Renovating a $1.1M Hotel Without Ever Closing It With Anthony Tokosky

Anthony Tokosky is the Owner and General Partner of The Marlo, a 24-room boutique hotel in Solvang, California, blending Danish-inspired design with modern comfort and serene gardens. He is also the Owner and President of Priority Doors and Windows, a company providing high-quality door and window products directly to homeowners and construction professionals. Anthony leads The Marlo's acquisition, renovation, and repositioning with disciplined underwriting and thoughtful guest experience. A former software engineer, he moved into real estate investing after growing up around his family's restaurant and rental properties.

In this episode… How does a software engineer end up owning a boutique hotel? Anthony Tokosky compressed a five-to-ten-year plan into 14 months by joining a hotel acquisition mastermind, learning to underwrite until the numbers ruled out the deals he was emotionally attached to, and partnering with people whose experience covered his gaps. The result was a 24-room hotel in Solvang, California.

In this episode of The Lights On Podcast, host Kin Sio talks with Anthony Tokosky, General Partner of The Marlo, about the full arc of acquiring, financing, renovating, and repositioning an independent hotel as a first-time hotel owner.

Anthony grew up inside the work. His parents are Chinese immigrants who came from Southern China, opened a small restaurant, and bought rental properties on the side. He was no more than four years old when they started bringing him and his siblings along to properties they were flipping after the restaurant closed at eight or nine at night. He studied computer science, spent 12 years in software, and ran real estate on a parallel track the whole time. The inflection point came with a short-term rental in San Diego and the question every short-term rental operator eventually hits: how do you buy the second one, and the third, and the fifth?

The mastermind taught him to underwrite. As he puts it, deals he thought were cool and fun and sexy turned out to have numbers that told another story. CoStar reports and market data got his team to an early thesis that The Marlo, then called The M, was an underperforming distressed asset. What converted that thesis into conviction was door-knocking. His team walked the Solvang market and asked nearby operators directly what the busy seasons were and how many rooms they had occupied that exact weekend. One nearby hotel was running roughly 30 to 40 percent better on a product A