Meet Stacey Osorio of Notestone Reserve

Today we’d like to introduce you to Stacey Osorio.

Hi Stacey, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
There are properties that look like opportunities from the start. Notestone was not one of those.

When my dad, Mark, first heard about the land, it had been sitting idle for years. Four cabins on 14 acres in the Hocking Hills, all of them long past habitable. The drives were overgrown. The structures were occupied mostly by wildlife. There was a quonset hut at the entrance. The whole place had the quality of something that had been forgotten.

My dad had owned long-term rentals in the Franklin County area for years, but short-term rentals were never part of the plan. Then this property came his way, technically off market and about to be listed, and he called me. We drove down on a Tuesday afternoon and were in contract by Wednesday.

I can tell you the exact moment I understood why. It was the land itself. Fourteen acres, a pond, mature trees, and the kind of quiet that southeastern Ohio does better than almost anywhere else within a few hours of Columbus. The cabins were a problem. Problems have solutions. What you cannot manufacture is ground like that, the kind of place where you see a kid fishing at a pond and know immediately that a core memory is forming.

The tiny homes and glass homes came later, each one a different way for more people to experience what the place was becoming. Ten units total now: four cabins named for novelists, four tiny homes named for poets, and two mirrored glass homes named for the nature writers who thought the woods were worth paying attention to. It’s a small thing, a bit of order we put on what could have just been a numbered grid. But it’s ours, the way the whole property is ours.

So is the family that runs it. My brother and his business partner are involved. My older sister Sara manages our finances and shares the day-to-day with me, which is the only reason I ever have a day off. My twin sister is an investor. My younger sister and mom have been the kind of supporters who don’t get enough credit. My dad is the reason any of it started. I handle the guest-facing side: communication, reservations, cleaning, maintenance, marketing. All of it, every day.

Guests come here and sit at the fire longer than they planned. They sleep without an alarm. They leave saying it was exactly what they needed, and then they book again. That’s what we drove down on a Tuesday for, even when we didn’t have the words for it yet.

We still have work to do. The grounds keep improving. That part doesn’t stop.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
What we were not prepared for was how much stood between that idea and a functioning property.

We started by making the land navigable again. Then we raised all four original cabins and added walkout lower levels, taking each from a one-bedroom loft to a three-level structure with real square footage for families. Stowe went first. We stripped it back to the logs and the roof and rebuilt everything inside from scratch: new electrical, new plumbing, new layout, covered deck, fire pit. The plan was to use Stowe as the template and work through the rest.

Then we got to the rest. One had fire damage we hadn’t fully assessed. The logs on another were in worse shape than they’d looked from the outside. Two of the cabins were rebuilt from the ground up. We learned, slowly and expensively, what we didn’t know. Permitting. Contractor schedules. Four separate septic systems. Reworking a well. The things that are invisible in a finished property and completely visible when you’re trying to build one from nothing.

Everything took longer than expected. That’s not a complaint. It’s just how building works, and probably how it always has.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Notestone Reserve?
Notestone Reserve is a family-owned short-term rental property on 14 acres in Laurelville, Ohio, about twenty minutes from Old Man’s Cave. We operate ten units across three distinct types, and the mix is intentional: four tiny homes for couples and solo travelers, two mirrored glass homes for two, and four cabins that sleep six and welcome dogs.

The units are named on a system. The tiny homes carry the names of poets: Frost, Hughes, Yeats, Whitman. The glass homes are named for nature writers: Muir and Thoreau. The cabins are named for novelists: Austen, Hemingway, Sherwood, Stowe. It’s a small thing, but it shapes how we think about each space. A tiny home and a cabin aren’t just different in size. They’re for different trips, different groups, different versions of what people need from a few days away.

Every unit has a private hot tub and a fire pit. The cabins have hot tubs, fire pits, full kitchens, multiple bedrooms across three levels, and two full bathrooms. The glass homes put three walls of floor-to-ceiling mirrored glass between you and the forest, one-way during the day so you see out and no one sees in. The tiny homes are smaller on square footage and direct about it, but they don’t cut corners on the parts that matter.

What sets us apart is harder to inventory. Part of it is the shared game room: an 85-inch Smart TV, pool table, foosball, arcade machines, a racing game, an outdoor playground, and enough board games to fill a rainy afternoon. Every guest on the property has access to it, which means a family in a cabin and a couple in a tiny home end up sharing the same common space if they want to. That doesn’t happen at most properties.

Part of it is who we are as hosts. We’re not a management company. We’re the family that built this place from the ground up, and we’re the ones you’re dealing with when you book, when you check in, and if something needs to be handled during your stay. My sister Sara and I run day-to-day operations together. We read the messages, we know the property, and we notice when something could be better.

We’re particular about who the property is for. Couples looking for a few days away from the noise. Families who want to hand the kids a fishing rod and watch what happens. Friend groups who need space to actually spread out. We’re not set up for parties or bachelor weekends, and we’re straightforward about that. The guests who fit tend to stay longer than they planned and book again before they’ve finished unpacking at home.

That repeat-guest rate is the thing we’re most proud of, honestly. It tells us the property is doing what we built it to do.

Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
Don’t try to do it alone, and be honest about what you’re actually good at.

That lesson is easier to learn when the people around you happen to have exactly the skills the project needs. My dad has spent years flipping houses, so he understood construction sequencing, contractor relationships, and how to look at a structure and know what it was actually going to take. My brother owns a painting company, which meant every finish detail on the property went through someone who does this professionally. My sister Sara is an accountant who manages our finances at a level that would cost us significantly more to outsource. I’ve flipped houses and managed long-term rentals, so I came in understanding both the renovation side and what a guest actually needs once the build is done.

None of that was planned. We didn’t assemble a team with complementary skills. We’re just a family where those skills happened to exist, and the property gave us a reason to use them together.

What we learned is that the project gets better every time someone operates in their actual lane instead of everyone weighing in on everything. When Sara flags a financial decision, we listen differently than we would to a general opinion. When my brother says something about a surface or a finish, that’s not a preference, that’s expertise. Knowing the difference between someone’s area and someone’s opinion turns out to matter a lot when you’re making decisions under pressure with real money on the line.

The lesson isn’t really about family. It’s about knowing what you know, being honest about what you don’t, and finding people you trust to cover the gap. We just happened to find those people at Thanksgiving.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://notestonereserve.com
• Instagram: @notestonereserve