If not you, who? The motto Elliott S. Estes keeps in his head apparently served him well earlier this year. Estes did what many consider, but often fail to act upon—he left a great job with a great company to follow a dream.
In April, that dream—with the confidence-building “rock-solid support” of his wife, Maia— became reality when Estes founded Woodmont Lodging, LLC, a hospitality investment firm.
Estes made the leap of faith from hotel REIT RLJ Lodging Trust, where he had finance, transaction and portfolio-management responsibilities, serving as director of finance and managing the execution of all asset- and corporate-level transactions, with aggregate values in the billions of dollars.
With solid experience behind him, Estes in the short- to mid-term is now looking for Bethesda, MD-based Woodmont, which is focused on acquisition and asset management of select-service and extended-stay hotels, to own a portfolio of 10 hotels in its first 18 to 24 months.
To bolster that effort, Estes in September added Michael Blank, another RLJ executive expat, as a partner. Blank had managed RLJ’s business intelligence function, which was responsible for portfolio-data analysis.
Long term, Estes said the firm, which has been received “very well,” wants to “provide institutional-quality execution to local owners/operators, and to big institutions that are trimming their portfolios or purchasing portfolios but are not interested in the secondary and tertiary markets.” Noted Estes, “We want to grow. We want to be one of the larger players, but we know it’s going to take time to get there.”