The Patel family and other refugee families from India entered the U.S. motel business in the early 1970s by buying existing properties, cutting staff, and living on-site to slash costs. Over fifty years, they grew to own roughly 70% of all American motels by helping each generation acquire more properties.
How is it possible that 0.1% of the population owns almost 70% of all the motels in America?
A small number of motels, a few thousand of them, came into the United States in the early '70s. The refugees, they would buy these motels and basically fire all the staff. Motels are labor intensive. The family can do all the work and move in into two of the rooms because they had no costs. They were able to charge nightly rates. That were lower than all the neighboring motels. As their nephew came of age, they would help him out to buy his own motel, and then the next one, the next one. You run this for 50 years, you end up with 70% of the motels in the country under Patel ownership.
