Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason
Speaker 1: Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. But this next guest is always
Speaker 1: up to something interesting. He's an investor, in entrepreneur, in
Speaker 1: real estate and hospitality, so involved in those worlds. Delighted
Speaker 1: to have back with us because it's been a little while,
Speaker 1: Stefan debates. He's founder and president of the asset management
Speaker 1: from Elevated Returns. They control the st regious Aspen Resort
Speaker 1: in Aspen, Colorado. They've got properties around the globe, about
Speaker 1: a one billion dollar portfolio. He's also founder and owner
Speaker 1: of Chess Club, so a lot of ground to cover. Stefan,
Speaker 1: it is so nice to have you here, and I
Speaker 1: know you're in Aspen. Um, how are you. I'm great.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me again on the show.
Speaker 1: Uh No, it's just been a wild year, just like
Speaker 1: for everybody else. But he's been a good year for us.
Speaker 1: And uh I have personally relocated to us then Colorado
Speaker 1: and it's such a beautiful place, so difficult have a
Speaker 1: bad day investment. Yeah, that's definitely true. I do feel
Speaker 1: like I mean, we've done a lot of stories speaking
Speaker 1: of real estate. Uh, Steffan about um stuff. Excuse me,
Speaker 1: how um? You know? Real estate there has really skyrocketed
Speaker 1: because a lot of people like yourself are trying to
Speaker 1: find a place where they can sort of have it
Speaker 1: all in some ways, especially in a world where a
Speaker 1: lot of it is remote and there's less focus on
Speaker 1: spending lots of time in big cities. And listen, I've
Speaker 1: spent some time in aspin it is gorgeous. That's right,
Speaker 1: that's right. I think. I think what the pandemic is
Speaker 1: done and and still doing every day is it's just
Speaker 1: changed the way that people look at their life and
Speaker 1: prioritize physically what it is most important. And in my
Speaker 1: case it was definitely the case. And say, now that
Speaker 1: we've accepted the fact that we can do at least
Speaker 1: forty to sixty percent of whole work from home, why
Speaker 1: don't we go to a place where you have more
Speaker 1: books for the money and you enjoy actually a better
Speaker 1: quality of life. So you're right that the Britistate market
Speaker 1: in that spent is on fire. Uh, there is a
Speaker 1: wait list on all the school which has never heard of.
Speaker 1: And but still, you know, even if it's on fire,
Speaker 1: it's still a small town right, it doesn't look like well,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the reasons, you know, for so
Speaker 1: many reasons, it's nice to catch up with you, Stevan.
Speaker 1: And one of the things, you know, I really wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to you because Jason and I we talked
Speaker 1: so much with individuals in the real estate industry, and
Speaker 1: you know, we've heard a lot of things about you know,
Speaker 1: like you just talked about, we're finding out we can
Speaker 1: do like of our work from home. In our case,
Speaker 1: we're doing most of it, if not all of it
Speaker 1: at home and still doing a broadcast, um and so on.
Speaker 1: But I do wonder what kind the shifts do you
Speaker 1: think longer term shifts will actually stay with the real
Speaker 1: estate real estate sector. You understand that we hear about
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley people leaving Silicon Valley and they you know,
Speaker 1: tech companies and you can go work from home, and
Speaker 1: that means you can live wherever you want. So what
Speaker 1: within the real estate community, what if those trends caused
Speaker 1: by the pandemic will ultimately stick with us In your view,
Speaker 1: I think you're gonna have a short term impact then
Speaker 1: a probably a recovery towards what I call the mean.
Speaker 1: One thing that we should never forget we are social animals.
Speaker 1: So even so we want to go back in being
Speaker 1: a beautiful properties, we're still going to need to mingle
Speaker 1: and socialize. That is what makes human beings human beings.
Speaker 1: But I think that the first trend that we certainly
Speaker 1: do see is people are moving into suburban life. I
Speaker 1: think that cooperation will have probably satellite of peace in suburbia.
Speaker 1: I think that you're gonna see a lot less international
Speaker 1: traveling for business. So I think the travel business is
Speaker 1: going to be impacted for a long time. And and
Speaker 1: then we really to take a view about what's going
Speaker 1: to be the cross border traveling restriction. UH, people are
Speaker 1: going to be forced to have vaccination. People is going
Speaker 1: to need to carry a digital passport. We don't know
Speaker 1: that yet, but I think less international travel certainly for
Speaker 1: the next three years, and moved to suburbia at the
Speaker 1: trend that I can see, last thing for at least
Speaker 1: three to five years. Stefan debates his founder and president
Speaker 1: of Elevated Returns he joints on the phone from beautiful Aspen, Colorado.
Speaker 1: Um So Stepan talk to us about technology, the block chain.
Speaker 1: This is something that I'm guessing most people here back
Speaker 1: chain and real estate and there like I'm sorry, well,
Speaker 1: how does that off it together? But it's a really
Speaker 1: interesting and important innovation that you're working on. To tell
Speaker 1: us about it. Yeah, absolutely, And and you know, for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, the word blockshain always either going to excite
Speaker 1: people or they're going to scare them. The truly blockchain
Speaker 1: stands for in the mind of people, is a technology
Speaker 1: that enables to use programming, smart contract to represent an asset.
Speaker 1: So what we've done in our case, we took a
Speaker 1: real estate, we created a read structure, and we shocked
Speaker 1: the real estate in shares. And what we've done we
Speaker 1: created digital representation of shares and that basically allow people
Speaker 1: on the street to go and buy or sell shares
Speaker 1: into a trophy as set that they like. At the
Speaker 1: end of the day, what what investors have to remember,
Speaker 1: what they're buying is a share into the property. The
Speaker 1: blockchain technology, it's only the technological path that enables the
Speaker 1: transaction to take place. So I think that when we
Speaker 1: understand that we are in twenty twenty with beautiful innovation,
Speaker 1: and you think that most of paper transaction for real estate,
Speaker 1: it still happened on paper. You understand that it's probably
Speaker 1: room for a big revolution over the next five year.
Speaker 1: Well that's you know, it's interesting to hear you say that,
Speaker 1: because I feel like, right, just go back with it
Speaker 1: a year or so. I feel like ago, maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit longer than that, that everything was NonStop blockchain,
Speaker 1: and you know, if anybody talked blockchain in terms of
Speaker 1: their company, they just took off like a rock rocket rather,
Speaker 1: so I do wonder a little bit like her rock
Speaker 1: and then like a rock. Yeah, yeah, exactly, So Stefan,
Speaker 1: I mean you said about five years, I mean, do
Speaker 1: we start to see blockchain become much more part of
Speaker 1: kind of this accepted you know, financial system. Well, I
Speaker 1: think what you're gonna have, You're gonna have a digitization
Speaker 1: of financial product. Take a look communication, for instance, twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, you and I would would basically exchange information
Speaker 1: by sending a fact to each other. Then what happened
Speaker 1: We had emails technology taking place, and suddenly people are
Speaker 1: no exchanging communications through email, and they find new application
Speaker 1: for communications, such as scheduling to go for a glass
Speaker 1: of wine over an email, something you would have never
Speaker 1: done over a fact. What's going to happen is I
Speaker 1: think the digitization of financial product really enabled investor that
Speaker 1: are retail investor access to financial products that today they
Speaker 1: can't have access to. And I think that's going to
Speaker 1: be the true revolution. Because you were talking about this
Speaker 1: billionaire having a one billion of its residents. Thought for you,
Speaker 1: really the man on the street, the the the American
Speaker 1: person understand that real estate is the great investment. But's no,
Speaker 1: but very few people have a billion dollars to assemble
Speaker 1: a pot for you. So I think that once technology
Speaker 1: enaghbors people to actually participate and and enjoy the privilege
Speaker 1: that's a very few investors have today, that's gonna be
Speaker 1: the true revolution. That's funny that you say that. I
Speaker 1: was talking to you like the younger generation my family,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, you know, when you think about investing,
Speaker 1: think about smart real estate, and you're right, that's a
Speaker 1: way to potentially access those bigger deals that most normal
Speaker 1: individuals cannot do that. Um, so it's an interesting perspective
Speaker 1: on it. I wanted to ask you about chefs, the
Speaker 1: chef's club clubs, because you know, restaurants. Man, they you
Speaker 1: sounded rather a beat when we started, but I think
Speaker 1: about restaurants major city certainly in New York City. They
Speaker 1: have had such a tough time. We've talked with Daniel Blue, uh,
Speaker 1: so many others of the well known chefs within the
Speaker 1: New York um City world, and how are they doing.
Speaker 1: I've been to your Chef's Club in New York, loved it.
Speaker 1: Um are they open? How are they doing? Okay? So
Speaker 1: we actually, uh, we actually had a tough time as well,
Speaker 1: because not only we're in the food and beverage business,
Speaker 1: but all DNA was traveling chef bringing their experience from
Speaker 1: one country to another. So when you have closure of
Speaker 1: restaurant and you based on traveling and migration of chefs,
Speaker 1: you're having a hard time. So what we've decided to
Speaker 1: do is we've actually closed our restaurant in the big cities.
Speaker 1: We put the brand in the big cities in what
Speaker 1: I call hiber nation. We are keeping our brand in
Speaker 1: places like I spend open simply because we actually understand
Speaker 1: the wolves and we can actually make a business plan.
Speaker 1: I think what has been very, very difficult for the
Speaker 1: entire industry in the major cities is ever changing world
Speaker 1: and in order to stay in business, you need to
Speaker 1: raise capital. In order to raise capital, and you need
Speaker 1: to have a business plan. But if you are not
Speaker 1: able to put on paper what the sixth or next
Speaker 1: twelve months gonna look like, it is super, super difficult.
Speaker 1: A lot of our friends in in the chefs community
Speaker 1: have lost their job, lost their restaurant. It's really, really,
Speaker 1: really difficult for the industry. How much do do you
Speaker 1: think the hospitality business. We've only got about a minute
Speaker 1: left here, Stefan, how how much does it change permanently?
Speaker 1: Like I say, it's it's too early to tell. I
Speaker 1: I believe in human beings. I think we are so
Speaker 1: a animal. We're gonna want to still to travel. But
Speaker 1: I think for the next three years you have to
Speaker 1: look purely at resort leisure destination. This one will do well.
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit concerned about the hotel in big metropolitance.
Speaker 1: I think you're gonna see lots of bankruptcies and lots
Speaker 1: of defot on those properties. Yeah, yeah, it's really it's
Speaker 1: going to be difficult to say at least Stefan debates.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, President of Elevated Returns joining us
Speaker 1: on the phone from Aspen, Colorado, Carol. Yeah, really nice guy,
Speaker 1: and I do love his perspective. In terms of what
Speaker 1: he can see and you know, you're right, Like in
Speaker 1: certain cities like an Aspen, right, they it's it's different
Speaker 1: in terms of how the virus is impacting it. And
Speaker 1: he says, you know, they can figure out the rules
Speaker 1: and figure out how to operate um, but there are
Speaker 1: often changing rules in the major cities just based on
Speaker 1: virus cases and what's going on. It makes it really
Speaker 1: tricky to run a business.