Excerpt from CoStar

In a review of hotel transactions for the first six months of the year, hotel industry experts say that the cost of capital and sellers holding out for a higher price while would-be buyers seek a better deal are slowing the pace, but there's potential for a turnaround.

U.S. hotel transactions slowed in the second half of 2022 amid hopes that pent-up capital, a better grasp on pricing expectations and a slowing of interest rate increases could translate to more deals in 2023.

That didn’t quite happen, at least in the first half of the year.

Capital is still pent up. The cost of debt is still high. The bid-ask gap is still wide.

A common refrain from the recent NYU International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference was that if a hotel owner doesn’t have to sell, they shouldn't, said Jan Freitag, national director of hospitality market analytics at CoStar.

Hotel owners are buoyed by rates that are higher than in 2019, without adjusting for inflation, and occupancy on par or just below, unless it’s a city hotel. That gives them a sense of what their properties are worth, but they’re not finding buyers who are underwriting the same way.

“There’s still this bid-ask spread — chasm — and that is going to take a while to unfold,” Freitag said. “That’s why if you’re not motivated, if you’re just sort of sitting on the sidelines, there’s really no catalyst for you to really be aggressive in marketing your property.”

A Drop in Deals

LW Hospitality Advisors’ Major U.S. Hotel Sales Surveys for the first two quarters of 2023 show year-over-year decreases in hotel sales and dollar volume as well as price per key. The surveys track hotel transactions valued at $10 million or more.

According to the surveys, there was a 36% decrease in the number of transactions priced at $10 million or more. Total dollar volume declined by 50%, and the price per key dropped 4%.

Eighty-three single hotel assets sold for $10 million or more in the first quarter, totaling almost $3.5 billion. That comprises roughly 12,500 hotel rooms with an average price per key of $279,000. In the second quarter, 84 single-asset sales totaled $3.1 billion — comprising 12,100 rooms and an average price per key of $257,000.

Click here to read complete article at CoStar.