By Ellen Paris | Forbes
The mega-successful real estate financier Mort Fleischer, 81, and his wife Donna are selling their two cowboy ranches in Arizona and Montana as a set for $50 million.
Fleischer, chairman of STORE Capital Corp. (NYSE: STOR) was an industry disruptor years ago through his real estate investment trust (REIT), Franchise Finance Corp. of America. In the late ’90s, Fleischer’s REIT became the country’s “largest independent financier of chain-restaurant real estate.” Before Fleischer started doing it, REITs did not finance independent restaurant real estate.
“When I started financing single tenant restaurant real estate, the industry said it hadn’t been done before and wouldn’t work. It was successful, we have institutionalized this class of real estate,” Fleischer explains. That is an understatement. In 2017, Warren Buffett invested $377 million for a 9.8% stake in STORE Capital Corp. Today, Fleischer intends to change the way real estate is marketed by selling the couple’s beloved ranches, in Scottsdale, Arizona and Lewiston, Montana in one deal. “Once again everybody told me I was crazy,” Fleischer confides.
