Half the fun of watching the Kentucky Derby is watching the people: the swells who pack Millionaire’s Row atop Churchill Downs’ grandstand, the ladies in their hats, of course, and the visible tension on the faces of the thoroughbreds’ “connections”—their owners, trainers, and horse-world hangers-on.

If you’re a real-estate minded New Yorker like me, you’re also probably thinking, “Where do all those people stay?”

That’s where Dana Marcum comes in. The owner of Event Home Leasing , Marcum has been arranging short-term home rentals for Derby-weekend visitors to Louisville since the mid-1990s, and making sure her corporate and private customers have everything they need, from caterers to tee-times at local golf clubs.

The full Derby experience begins on Thursday before the Saturday race, when the weekend starts with a round of benefit galas, cocktail parties and old-fashioned carousing in the restaurants and nightclubs along Bardstown Road southeast of Louisville’s city center. During the day, says Marcum, “the men like to play golf and the women like to shop.”

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