Photo: Andrew Kung
She's the writer who couldn't resist buying a Detroit triplex for $17,000 in 2014 because she saw where the city was headed. The host whose Paris dinner parties bring together strangers who leave as friends as they rush to catch the metro before it closes. The hospitality pioneer who started renting her home before home-sharing had a name.
Dana McMahan, Elle Fera Fera, is an experience designer who sees stories waiting to be told—and then brings them to life.
We're switching to third person here because that makes the impressive bits a little easier.
The Foundation: Pioneering Hospitality Before It Had a Name
Dana started renting her Louisville home for Derby weekend in 2007, before home-sharing existed as an industry. While people called her crazy for handing over keys to strangers, Dana was pioneering what would become the modern hospitality economy. By the time tech caught up to her vision, she'd already mastered the art of creating spaces where people genuinely want to stay.
That instinct for seeing potential others miss would define everything that followed.
Building Expertise Through Experience
Dana defined her approach to hospitality through documenting travel to nearly 40 countries absorbing what makes experiences unforgettable — from Arctic Circle extremes to Sahara desert camps, Himalayan guesthouses to Maldivian resorts. She's learned as much from the opulence of Parisian palace hotels as from the singular perfection of fire-fried noodles in a Bangkok back alley.
Along the way she discovered that text and textile share the same Latin root — texere, meaning to weave — which may be why creating stories and creating spaces have always felt like the same work to her. This foundation of understanding what works (and why) shaped everything she touched.
Her travel and design expertise has been featured in national publications. Select credits include Architectural Digest, Washington Post, Condé Nast Traveler, Esquire, CNN, NBC, Real Simple, and Apartment Therapy. When Dana creates something, whether it's a story on Detroit's bourbon boom for Condé Nast Traveler, a Victorian kitchen that ends up on cooking shows, or an Airbnb that USA Today calls one of America's best, it's because she understands the difference between pretty and powerful. Pretty is surface. Powerful changes how people feel.
From Recognition to Results
For 14 years, Dana shaped Louisville's culinary landscape as the Courier Journal's dining columnist, earning formal recognition from Mayor Craig Greenberg as "a beloved and influential voice" whose work "transcended local boundaries." When United Airlines needed someone to host a travel documentary about Louisville, they chose her. She creates Paris experiences because she understands at an intrinsic level what transforms a trip into a story worth telling.
But Dana's expertise is manifest in what she's built: properties that perform.
The Property Transformation Track Record
Over the past decade, Dana has transformed multiple properties from underperformers to revenue generators. Her own Old Louisville Victorian had languished on the market for a year before she bought it and spent seven years transforming it room by room, then got under contract (with multiple offers) in 34 hours at triple the purchase price. A 16-unit multi-family achieved a 77% increase in net operating income through her design approach. Her transformations like a 49-day complete gut renovation and six-day furnished transformation have been featured in national publications, and a Bertazzoni campaign, proving that confident design choices create measurable results. View the complete transformation portfolio →
What This Means for Property Investors
Dana transforms underperforming properties by understanding what makes people willing to pay more, stay longer, and become the word-of-mouth marketing that fills calendars.
In a world where everyone has access to the same contractors and materials, Pinterest boards and AI tools, competitive advantage comes from confident creative decision-making. Dana provides the sophisticated aesthetic judgment and revenue-focused strategy that transforms generic properties into destinations people actively choose. She has spent her career paying attention to what makes spaces and experiences unforgettable, then applying that knowledge to help properties perform at their highest potential.
Now she makes that expertise available to other property investors who want to compete on experience rather than price alone, and to homeowners who want their property's story told in a way that makes buyers fall in love before they even walk through the door.
