Join Big Mike for a no-holds-barred chat with Mike Stohler, Navy veteran, former commercial airline pilot, and co-founder of Gateway Private Equity Group. With a battle-tested portfolio of over 150 value-add units—from multifamily gems scooped during the 2008 crash to boutique hotels in the U.S. and beyond—Mike embodies the grit of turning setbacks into seven-figure wins.
From his small-town Indiana roots and early landlord fails in the pre-Google days to full-time investing by 2003, Mike reveals how he navigated market crashes, pivoted strategies, and uncovered untapped opportunities abroad. Facing U.S. hotel headwinds like soaring rates and labor costs, discover his bold shift to Spain’s Costa Brava—where low-financing deals and tax-smart structures deliver outsized returns. Tune in for raw insights on global diversification, contrarian plays, and building a “lifestyle investment” empire that lets investors vacation at their assets.If you’re ready to think beyond borders and crush cycles, this episode is your launchpad.
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE EPISODE
0:00 – Welcome to the BigMikeFund Podcast
0:19 – Guest Intro: Mike Stohler
1:24 – Small-Town Indiana to Navy and Early RE
1:44 – Pre-Google Landlord Failures
2:05 – Airline Pilot Career and Injury Pivot
2:32 – Full-Time RE Investing in 2003
3:01 – 2008 Crash: Buying Multifamily at 10+ Caps
3:52 – Pivot to Hotels ~10 Years Ago
4:05 – Napkin Deal: Selling Portfolio at 4.5 Caps
5:17 – Partnering with 25-Year Hotel Expert
5:50 – COVID Survival: From 84% to 7% Occupancy
6:30 – Current US Hotel Market: High Rates, Expenses
7:21 – Shift to Spain’s Costa Brava: Lower Costs, 15 Caps
8:50 – Example: €1.5M Medieval Boutique at 15 Cap
10:09 – Low Financing: 2.55-2.7% Rates
11:12 – Focus: Catalonia/Costa Brava Tourism Hub
12:11 – Tax Structure: No Double Taxation via Treaty
14:15 – Deductible Vacations as Business Expenses
15:18 – Operations: Local Team, Niche Marketing
17:53 – SEO for Castles/Estates, Wedding Focus
20:47 – Projections: 21% IRR, 8-14% Cash Flow
21:34 – Exits: 3 Strategies, Long-Hold Lifestyle Model
23:34 – Structure: 80/20 Split, Simple Waterfalls
26:34 – Fees: 1% Management/Investor Relations
32:58 – Connect with Mike Stohler
If you found this episode substantial and want to dig deeper into real estate, or maybe you want to discover better investment opportunities, be sure to check out www.tempofunding.com.
CONNECT WITH US:
Website: www.tempofunding.com
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnJkdVoOsUy85ydkmot9iVA
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mzlotnik/
Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/TFmanagementgroup/?_rdc=1&_rdr
X: https://twitter.com/management_tf
CONNECT WITH THE GUEST
Website: gatewaype.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelstohler/
Full Transcript:
Mike Zlotnik (00:02.039)
Welcome to the Big Mike Fund podcast. the Big Mike, Mike Zlatnik. And today it is my pleasure and a privilege to welcome Mike Stoller. Hey, Mike.
Mike Stohler (00:10.55)
How you doing, Mike?
Mike Zlotnik (00:12.696)
Thanks for coming on a podcast. you said you hail from Scottsdale and you’re between Scottsdale and Barcelona. And let me do a formal introduction. So Mike is a former commercial airline pilot, Navy veteran. Thank you for your service. And a co-founder of Gateway Private Equity Group, a real estate investment firm whose portfolio includes hotel, multifamily, residential properties.
Between apartment complex as houses Mike hotels Mike also owns and operates 150 over 150 units seeking value at opportunities higher returns Mike pivoted from multifamily to hotels and now focuses exclusively on that niche so Mike welcome and let’s Just a couple of words about you your family and then we’ll jump straight into the hotels US Spain and we’ll see where this journey goes
Mike Stohler (01:10.026)
Sure, sounds great. I’m a small town redneck from Indiana and it was one of those things where I could go work in the factory or I could do something in that small town and it just wasn’t me. So I the Navy and started buying properties because I knew that that was it. And back in, I call it the pre-Google days when I got started. It was easy.
Eight units failed miserably because I couldn’t Google how to be a landlord or what forms were there. Couldn’t do anything. So failed miserably. so shifted, became an airline pilot. You know, that was my dream. While I was an airline pilot, I started buying again, because now Google came so I could actually Google how to do things. And I got injured pretty bad while flying into Houston and made that decision there that I could quickly and easily.
replace my income so I headfirst into real estate investing.
Mike Zlotnik (02:14.986)
And when was it? When did you go real estate full time? What year?
Mike Stohler (02:22.102)
Full time, I started in 99. I went full time in 2003 and had multi, built up multifamily portfolio. then I saw kind of something, you know, the prices were starting to go up in five and six. And so I just held on to a lot of cash. And then 2008 came the crash and that’s when I just started buying everything.
anything and everything, did a lot of seller financing, did a lot of bank takeovers. And that’s where when I build up my portfolio and everyone was like, oh my God, you know, I was ruined. And a lot of people were ruined during that, but not to say that I took advantage of the situation. I bought 90 % of my multi-family portfolio between 2008 and 2012 and 13.
Mike Zlotnik (03:18.158)
And that’s very cool. the way, it’s not, you know, taking, not taking advantage of anyone. It’s just kind of the market, the market cycles, right? And these things do happen. And we just see in the other market cycle in multifamily as well. So these things do happen from time to time. And, and people who think there are no market cycles, they, get surprised again and again. And what about hotels? When did you switch to hotels? Uh, how long have you been in that strategy and, um, where is the market now?
Mike Stohler (03:25.258)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mike Zlotnik (03:47.79)
from the market cycle perspective.
Mike Stohler (03:49.642)
But I tell you, great questions. So what happened to someone from Idaho, all places came in and for four times wanted to buy my portfolio. And I said, no, you know, golfing, I’m living life. I’m, you know, I’ve got, I was on cruise control. Well, they came down to Phoenix area. So Mike, want to meet you at IHOP. And I’m like, okay. So over pancakes and coffee, they wrote.
a number on a napkin that I couldn’t refuse. And you have to understand that I was buying at over a 10 cap, you know, during the crash. mean, they were, and now was selling it at a four and a half. So I had to make a decision. Do I want to take all this money, 1031 it into more multifamily at four, four and a half caps? And I said, no, yes.
It didn’t make sense to me. So long story short, I had a real good friend, got 25 years of hotel experience and had coffee with him. And I said, look, explain this to me. And he goes, yeah, hotels are still 10, 12 caps. And I said, well, I have the money. You tell me how to buy them. You show me how to buy them. I want you to run those hotels for me. And if you do that, I’ll give you a cut on the back end. So I made
I wanted to make sure that he had an incentive to make me money because then he would make money. And that was the start of it. That was about 10 years ago. And it’s been pretty good and pretty bad ever since, know, COVID, owning hotels and COVID. I would joke that I had a full head of hair prior to COVID. Then COVID hit and, you know, I bought a hotel in November of 2019.
And you know what happened just a few months later, went from I think an 84 % occupancy down to seven within four or five months. And, uh, but those types of things made me much better hotelier because I had to think outside of the box and see how it can make these hotels survive. All of our hotels did survive. Um, but to your point, where’s the market now I’m seeing for the last couple of years.
Mike Stohler (06:17.462)
The sellers want 2019 prices, but the debt to service coverage ratio doesn’t support it at 78 % interest rates. So you’re buying it upside down basically, or zero net profit. So it’s very hard to get into hotels in the US right now. Labor’s gone up. In the last two years, expenses have gone up 30%, 35%. So it’s been really, really squeezed. I’m still finding some.
in small towns in the Midwest, Indiana, Ohio, Georgia has some good, but it’s more of the Midwest where there’s not a lot of appreciation, but really, really cash flows. But what I did was that original partner lives half of half the time also in Barcelona. And he said, Mike, you need to come over here and look at these places. And I kind of poo-pooed it at first. like, I’m not going to do anything in Barcelona. But then
I got there and the prices, the expenses, I can make more money and pay a tenth of what it cost. For a $10 million hotel in the United States, I make a 10 % return. I can make more of a return on a $1.5 million, 600 year old castle that’s been converted to a boutique hotel because labor is down, expenses are down.
you’re buying at a fraction of the price. So we’re concentrating in the Costa Brava region of Spain right now.
Mike Zlotnik (07:56.483)
Very interesting. So you found a unique niche, I guess, Porsche, part of EU that is just the boutique hotels, they exist. People go on vacation from the US and they go on vacation from Europe and so it’s a niche market. So what kind of cap rate are you buying them at? It’s all relative to the price and expenses. It’s all computed in the cap rate. So of course, of financing now is up, but
What cap rates are you getting?
Mike Stohler (08:26.836)
Yeah, not in Spain. Financing in Spain is not up. It’s actually crazy. So we’re buying it around 15 caps. One five. To give you an idea of the one that I have an open syndication now for a 14 room boutique in a medieval town that’s in the middle of a medieval town. The whole hotel is carved out of rock and stone. It’s something out of the movies. He doesn’t have, he’s had it.
Mike Zlotnik (08:35.946)
One five.
Mike Stohler (08:56.374)
Second generation has had it for 15 years. It’s tired of it. He’s not really a hotelier. He has zero website, zero marketing. He still makes 500,000 euros a year with no effort. We’re buying it at 1.5 million. He’s carrying 600,000 euros at 2.7 % interest. So that means I have to raise.
Instead of the whole thing, I only have to raise $800,000 and we have something that already makes 500,000 euros. So what is that return? If I’m only raising 800,000, it already makes 500,000. It’s crazy returns. But as far as the interest rates, the apartment that we bought in Barcelona, 25 year mortgage at 2.55%. Those are the interest rates there.
Mike Zlotnik (09:55.036)
Is this real? Is this real? The interest rates are that low so you can still get these type of insane loans in Spain?
Mike Stohler (10:04.597)
100%. Yep, we just closed on the apartment last month, 2.55%. And the commercial rates are 2.7. And they apologize that they had to charge me so high because the resident rates are even lower than.
Mike Zlotnik (10:22.21)
Wow, that’s fascinating. It’s something worth further research from for US investors. Again, now it’s a different country now, the different laws, but you know, it’s not a third world country. mean, Spain is a developed country, part of the EU. You’re not investing in, I don’t know, some country with this war on instability. There’s a lot more stability.
Mike Stohler (10:25.459)
I know it.
Mike Stohler (10:49.93)
Yeah, it’s not Venezuela. I’m not investing in Venezuela or Colombia. And we only invest in Catalonia, which is the more capitalistic side. If you don’t know Spain as kind of two countries, Catalonia has its own, that’s where Barcelona is. They have their own flag, they have their own language, they have their own, they wanted to succeed from Spain because they were tired of…
I don’t know if it’s the king or just more of the socialistic views. They’re kind of the capitalistic side of Spain. So I will only concentrate in that. And then we concentrate in the Costa Brava region, which is right now, I think number one or number two tourist destination in the world is that region.
Mike Zlotnik (11:38.326)
Yeah, that’s very fascinating. And how do you find these deals over there? how do you, you know, how is the income taxed from Spain? know, if you got a US investor, what kind of, you know, are they taxed on both sides? I’m just curious, is that tax treaty?
Mike Stohler (11:55.446)
Yeah, great question. These are questions that all of our investors ask. Number one, I have a team in Barcelona and people that live there their entire lives. Jordi has done a lot of deals for Blackstone. And so he was the one that found them, appraised them, looked at the property.
I figured, hey, know, Blackstone could hire him. Now he’s retired. And his whole dream was to go after these old castles in these old estates. So we brought him on board. We have Vic who does the operations and then we have caretakers, husband and wife teams that run them. That’s how we find them. It’s just once you kind of get your work name out. It’s kind of like here in the U.S. all of a you get off these off market deals from brokers and that’s.
It’s kind of the same. As far as the taxes go, so how it works is we had to set up a Spanish company, Spanish LLC, get on their tax system. So we have all the day to day operations are run through a Spanish company. That company is owned by an American company and that’s where the investors are. There’s a Spanish American tax treaty. So there is no double taxation.
All the taxes are paid by the Spanish LLC. when I move distributions from euros to US dollars to the American entity, all we have to worry about is the conversion and you know, from euros to the US and then that American LLC then distributes the distributions to the investors. So as far as your CPAs and everything’s concerned, it’s just an American LLC.
giving you money and then you’re taxed off of that and it just becomes like an American LLC. The great thing is because there’s no double taxation, there’s a lot of different, we still get depreciations, we still get benefits from the K1s and what the investors are really liking is every time they go to Europe on vacation, now what does it become?
Mike Stohler (14:19.926)
you’re going over to see a business asset. So that airfare and a lot of those expenses, if you have a good CPA are now tax deductible.
Mike Zlotnik (14:30.998)
Yeah, that’s pretty cool. If people get to visit there, the investment could be a business purpose. Yeah, it makes sense. I looked at a tax treaty years ago and the US has some really good tax treaties with most of the developed world like, know, UK, Australia, Germany, Spain, all typically, you know, things are taxed on one side. Although it’s different, without spending much time, I’m sure you figure it out.
Mike Stohler (14:39.286)
You guys.
Mike Zlotnik (15:00.802)
So.
These operating businesses in most people, it’s one of the concerns that I’ve always had in hotels, senior living facilities, car washes, they’re all literally operating businesses. So real estate is only valuable if you’re operating well. So, you know, it’s really an investment in the confidence of your team. I mean, you and your team operating these assets.
And I assume you are the direct operator. you basically have local staff and you’re doing local marketing. How are you marketing these hotels? I’m just curious. Is it like booking.com or some other websites?
Mike Stohler (15:47.038)
Yeah. Yeah. You know, great question. So certain assets, you know, one that we’re looking at is a castle. And right now it is in coastal province, the number one wedding destination. So you get a lot of marketing in like Rob reports, wedding websites, wedding destination magazines.
And it’s more event planners than OTAs, which are the booking.com and travel-osity type thing. So you heavily market and you bring on these wedding destination type of event planners. Other ones that are more of a hotel, you do, you set up a website because it’s an independent property. And then the marketing is a lot of the OTAs here in the U.S.
It’ll be marketing companies and leisure destination magazines, partner with like American Express or the different credit cards as far as the unique destinations of the world. Because they’re not cheap to stay there at night. They’re 3,400.
Mike Zlotnik (17:05.486)
So it’s a boutique niche market. That’s what I’m hearing is boutique niche market, destination market. You really have to cater to very specific audience. Again, like you said, events. And it makes sense. I mean, if you want to have a wedding in a castle, that’s pretty cool.
Mike Stohler (17:23.478)
Yeah. And most of the people that go to Spain don’t want to stay at the Marriott or Hilton or regular franchise. They want to stay in the castle. They want to stay in an old estate that’s in the middle of a medieval town. So you have to make sure there’s a lot of SEO work on the backend to make sure that they, if you say. Castle in Spain or a state in Spain or Costa Brava, you want to be on the first page. So there’s a lot of SEO and backend marketing.
Mike Zlotnik (17:54.925)
Yeah, it’s a niche business. mean, everything you’re saying is it’s a great niche business. You could be very successful at this if you’ve got it figured out. now again, age of AI. I’m just curious. even Google search is all changing to the AI now. People are just going to be running AI. I’m just curious if you’ve, if you’ve thought about this, if there’s any modifications to your strategy, how do you make sure you continue to be, you know, on top of these AI driven.
Mike Stohler (18:12.234)
Yep.
Mike Zlotnik (18:24.59)
Questions from investor searches so any quick comments just
Mike Stohler (18:29.044)
Yeah, it’s called paying money to SEO people and people that this is what they do all day long. I found out a long time ago, it’s like, why would I ever do the SEO work in the marketing work? That’s not what I do. I find hotels and we operate them. So you partner with people that this is their entire job is to get you on the first page. They do.
newsletters, blogs, we do guest posts on in magazines and they they handle all that stuff.
Mike Zlotnik (19:07.982)
So how many of them you have in Spain right now? just curious of the size of operation. Are they all similar?
Mike Stohler (19:13.558)
No, it’s very small. They’re not similar at all. two that we have, two that one is in the mountains of Costa Brava. It’s more of a, it’s 45 minutes from Barcelona and it’s a summer getaway. It’s an hour from France and 45 minutes from Barcelona. So you’re just in that part and it’s just that perfect 72 degree.
Mike Zlotnik (19:40.59)
It’s a seasonal hotel. It’s heavily seasonal.
Mike Stohler (19:44.619)
This one is more seasonal in the winter time and there’s a lot of mountain biking and hiking in the area. So people come and do that. Another one is in the Priorat winery. So it’s right in the heart of the vineyards. So they’re very different types. One that we’re looking at is the castle. Another one we’re looking at is the one in the medieval town. The goal is to develop the website into a drop down box.
Spain, Italy, Portugal, people will pick. you know, instead of trying to get them to a specific property, we’ll do the SEO driven analytics to get them into that website. And then they can just drop down and say, where do I want to go?
Mike Zlotnik (20:33.442)
Yeah, understood. Just curious now, you know, basic question on what kind of returns these things generate from, you know, projections perspective, what kind of cash flows and, and, you know, is it the five year hold? Are they similar to the US syndication concept? And also, you know, you’re buying at a 15 cap. You’re probably going to sell it to somebody else, maybe at a 12 cap. I’m using an example. It’s not going to be like suddenly you buy 15 and sell at a five cap.
It’s a market for these assets local and people expect these strong returns otherwise why bother with these boutique type of assets? I’m just curious how you basically look at the whole thing.
Mike Stohler (21:17.844)
Yeah. So most of the buyers and sellers are foreign nationals. In Spain, they don’t have a lot of…
You know, I’m not going to say that, you know, the way that the mindset is, but you don’t have a lot of Europeans that buy them. The cash flows because of expenses, you know, for instance, for instance, here in the U.S. my housekeepers make 20, $22 an hour. In these boutiques, we have a husband and wife team. make about 25,000 euros a year. And then if they need a housekeeper.
The going rate for housekeepers around 8.6 euros, so 9 euros an hour. They make about 16,000 a year. So the expenses are a lot lower. The returns, for instance, this one that we’re buying, it’s already making 500,000 euros. About a 40 % expense ratio right now because he runs his entire life through it.
So we’re going to cut that. So let’s say that it’s making 250,000, 300,000 net off of an $800,000 total investment. And the returns are really good. What we found is that my investors don’t really want us to ever sell these. It’s a different concept in the US. In the US,
No one’s ever told me that I can’t wait to see your Comfort Inn and Topeka. These they want to say, like, okay, how much can I invest to get two weeks at these properties? And then they say, well, what if I don’t want you to sell these? So we came up with this new term. more of like a lifestyle investment where because interest rates are so low, we’re buying these in cash. We’re waiting about three years.
Mike Stohler (23:29.526)
We refinance them at 2.7%. And then we use that money and buy another one. And right now the investors that I’m talking to, it’s like, Mike, I want you to hold onto these for 10 years, 12 years. I want to be able to go vacation with them. I want to be able to have a glass of wine in this castle and say, you know what? I actually own a part of this. So it’s more of a vacation lifestyle type of investment than just a regular box hotel here in the US.
Mike Zlotnik (23:59.875)
Yeah, that’s very interesting. So you’re looking for even a niche investor, not even not a money investor in essence, looking for sort of a strategic value investor, they can claim that they own piece of it. And the very long time horizon is almost counterintuitive. It’s almost like some people actually want to know that this thing is going to have an exit strategy versus you’re saying, well, you know, maybe 10 years at the end of the day, it’s
Mike Stohler (24:22.229)
Yeah.
Mike Zlotnik (24:30.402)
So who controls the decision when to sell? Is it still you?
Mike Stohler (24:35.049)
Well, it’s always me, we have, if, ladies and gentlemen, if you looked at the fund, there’s three extra strategies. The first one is I can sell as soon as we hit our IRR mark. And we can just say, we’re going to sell them all. Number two is that three to five year, usually three to four, depending on what the P &Ls are, you know, they want in Spain, they want to see three to four years of P &Ls.
At that three and four year mark, can, when we refinance, we’ll cash out those people that want to exit. If Mike, you are an investor, you want to cash out. Another Mike was an investor. He’d just buy your shares because he wants to keep it on. So there is a plan. There’s a three stage exit strategy. The second one, you can, we can cash you out when we refinance and you can go your merry way. And then the third one is our
It’s those people that want five of these, they want 10 of these. And they’re getting distributions, they’re getting paid, but they get to deduct their European vacations, they get to stay at their asset. One of my investors I had to talk to a couple of days ago, his daughter to get married at one of the assets, it becomes just more of this vacation, this lifestyle. So we have all…
different types of investors, those that want to cash out, and we let them in year three to five. But there’s a lot of them that just want, like, know, if I can get distributions and cash flow for the next 10 years and be able to vacation in my own castle in the state, you know, that’s what they want. So it’s different investors.
Mike Zlotnik (26:22.638)
Understood. So what kind of distributions are you projecting to investors?
Mike Stohler (26:28.118)
On the two that we’re getting rated by, it’s a life cycle IRR around 21 % and we’re expecting year one, it’s always a lot lower. I always am conservative at around 8 to 10 % and then it goes up to about a 14%.
Mike Zlotnik (26:51.084)
Yeah, using the numbers you mentioned. And I don’t know what your terms with investors, if you’re giving them a pre-return or a split and what that waterfall looks like. Are you able to share that? What kind of, you know, how are these deals structured? I’m just curious how you’re approaching, because you’re finding deep, you know, that’s called deep value, but they require operating expertise. So it’s kind of like they’re almost like operating businesses. It’s real estate, but they’re operating. And then
Mike Stohler (26:59.296)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, sure. Yeah.
Mike Stohler (27:19.678)
It is business. hotels are both. Hotels are a business that sits on real estate.
Mike Zlotnik (27:21.388)
Yeah, it’s a
Mike Zlotnik (27:27.054)
So just curious, how are you splitting cash flows and profits with investors?
Mike Stohler (27:32.663)
Yep. In Europe, it’s different than the United States. I am of the mindset, I’m the GP that hates complicated waterfalls. If there’s more than two levels, I can figure it out. And then I, know, in the portal cycle, if this happens and that happens and if we have 15 % IRR, I’m like, what in the world is going on here? Simplicity. So in Europe, I don’t even have a prep. I do for the life.
Mike Zlotnik (27:53.484)
Yes, simplicity is easy to understand. Agreed.
Mike Stohler (28:02.774)
80-20 split. And if I distribute 50,000 investors get 80%, we get 20%. We put it back into the operations because I don’t bring anything over in the United States. I just keep it over there. And then a lot of them don’t even want the 80%. They want it to be reinvested back in. But in the United States, I’ll do a preff and then a split. And it’s just
None of this IRR stuff, here’s an 8 % preff, then 75.25 or an 80.20. I just want to keep it simple. But because we’re not dealing with hundreds of thousands of dollars in distributions on like a 10 or 15 million dollar hotel here, we’re talking about $250,000 net cash, or we’re talking about 10 or 20,000 a quarter. They’re smaller distributions.
because of just the size of the boutique. Investors are okay with, you know what, it’s 80-20 split.
Mike Zlotnik (29:10.414)
Yeah, it’s listen, I’m not questioning criticizing this at all. It’s just I wanted to know what it is and 80 20 split by the way, it’s not unreasonable. We’ve seen that the structure plenty of times where people do you take a management fee in addition to the 80 20 split or the 20 % includes the your compensation. That’s the only
Mike Stohler (29:32.383)
There’s a 1%. Well, there’s a management fee that goes into…
Being that person that’s doing the day-to-day operations like Vic, that has to go to the asset. He’s in Barcelona, he has to travel 45 minutes. So there’s a property management fee. And then there’s a 1 % investor relation fee. And what that does is it helps pay for the people that are on our backend that are doing all the newsletters, all the reports, all the distributions. We do monthly.
Mike Zlotnik (30:08.706)
Yeah, I understood. you have an asset management fee and the asset management fee is fair. People have to keep the lights on, right? You’ve got to be able to give them the reports. You’ve got to be able to update them. yeah, so I’m listen, this is is I expected worse than people, you know, a with with big opportunity, you know, 50 50 split, maybe some six profit to split. But 80 20 is definitely, you know, reasonable one from investors perspective.
Mike Stohler (30:10.465)
So it’s a 1%.
Mike Stohler (30:25.194)
I don’t do worse things.
Mike Stohler (30:37.719)
I have these hotels because of the investors. And if I take care of the…
Mike Zlotnik (30:44.59)
But the amount of capital you need is not that large, by the way. It’s like you need small checks. You need a very small set of investors who kind of love your strategy and really know, like, and trust you.
Mike Stohler (30:47.339)
Kusprach!
Mike Stohler (30:51.051)
Yeah, I know.
Mike Stohler (30:58.711)
Yeah, the hotel in the Priorette wine region, which does very well. It’s an elderly lady. She has to sell. She’s just a health. We could buy that. It’s seven rooms and we’re getting for about 650 to 700,000 euros total. And it has a little restaurant. She does wine tastings. And I’m like, I mean, that’s cheaper than a lot of our houses, you know, in the U.S.
Mike Zlotnik (31:26.445)
So just hearing you out a little bit, when you’re buying assets, know, six, 700,000, you’re buying an asset, earn a million and a half, you’re basically assembling a portfolio of relatively, you know, not very expensive hotels. You’re not paying, you know, $20 million or… Is it difficult to manage in the different parts of the country? I just wanted to kind of understand one of the biggest difficulties that I’ve seen when people do this is management.
Because you got property here, you got to drive an hour that way, two hours this way, you got to fly. It’s a lot of complexity related to that.
Mike Stohler (32:02.071)
Yeah, well that’s why we have a team that’s full time in Barcelona. If I didn’t have that, there’s no way that I’d ever be able to manage it. And because…
Mike Zlotnik (32:11.502)
So everything is not too far from Barcelona, right? You’re basically saying that every single one of these assets.
Mike Stohler (32:14.557)
Everything is within 45 minutes. Everything that we own is within 45 minutes of our salon. And so it’s very small.
Mike Zlotnik (32:20.61)
Got it. Mike, yeah, I appreciate your explanation. This was very interesting. This is different and definitely unique. So how would folks reach out? What’s the best way to reach out if they wanted to talk to you, understand more about the strategy, cetera?
Mike Stohler (32:30.892)
Yeah.
Mike Stohler (32:39.925)
Yeah, website’s gatewaype.com. And you can find me on LinkedIn. I’m very active on LinkedIn. Michael Stoler.
Mike Zlotnik (32:51.01)
Very cool. I appreciate you sharing. Appreciate you coming on a podcast. Good luck. Enjoy Spain. It’s just a beautiful country and it sounds like you found a phenomenal niche. So sounds like an awesome strategy.
Mike Stohler (32:57.099)
Thank you.
Mike Stohler (33:05.591)
It’s a lot of fun. Yeah, I’m heading to Barcelona next weekend for three weeks. So it’s going to be fun.
Mike Zlotnik (33:11.15)
Safe travels and enjoy. I appreciate you being on a podcast.
Mike Stohler (33:13.921)
Thank you, take care.
Mike Zlotnik (33:15.533)
You too.
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