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1. Magna sells New York portfolio for $490 million
A fund managed by Magna Hospitality sold a portfolio of four New York City hotels for a total of $489.8 million, according to CoStar data.
The portfolio includes The 196-room Hilton Garden Inn New York Times Square North and the 374-room Motto by Hilton New York City Chelsea, as well as leasehold interests in the 320-room DoubleTree by Hilton New York Times Square South and the 239-room Fairfield Inn & Suites New York Midtown Manhattan Penn Station.
Jan Freitag, national director for hospitality market analytics at CoStar, said the deal is a sign of the strong hotel fundamentals in the city.
"This sustained pricing power has made assets in the city attractive, and so it is no surprise that more transactions are being talked about or consummated," he said. "The price per key in the fee simple part of the transaction speaks to the strength of the asset class, based on healthy market demand fundamentals and continued robust pricing power."
2. Regional banks merge to ramp up lending capacity
While fewer and bigger lenders is the broad trend across the banking industry, The Wall Street Journal reports more regional and midsize banks are making deals to merge and "build strongholds in specific, local markets."
Recent deals include Fifth Third's planned $10.9 billion acquisition of Comerica and PNC Financial Services $4.1 billion deal to buy FirstBank.
Ultimately, this could result in a more resilient network of lenders for industries — like hotels — that rely on them, the newspaper reports.
"Deals like these will hardly result in behemoths the size of JPMorgan Chase or Bank of America," the Journal reports. "PNC’s chief executive has ultimately set his sights on roughly doubling its size to $1 trillion in assets — while Colorado-based FirstBank brought in just $27 billion. But one thing they do bring is the promise of being able to build relationship- and branch-based networks of deposits that might be less likely to flee the next time interest rates rise or there is a banking crisis elsewhere in the country."
3. Under-construction hotel partially collapses in Madrid
Three injuries were reported, although none appear to be life-threatening, when a building under renovations in central Madrid partially collapsed, Reuters reports.
The five-story building was described as a hotel conversion project by developer Rehbilita. The collapse happened on the interior, leaving the facade in tact.
Two people had what were described as light injuries, while the third was taken to a hospitality with a broken leg.
4. Spanish REIT Azora buys hotel operator Medplaya
Spanish real estate investment trust Azora has closed on a deal to buy hotel operator Medplaya, CoStar News' Terence Baker reports. The deal includes six owned properties in Catalonia and Costa del Sol along with Medplaya's 15-property management platform.
All but one of the hotels operated by Medplaya are in Spain with the lone exception being the 212-room Bella Vista Beach Club in Bulgaria.
Azora "has invested over €4.15 billion in more than 110 hotels and 28,000 rooms since 2011," the news release announcing the deal said. "Its strategy spans high-quality hotels, urban hostels and assets requiring active management and repositioning, partnering closely with leading operators to maximize value.”
5. A ground-level look at LuxUrban's sudden closures
On Tuesday, The New York Times published a first-hand report of a journalist who inadvertently ended up as the messenger of bad news for would-be guests at a suddenly shuttered New York LuxUrban property.
That company unexpectedly closed down three properties in September, including the Tuscany by LuxUrban.
"Still unsure of exactly what had happened, I walked to the Tuscany, another LuxUrban hotel nearby," wrote Times reporter Gabe Castro-Root. "There, I found a note on the door from the building’s owners saying the hotel company that leased the property had abandoned it without notice. It also referred to a vacate order from the local Fire Department.
"In the lobby, I met Eliza Simopoulou and Tasos Simopoulos, siblings from Thessaloniki, Greece, who were poring over their computers in search of a new hotel. They had arrived to check in to the Tuscany only to be told it was closed — despite having received an email the day before saying they could request an early check-in — and it looked as if every other available hotel was either out of their budget or in New Jersey."