How We Think
Every assumption is interrogated before it is financed.
Underwriting is a discipline of questions. This is the framework the research applies to an asset, line by line — including the honest boundary of where applied intelligence helps and where judgment must stay human.
The Einstein Method
Eight disciplines, applied line by line.
The underwriting spine of this capstone is the Einstein Method — an eight-step protocol that reads a hotel asset rather than a credit file. Each step below is the lending application of one of those steps.
- E
Examine Market
Supply pipeline, demand drivers, and whether the submarket can absorb what is already under construction.
- I
Interpret Meaning
Pricing power and rate resilience — whether the asset holds its position when the market gives ground.
- N
Normalize Financials
Owner anomalies, skewed payroll, related-party charges, and under-reserved replacement lines stripped out.
- S
Stress Assumptions
Capital budgets, reserves, and wage inflation tested against what actually happened to comparable assets.
- T
Test Downside
Recession-level occupancy troughs run against debt service. The question is survival, not return.
- E
Evaluate Exit
Refinance and sale scenarios under cap rate expansion, with the debt yield that would actually clear.
- I
Identify Risk
Franchise agreements, management contracts, PIP obligations, and ground leases read in full, not summarized.
- N
Name Decision
A documented posture — proceed, restructure, watch, or decline — with the reasoning written down.
Every one of these produces a written position. Nothing is carried forward on instinct alone.
The Questions
What every assumption has to survive.
On the revenue ramp — What has to be true in the market, not in the model, for this ramp to happen — and who has done it here before?
On payroll — Is this staffing level the one that ran the property, or the one that makes the deal work?
On reserves — Is the FF&E reserve funded at a level that survives the brand's next product improvement plan?
On the franchise agreement — What obligations transfer, what triggers a PIP, and what does termination actually cost?
On the exit — At what cap rate and debt yield does the exit stop working — and how far away is that from today?
The Boundary
Where the machine helps, and where it stops.
Where it helps
Reading long documents, reconciling years of statements, surfacing comparable situations, and catching internal contradictions in a package.
Where it is limited
It cannot walk the property, read the operator across a table, or weigh what a family is actually trying to protect.
Where it stops
No assumption enters an underwriting because a model produced it. Every input is labeled as data or as judgment.
Put It To Work
Submit a scenario.
Bring the numbers you have. We will tell you which ones will not hold.