Connie Wilson and Larry Vermeulen
Pacaso Inc is a Delaware-based real estate holdings company founded in 2020, (and doing business as Landholdings, Inc. until October of that year). They have raised a billion dollars in funding from angel investors and venture capitalists. Pacaso creates a Limited Liability Company (LLC) to purchase a home in a desirable vacation destination, then sells âsharesâ in that LLC, claiming that the shareholders are âfractional ownersâ of the property.
Through this legal sleight-of-hand they claim that they are exempt from all regulations pertaining to time-shares or short-term vacation rentals. In fact, when the city attorney found that their fractional ownership model was just a time-share with a different name, Pacaso filed suit in the U.S. District Court of Northern California, arguing among other things, that the city of St. Helena does not have the authority to regulate the kinds of uses that occur within its boundari