ATLANTA — The hotel transactions market in the U.S. will improve this year, said a panel of experts at the 2026 Hunter Hotel Investment Conference. Debt is getting cheaper and impatience for transactions is growing — and those who do step up could be rewarded with a good deal.
"There's clearly a lot of noise out there, and I think we've been dealing with a lot of noise for the last couple of years," Brian Waldman, chief investment officer at Peachtree Group, said on the "Market overview: Financial analysis and forecast" panel.
A lot of hotel investors and other players in the space "have done their best to bury their head in the sand" and chosen not to transact if they don't have to, Waldman said.
"And they have just continued to kick the can and kick the can," Waldman said. "And now we're at a point where I think a lot of those groups — doesn't matter which side of the table you're sitting on — you've kicked the can kind of as hard as you can, and now things have to happen."
Conditions have and will continue to improve, said Robert Webster, vice chairman and president of CBRE Hotels Institutional Group, adding that now is the second-best time to buy a hotel throughout his decades-long career. Webster clarified that the war in Iran does add another underwriting risk, but debt markets are looking better.
"Anytime there's a spike in risk to investment, typically, rates will go down not up, and if rates go down, it will help hotel values, and probably really help with the transaction market," Webster said.
Evan Weiss, co-founder and chief operating officer of LW Hospitality Advisors, echoed the sentiment that now is a "phenomenal buying opportunity." And that's going to translate to more hotel transactions.
"The reality is that if you really want to have a more certain environment and really want to make very straight, stable cash flows, you should probably be investing in industrial data centers and get out of the hotels," Weiss said. "But if you're in the hotel space, you're in for a rocky ride, and understand that you don't know what's coming next."
While hotel ownership might not be the most lucrative ownership opportunity in all of commercial real estate right now, it's also not the lowest performer.
"Look at office, look at the multifamily, look at just about every other asset class. And when you put it in perspective, hotels really aren't that bad," Waldman said.
Hoteliers can also take comfort in the fact that not all markets are down. Carolina Bernal, senior director of JLL Hotels & Hospitality, said there's a range of experiences hotel owners are having based on market and types of hotels.
"Investors that are underwriting luxury will be very different from investors that are underwriting select-service," she said. "You can't necessarily focus too much on the overall market fundamentals. You have to focus on the specific market. I just think everyone's going to have a different experience and a different thought process."
Waldman shared his own experience with Peachtree's holdings, which primarily include select-service hotels. He said high-growth markets are where the jobs are going.
"If the jobs are going to a market and seeing investment, it's probably a pretty good place for accounts [versus] if you're in a market that's seeing pullbacks or coming back mediums where your expenses are going up much faster than the revenue — property tax issues, things like that," he said.
And hoteliers shouldn't rule out some markets that may have struggled recently, Waldman said.
"We are definitely an industry that has serious FOMO, and it takes something to happen, and then everyone wants to know about the bandwagon," he said, using San Francisco, which was flatlining before recent investment activity, as an example.
Plus, it might take new types of investors to create some momentum in the hotel transactions market, Webster said.
"What's happening today happens in every cycle," he said. "You have this catastrophic moment — the pandemic, for example — and a lot of equity has either been recognized as a loss or is what I would call 'zombie equity' that hasn't been recognized and has a loss yet."
So fundraising is not as big as it used to be, Webster said.
"Others who have fresh minds and fresh capital and a fresh viewpoint, they're the ones that are going to step in," he added.
New investors or old, increased hotel transaction activity is inevitable, Weiss said.
"The can-kicking is over," he said. "The folks that had debt trade over the last five years can no longer extend anymore. Frankly, they want to recycle capital.
"CapEx is going to push people to transact. They're not going to have a choice."