headquartered in Clearwater, Florida, built by two investor families — Elliott and Kylie Caldwell and Michael and Jill Elefante — who each self-managed short-term rentals (Asheville, NC; Nashville and Gatlinburg, TN; Fort Lauderdale, FL) before founding the company. It operated for several years as Home Team Vacation Rentals before rebranding as Home Team Luxury Rentals, and now markets itself across all seven U.S. regions it defines, from New England to the Pacific Coast.
How it works for owners
Per its own management page, Home Team charges 15–22% of rental revenue, varying by property size, market, and operational complexity, and waives the first month’s commission for new owners — a real, published rate that not every full-service manager in this category discloses. The fee bundles six areas: revenue management (dynamic pricing, occupancy/ADR optimization), operations and guest experience (communication, cleaning coordination, maintenance oversight), marketing and distribution across Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com and Expedia, property setup and onboarding, financial reporting, and compliance/regulatory guidance. Leadership is unusually well-staffed for a company this size: its team page names 14 executives and VPs, including a COO, CRO, CMO, CFO, a VP of Finance, separate VPs of Operations for the East and West regions, and a VP of Brokerage. Its testimonials page features several named owners describing concrete gains after switching — Phil and Liz R. (Blue Ridge, GA) say they left a local company that charged higher fees; Pete B. says bookings, occupancy and rates all rose after switching, with reviews “100% Five Star”; Gerardo C. credits the design team with a room-conversion suggestion that boosted booking rates.
What we could verify
Home Team Vacation Rentals LLC — the legal entity on file ahead of the company’s rebrand — holds an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau but is not BBB-accredited; the BBB lists a business start date of June 6, 2022 and two complaints total over three years, both answered — one a guest lockout dispute booked through Marriott, one a guest maintenance/refund dispute — with zero complaints closed in the past 12 months. Third-party estimator Airbtics tracks 116 of the company’s Airbnb listings at a 4.9-star average, a $613 average daily rate, 63% occupancy, and roughly $94,278 in average annual revenue per listing — figures Airbtics itself labels estimates, not confirmed against Home Team’s internal numbers.
The headline growth claim flagged in our internal roster — “560+ markets” — checks out only as a June 2025 press release figure for markets newly added across four states in one expansion (346 in Florida alone, 111 in North Carolina, 54 in Arizona, 49 in South Carolina), not a running total of markets under active management. We tested what a new market actually looks like by opening the company’s own Naples, FL landing page directly: it uses templated copy (“all 411 vacation rental markets in Florida”), lists the same Clearwater/Tampa-area phone number (727) that appears on the homepage rather than a Naples number, and names no local Naples staff, office, or portfolio — confirming what a sibling review on this site’s Naples guide already flagged. We could not find an independent, owner-specific review trail to weigh against the company’s own testimonials: Yelp and Trustpilot both blocked automated access during our research, and independent reviewer Fairly.com reached the same conclusion, writing that “there are no reviews of the company on third-party websites from actual owners.” On the BiggerPockets investor forum, one experienced member’s only assessment was that Home Team doesn’t “appear to be anything special… just a PM that markets rentals” — a single anecdotal data point, not a pattern, but the only independent owner-community reaction we could locate.
How it compares to our top pick
Home Team’s published fee range and 14-person leadership bench are real differentiators in a category where most competitors hide pricing behind a sales call. But the gap between its national growth marketing and what actually shows up on a new city’s landing page is the thing to press on directly before signing — ask specifically which of its claimed markets have a local team versus a templated page. One Fine BnB publishes a flat 10% fee with no long-term contract, a simpler comparison point than Home Team’s 15–22% range. See how the rest of the field stacks up in our best Airbnb management companies ranking.
Bottom line
Home Team Luxury Rentals is a real, well-staffed operator with a published fee and genuine founder-operator history — not a shell. But its “560+ markets” growth story is PR framing for new-market entry, not existing local coverage, and its own Naples page shows what that entry looks like on the ground. Confirm a genuinely local presence — not just a landing page — before signing in any market outside its Florida core.