A micro resort is a small-footprint hospitality property built around amenity density and group capacity rather than bedroom count — think a multi-home compound with courts, cold plunges and a sauna that sleeps 20, or a farm with lodging units and a wedding barn. Micro resort development sits between a short-term rental and a hotel: you underwrite it like a development deal, fund it with raised capital and bridge debt, and earn on two revenue lines instead of one.
Zack Metcalf of Stay INTRVL runs both versions. He owns a three-home compound on five acres in Joshua Tree and just closed a $5.1 million project on a 240-acre historic farm in the Catskills that will operate as an event venue, micro resort and wellness center.
This piece breaks down the buy box he and his partners screen against, how the capital stack on a $5M hospitality project came together, where the revenue actually lands, and what changed operationally when he stopped buying one house a year.
Key takeaways
- The product is amenity density and group capacity, not bedrooms — Metcalf’s Joshua Tree compound sleeps 20 across three homes on five acres with basketball and pickleball courts, two cold plunges, a sauna, a jacuzzi and a 30-foot movie screen.
- Mixed zoning plus buildable acreage is the screening criterion that makes a micro resort possible — Stone Tavern Farm has 240 acres with roughly 100 buildable, so eight prefab units can be added within code.
- A $5.1M project came together with three general partners, nine investors, roughly $1.5–2M raised (about $1M secured at close), vendors converting to LPs, and bridge debt at acquisition with a planned refinance into longer-term debt.
- Events are the revenue line residential STRs don’t have: a single June wedding inquiry is worth 10 to 15 grand for the weekend, but conditional use and event permits cap how many you can hold.
- Nightly stays at Joshua Tree are tracking to roughly $180K this year and near $300K next year with the third house added — plus about $6K a month from other rentals.
From the Real Estate Pros Show
This article draws on an interview with Zack Metcalf of INTRVL (Stay INTRVL) on the Real Estate Pros Show, hosted by Cody Crabb.
What a Micro Resort Is, and How It Differs From a Short-Term Rental
A micro resort is a stay where the property itself is the destination. Metcalf frames the distinction against the old hotel model: you check into a Hilton, you sleep, you leave, and there’s no connection to the property. A micro resort is built so guests don’t want to leave — and so they bring 15 friends with them.
The Joshua Tree property, INTRVL, shows what that means physically. It started as a duplex Metcalf and his wife bought six years ago. They then bought the two neighboring properties, and the result is a three-home compound on five acres that sleeps 20, with a basketball court, a pickleball court, two cold plunges, a sauna, a full jacuzzi and a 30-foot movie screen.
Read that list again and notice what’s missing: bedroom count barely matters. The bookable product is the amenity stack and the ability to absorb a group of 20 people who want to be together for a birthday, a reunion or a wedding. Metcalf hosted 25 of their friends there for his wife’s 40th.
That changes who your guest is. A standard STR competes on nightly rate against every other three-bedroom in the market. A compound with group capacity competes on occasion — and occasions come with budgets, planners and a reason to book the whole property rather than one unit. It also means your buyer pool at exit is different, because you’re selling an operating hospitality asset, not a house.
The Catskills project extends the same logic at development scale: a 4,500 sq ft farmhouse, a 10,000 sq ft barn, and eight prefab units from an Estonian company called Iglucraft dropped onto acreage that already has four ski mountains within 45 minutes.
The Buy Box: Mixed Zoning, Buildable Acreage and Drive-To Amenities
The screen is short and it starts with zoning. Metcalf and his partners look for a small hotel or a residential parcel with a few structures on it, sitting on enough land, with mixed zoning — because mixed zoning is what lets you add units within code instead of fighting for a variance.
Stone Tavern Farm checks every box:
- 240 acres, roughly 100 of them buildable. Acreage alone means nothing if it’s wetland or slope.
- Mixed zoning, which is what makes the eight prefab units feasible.
- Existing improvements with revenue potential: a 4,500 sq ft house and a 10,000 sq ft barn that becomes the wedding venue.
- Drive-to amenity density: four ski mountains within 45 minutes.
- A place they actually want to be. Metcalf is an avid snowboarder. That’s not sentimentality — it’s a proxy for whether the demand driver is real.
What’s notable is how few deals clear it. Metcalf has peers he respects who push ten LOIs a week and let the funnel sort itself out. He doesn’t operate that way, because his time is the scarce input on a development deal, not deal flow.
The flip side is walking away late. Before Stone Tavern Farm, the team pursued a property in Surf City, North Carolina. They flew out, stood on it, and didn’t feel the connection to the site they needed to build the vision on. They killed it.
On a rental, gut feel is a luxury. On a project where you’re designing an experience and selling it to wedding planners, your read on the site is part of the underwriting — after the numbers already work.
We’re not going to buy a property that doesn’t underwrite with the correct IRR or cash on cash or multipliers. What I mean by numbers is we don’t care about how many LOIs we put out. Some people in my network are putting ten letters of intent out a week. We don’t operate that way.
— Zack Metcalf, Stay INTRVL
How the Money Is Structured on a $5M Hospitality Project
Stone Tavern Farm is a $5.1 million total project. The equity piece is roughly $1.5 to $2 million of raised capital, with about a million dollars secured as of closing. The sponsor side is three general partners; the LP side is nine investors, plus several vendors on the project converting into LP positions rather than being paid entirely in cash.
The debt is bridge financing at acquisition, with a planned refinance into longer-term debt once the barn, house and prefab units are complete and the property has operating history. That’s the standard shape for a value-add hospitality deal: short-term, higher-cost money to get through construction, then permanent debt priced against stabilized revenue.
Two things about the underwriting are worth copying.
First, sequence. The gut-feel criteria from the buy box only apply after the deal underwrites. Metcalf is explicit that the numbers have to make sense at all times, and that means correct IRR, cash-on-cash and equity multiple — they’ll underwrite a property until the cows come home before committing. The site feel is a filter applied to deals that already pencil, never a substitute for one.
Second, the fiduciary standard. Metcalf’s stated non-negotiable on this project is that no investor loses money. That sounds like boilerplate until you connect it to behavior: it’s why the team does more diligence than a residential buyer would, including soil testing, and why they walked from North Carolina rather than force a deal to close.
He’s also honest about the personal side of a raise-and-build. Ten months of cash going out, no W-2 income coming in after leaving a $400K-a-year pharma career, and the intrusive thoughts that come with it. That’s the real cost of moving up in project size.
Where the Revenue Actually Comes From: Events, Nightly Stays and Permits
Micro resorts run two revenue lines. Nightly stays are the base. Events are the margin.
Events. A wedding inquiry that came in for the following June was worth 10 to 15 grand for the weekend. That’s one booking against a whole-property rate that would have to be earned over many nights on the STR side. The channel is relationships, not listings: Metcalf has already hosted several weddings at the Joshua Tree property, and out of those he’s built a network of wedding planners who feed him inquiries. On the Catskills deal, his role once it’s operating is the event side — sales, planner relationships and operations — and the immediate priority after closing is getting brides onto the property so deposits for next year’s season start landing.
The constraint is permitting. Event volume is governed by a conditional use permit and event permits that have to be pulled, and researching and securing them takes real time. That’s the number to nail down before you underwrite an event line: not what a weekend is worth, but how many weekends the property is legally allowed to host.
Nightly stays. At Joshua Tree, the original duplex plus one house is tracking to about $180,000 this year. With the third house online, Metcalf expects to push near $300,000 next year. Another roughly $6,000 a month comes in from other rentals in the portfolio. Combined with his wife’s income, that gets the household to roughly where his W-2 was.
Validation came fast. The newest house launched and booked about $20,000 in its first week — enough to confirm the amenity-heavy thesis before the season even started.
Why He Traded Doors for Fewer, Bigger Projects
The door-count goal died on a fourplex in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Metcalf bought it for around $870K, put roughly a quarter million into the rehab, and it produced about $1,200 a month in cash flow. It was purchased partly for a tax strategy that didn’t end up working out. And he had no interest in ever going back to visit it.
That was the turning point. The path there started in 2018 with a four-bedroom, four-bath condo he bought and rented by the room — a $3,600 mortgage that cost him $300 out of pocket once the other three rooms filled. He didn’t know the term house hacking at the time. He rolled the savings into an Airbnb in Joshua Tree, then set a goal of one property a year and hit it for eight straight years across single-family, small multifamily, midterm and short-term rentals.
What he concluded was that he didn’t want to be a full-time landlord, and he didn’t want to hand a pile of properties to a property manager either. He’d rather do one $5 million project with partners whose strengths cover his weaknesses than ten half-million-dollar projects alone.
The asset class also held his attention for tax reasons. Metcalf cites depreciation on short-term rentals as a major factor in his own returns — refunds of $82,000 one year and $36,000 the next. That is his experience with his own facts and advisors, not a strategy to copy; how depreciation and material-participation rules apply to you is a question for your CPA.
Running a Hospitality Portfolio Remotely Without Drowning in Tasks
The Catskills project runs on a seven-person team, and Metcalf lives in California. The structure: three general partners, an architect, a designer and two general contractors, with one partner owning operations, one owning marketing, and Metcalf on financing, lending and events. One partner is relocating to be on-site for roughly six months to get the build to completion — and he already runs another property in the same town, so there’s an established local vendor bench.
That’s the model for out-of-state hospitality: someone with skin in the game physically present during construction, plus a partner who already operates in the market.
The honest part is the rest of his portfolio. Metcalf still self-manages 11 doors from Huntington Beach and openly says he knows he’s doing tasks he shouldn’t be. Some properties genuinely are passive — a Havasu house where the tenant checks in, sends a photo and moves on. Others produce a fridge replacement in a week he doesn’t have.
He’s building the delegation list rather than waiting for a crisis:
- Booking management and guest communication
- Bookkeeping and accounting
- Lease renewals and maintenance coordination — small individually, but four turnovers a year across four properties is 16 events
- Permit research, including the event permits gating revenue
- Content production, posting and email marketing
Two hires are already in motion: one of his cleaners is being paid extra to step into a house manager role handling all post-booking guest communication, and a contractor now edits and posts content and runs email marketing. He also filters requests he doesn’t want, like content creators asking to film on the property.
His own test for what to keep is whether the work is creative and on the business rather than in it — designing the vision, hiring the designer, getting brides onto the property. Anything he’d price at $20 an hour goes to someone else.
Frequently asked questions
How much capital do you need to develop a micro resort?
On a $5.1 million project like Stone Tavern Farm, the equity requirement was roughly $1.5 to $2 million raised, with about a million secured by the time of closing. The rest was covered by bridge debt at acquisition, with a refinance into longer-term financing planned once the renovation and new units are complete.
That equity came from three general partners plus nine limited partners, with several project vendors also converting into LP positions instead of taking all cash. You don’t need $2 million of your own money — you need a deal that underwrites well enough to attract it and the ability to act as a credible fiduciary for it.
What zoning do you need to add cabins or units to a rural property?
Mixed zoning is the specific thing Metcalf’s team screens for, because it allows additional units to be added within code rather than requiring a variance or rezoning fight. Stone Tavern Farm’s 240 acres — about 100 of them buildable — carry mixed zoning, which is what makes eight prefab lodging units feasible.
Event use is a separate approval track from lodging. Hosting weddings typically requires a conditional use permit plus event permits, and those govern how many events the property can hold per year. Confirm both zoning and event permitting with the local jurisdiction before you underwrite either revenue line.
How much revenue can a wedding and event venue generate per weekend?
Metcalf received a wedding inquiry for the following June worth 10 to 15 grand for the weekend at his Joshua Tree property. That’s a single booking, and it’s why the event line changes the economics compared with a pure nightly-rental model.
The binding constraint is not demand, it’s permits. The number of events a property may host is capped by its conditional use permit and event permits, so the honest revenue math is weekend rate multiplied by permitted events — not weekend rate multiplied by available weekends.
Can you own and operate a micro resort in another state remotely?
Yes, but not alone and not on a spreadsheet. Metcalf lives in California and the Catskills project is in New York. It works because one general partner is relocating on-site for around six months to carry the build, that partner already operates another property in the same town with an established vendor network, and roles are split so one partner owns operations while another owns marketing.
Metcalf’s own remote role is financing, the eventual refinance, and event sales — work that genuinely can be done from anywhere. Anything requiring presence belongs to someone who is present.
Is it better to buy more small rentals or one large hospitality project?
It depends on whether your constraint is capital or attention. Metcalf hit his one-property-a-year goal for eight years, then stopped — a Cheyenne fourplex that took roughly a quarter million in rehab to produce about $1,200 a month, on a tax strategy that didn’t work out, convinced him that door count wasn’t the metric he cared about.
His conclusion was that one $5 million project with partners covering his skill gaps beats ten half-million-dollar deals he manages alone. The tradeoff is real: bigger projects mean investor capital, construction risk, and months of cash going out before anything comes in.
The bottom line
If you’re moving from short-term rentals toward micro resort development, do the zoning and event-permit work first — the buildable acreage and the number of events you’re legally allowed to host determine whether the deal exists at all, long before you refine the amenity list or line up investors.
