Your School
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Your House
🚩
Your Legacy
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Your School 🚩 Your House 🚩 Your Legacy 🚩
Fan Houses™ turn the pride, traditions, and memories people carry long after college into distinctive vacation rentals built around the reasons they keep coming back.
For investors and property owners, this creates a compelling opportunity to broaden your portfolio with a differentiated edge:
…highly desirable, ready-to-rent properties with a built-in story that passionate guests feel from the moment they check in, and continue to talk about long after they leave.
It’s not just another listing, it’s your stake in a place that continuously brings people back to an experience they love.
College towns create unique demand.
32*
*Number of markets analyzed shows a proven pattern, not a one-off trend for one school or one town.
455%*
*Game-weekend RevPAR lift.
Peak weekends can create outsized pricing power for the right property..
26%*
*Of annual market revenue generated by just seven or eight home-game weekends. A handful of key weekends can drive a meaningful share of yearly performance.
90%+
Occupancy on the strongest game weekends in many markets studied…when demand compresses, distinctive properties have the most to gain.
The opportunity isn’t the same everywhere, and that’s why every Fan House™ starts with market research.
Our Market Insights Process is designed to study guest profiles, amenity expectations, local competition, booking patterns, and what will make a property stand out before the design even begins.
What are fan Houses™?
Not just another themed rental.
A Fan House™ isn’t created by filling a property with school colors, logos, and memorabilia…it’s designed with a story and built around an experience. All with your investment in mind.
Before starting design, Rainie begins by asking deeper questions:
What makes this university meaningful?
What traditions do people carry with them?
Who is traveling here, and why?
How will they gather?
What will make the experience memorable enough to talk about after they leave?
The result is a property that feels connected to its place without becoming themed (or predictable!).
Think: playful nostalgia combined with thoughtful storytelling and comfortable gathering spaces that are FULL of unexpected details.
The little things that make guests feel like someone thought of everything, a signature of all our designs at RGI.
It’s your home field advantage.
Great design starts when you know who you’re designing for. So before the design even begins, we look at the market.
Your market.
College-town demand can be powerful, but it isn’t identical from one university to the next.
Each Fan House™ starts with research into the property, location, target guest, competitive landscape, and opportunities within the market.
We consider:
Who’s coming
Why they’re traveling
Who they’re traveling with
What guests value
Which amenities influence the experience
Where competing properties are falling short
Where thoughtful design can create a stronger reason to choose your property
Data gives our creative work a unique starting point.
Instead of designing from instinct alone, we combine market intelligence with our hospitality-minded approach to shape a property around both the people staying there and the goals of the person investing in it.
How does it work?
Fan Houses™ turn a promising property into a fully designed, guest-ready destination, handling the strategy, design, installation, and launch along the way.
01
Research
& Strategy
We study the market, guest, university culture, property opportunity, and competitive landscape before establishing the design direction.
02
Concept & Storytelling
We uncover the traditions, personality, history, and meaningful details that can give the property a story of its own.
03
Interior
Design
Space planning, furnishings, lighting, textiles, color, artwork, styling, and one-of-a-kind details come together around a cohesive creative concept.
04
Your
Playbook
Every room is thoughtfully planned so the experience works beyond the photographs. Furnishings, amenities, guest essentials, storage, and hospitality details are considered as part of the whole.
05
Procurement
& Installation
We source, order, coordinate, install, and style the pieces that bring your Fan House™ to life.
06
Touchdown!
Professional photography, videography, property storytelling, and launch-ready content help introduce the finished experience to the market.
★★★★★
“Rainie is one of those people who is supremely gifted at creating an inviting space. She able to take a room and make it truly instagram worthy. Plus, she is a blast to work with! I highly recommend her.”
Jessica Blad
The story behind fan houses™
Created by the designer who’s thought of every little thing…
Rainie Graham has spent her career creating spaces around the way people actually live, gather, host, and connect.
But Fan Houses™ also comes from somewhere much more personal.
Rainie grew up hearing stories from her dad’s years traveling from university to university as a recruiter.
Through his stories, she saw how deeply people stay connected to the schools, traditions, teams, memories, and communities that helped shape them.
That idea never really left her, and today, it shows up in the way she designs.
Rainie doesn’t stop at making a space beautiful, but instead thinks way ahead of the game…
She thinks about what happens once people arrive and where everyone will gather
About what the kids will do while the adults settle in
About what makes the kitchen work for a group
And about what happens after the game…what are the little things someone’s going to photograph, talk about, or remember six months later
It’s the same instinct behind the scavenger hunts, playlists, gathering spaces, hospitality touches, and unexpected moments she already builds into her vacation rental work.
Fan Houses™ brings all of that together: interior design, hospitality, storytelling, market insight, and Rainie’s lifelong understanding of why belonging matters.
Your Questions, Answered
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Fan Houses™ are designed for investors, property owners, alumni, parents, and university-connected partners who see opportunity in a college town they already care about.
Alumni and university-connected investors
Vacation rental owners and operators
Real estate investors
Property owners
Developers and builders
Hospitality partners
Families looking for their own place to return to while generating income when they’re away
You may already own a vacation rental you want to reposition, be considering a second home near a university, or be exploring a short-term rental investment in a market that brings people back year after year.
The best fit is someone who wants a property with a stronger point of view than the typical college-town rental, one rooted in the school, community, and traditions guests already have a connection to.
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A Fan House™ starts with the market and the guest, not a decorating theme.
Before design begins, Rainie looks at why people travel to the university market, who they travel with, what comparable short-term rentals are offering, which amenities matter, and where there may be an opportunity to create something guests are more likely to notice and remember.
That research then shapes the design, storytelling, furnishings, gathering spaces, hospitality details, and launch strategy for the property.
The result is a college-town vacation rental that feels connected to its location without relying on predictable school colors and memorabilia. It has its own story, its own personality, and a clear reason to stand apart from nearby listings. Rainie’s Fan Houses™ process extends from research and design development through procurement, installation, photography, and launch preparation.
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Many can be, but the opportunity varies significantly from one university market to another, and it’s our job to help you figure out the best market for your Fan House™.
Recent AirDNA research analyzed 32 SEC and Big Ten short-term rental markets and found that home-game weekends accounted for as much as 26% of annual STR revenue in some of the smallest college towns. In 22 of the 32 markets studied, home-game weekend occupancy exceeded 80%, and RevPAR increased as much as 455% compared with a typical fall weekend in the strongest market studied. Larger and more diversified cities generally saw smaller gains, which is why the university alone isn’t enough to determine whether a property is a strong investment opportunity.
A successful college-town vacation rental still depends on the individual market, property, competition, regulations, guest demand, and investment strategy. That’s why Fan Houses™ starts with research before the design direction is established.
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Every Fan House™ begins with market research designed to understand both the investment landscape and the people who will actually stay there.
Depending on the property and market, Rainie’s research looks at short-term rental performance, average daily rates, occupancy, comparable properties, guest profiles, feeder markets, university events, amenity expectations, competitive gaps, and the design features influencing stronger-performing rentals.
The goal isn’t to copy what the highest-earning property is already doing. It’s to understand what guests value, what the market may be missing, and where thoughtful design can give your property its own competitive position.
That information becomes the foundation for the Fan House™ concept, amenities, layout, design story, and guest-focused details. Rainie’s sample market-analysis process goes as deep as guest personas, competitive property performance, amenity strategy, booking drivers, and market-specific design recommendations.
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Not necessarily.
You may come to Rainie with an existing vacation rental, a property you’re preparing to purchase, or simply a university market where you believe a Fan House™ belongs.
If you’re still exploring the investment, the first conversation can help clarify the concept, the market opportunity, and the information that will matter once a specific property is identified. If you already own the property, Rainie can begin looking at how its location, layout, guest capacity, amenities, and design potential align with the larger Fan Houses™ vision.
Either way, you don’t need to arrive with every detail figured out. You need a market you believe in and a reason to start exploring what could be possible there.
ready to create your own fan house™?
Ready to create your own Fan House™?
Your school already has the traditions and your future guests already have the connection.
Let’s create the place they can’t wait to come back to again!
Tell us a little about the university, market, or property you have in mind, and we’ll start exploring what a Fan House™ could become there.