Hotel Investing at EOS – Jonathan Wang (EP.506)
Episode publishedPodcast: Capital Allocators – Inside th...Capital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment Industry
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When COVID hit, which was a crazy time for hotels, we were running 95% occupancy and then the state mandated us to send everyone home and no one knew when they were ever gonna reopen or if we were ever gonna leave our homes again. There's a hotel at the time. Once Florida lifted the ban on travel and they capped occupancy at 50%, what we saw at our other assets in the market was that we could fill up to max occupancy at rates that were higher than they were before the world shut down basically the next day. We had this unbelievable data about how demand was gonna be for leisure assets that you
I'm Ted Seides, and this is Capital Allocators. My guest on today's show is Jonathan Wang, the founder and CEO of EOS Investors, where he's built three real estate investment platforms totaling $2,000,000,000 in assets under management across the hotel and residential sectors. Jonathan also created a wholly owned hotel management company that oversees 60 properties for the EOS funds and five core partners. Our conversation covers Jonathan's path to hotel investing and EOS' hotel investment process across market selection, property type, underwriting, vertically integrated operations, and manag
Jonathan, great to see you.
Great to see you, Ted. Thank you for having me.
Why don't you take me back to the early upbringing influences that led into the path you're on today?
I grew up in Los Angeles, only child. I described myself as a late bloomer. I was a shy kid on the weekends. I used to spend time at home with my parents, play cards, mainly gin and hearts, which I am now trying to impart on my kids today. I loved basketball, which was my focus for most of my upbringing more than school or anything else. I was entering my senior year of high school, which was an important year for recruiting, and I got injured, which was tough at the time. But in hindsight, was probably one of the most pivotal moments in my life because I started focusing on academics more. My
So if you take a step back
on what it was about hotels that excited you.
I realized early on that I was curious about everything. I'd never wanted to be too focused on any one thing. I describe hotels as my window into the world. We have to think about everything that's going on whether it's international relations or demographic preferences or the price of gas or the way populations are moving within cities or how travel segmenting or how technology's becoming an intermediary to the booking process. We get to think about everything as a part of it. The nice thing about hotels is that you can relate to everybody about them. Everyone stays at hotels. Everyone has pr
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