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1. UK government to spend £15.3 billion on asylum hotels
A non-partisan committee in the United Kingdom Parliament has released is findings on the country’s use of hotel accommodation for asylum seekers, the BBC reports. The report states that the cost of housing asylum seekers will triple from £4.5 billion ($6 billion) to £15.3 billion in relation to initial estimates for the decade between 2019 and 2029.
The report added “the Home Office has become heavily reliant on the costly use of hotels for asylum accommodation — which are unpopular with local communities and largely unsuitable for accommodating asylum seekers. It has used large-scale contracts with private providers to deliver asylum accommodation, but these contracts have provided few levers to control costs and ensure that providers are delivering the accommodation required.”
The number of asylum seekers in hotel accommodations has fallen from a high of 56,042 in September 2023 to 32,059 in June 2025.
2. Sweden’s EQT sells Osaka Holiday Inn for $147 million
Swedish private-equity firm EQT has sold the 306-room Holiday Inn Express Osaka City Center Midosuji for 22.5 billion yen ($147 million) to Japanese real estate investment trust Orix, according to PERE Deals. The price per room is approximately $480,000.
According to CoStar, Baring Private Equity Asia, based in Hong Kong, acquired the hotel in November 2021 for an undisclosed price. EQT started the acquisition process for Baring in March 2022 for approximately $7.5 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.
3. UK MP alleges hotels loophole to avoid government safety regulator
Mike Reader, a Member of Parliament who represents the Northampton South constituency, has alleged that developers in London are skirting building regulators when building hotels. Reader claims developers are avoiding scrutiny by the government’s Buildings Safety Regulator by “seek[ing] to develop hotels that, once built, are flipped into long-term rents. … There is now a gray market of people finding ways of avoiding going through the BSR, including by building alleged hotels that then become rental accommodation under long-term leases.”
Hansard, the official reporter of parliamentary activity, added Reader and other MPs acknowledged the BSR did require an overhaul to lessen bureaucracy. The U.K. government is actively seeking to build 1.5 million new homes in the country and make it easier to develop. But Reader and other officials stated foremost should be safety issues, a concern that continues to be critical since the tragedy of the Grenfell Tower residential fire in London in June 2017.
4. Tariffs might soon hit US consumers hard
So far, the economic cost of U.S. tariffs have been absorbed by U.S. companies rather than consumers. While the Treasury Department has been “taking in about $30 billion a month in customs duties,” the New York Times reports that Americans might soon see cost increases.
The level of U.S. inflation — excluding food and energy prices — rose 3% in September.
Based on third-party data, the New York Times estimates US companies have absorbed 51% of tariff costs and passed on to consumers approximately 37% of the additional costs while suppliers have absorbed 9%. Higher inflation rates have been offset so far “because the tariffs are much higher and more widespread than in 2018 [the first time US president Donald Trump instigated tariffs], making them too difficult for consumers to digest all at once.”
5. Joint venture to acquire real estate investment trust Sotherly Hotels
A joint venture comprised of affiliates of Kemmons Wilson Hospitality Partners and Ascendant Capital Partners has a deal in place to acquire publicly listed U.S. hotel real estate investment trust Sotherly Hotels, CoStar News' Bryan Wroten reports.
Under the terms of the deal, the joint venture entity KW Kingfisher will acquire all outstanding shares of Sotherly common stock for $2.25 per share in cash. Sotherly's stock price closed trading on Friday, Oct. 24, at $0.89 a share, and on Monday morning jumped to $2.15.
Sotherly Hotels is an owner and operator of 10 full-service, primarily upscale and upper-upscale hotels with 2,786 total rooms across seven U.S. states.
“This transaction is a testament to the high-quality portfolio that Sotherly has built over the past 20+ years as a publicly traded company and we are confident this will pave a path towards future success for our hotels and the associates and guests that enjoy them every day,” Sotherly CEO David Folsom said in a statement.