Hersha Hospitality Trust Sells D.C., Boston Hotels
Hersha Hospitality Trust is continuing with its strategy of selling hotels as the industry reaches a full year since the coronavirus pandemic disrupted its business.
The REIT sold the 153-room Capitol Hill Hotel in D.C. for $51M and the 112-room Holiday Inn Express in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for $32M, a Hersha spokesperson tells Bisnow.
Hersha announced Tuesday it sold the hotels for net proceeds of $58M. The Hersha spokesperson said the net proceed figure reflected the combined sale prices minus the outstanding debt on the D.C. hotel.
Hodges Ward Elliott announced Thursday it brokered the sales. The parties didn't disclose the buyer, and the sales haven't been posted in D.C. or Massachusetts property records.
The REIT acquired the Capitol Hill Hotel in 2011 for $47.5M. The hotel at 200 C St. SE sits one block from the U.S. Capitol complex.
Hersha bought the Holiday Inn Express in Cambridge in 2006 for $12M. The hotel at 250 Monsignor O'Brien Highway sits a quarter-mile from Lechmere Square.
"The Washington D.C. and Boston markets consistently outperform in the wake of market shocks, making both favorites of the investment community in times of crisis," Hodges Ward Elliott Managing Director Cyrus Vazifdar said in a release.
Hersha Hospitality Trust has reached agreements to sell four additional hotels in San Diego, Coconut Grove, Florida, Wilmington, Delaware, and New York City. It said Tuesday that the six sales create combined proceeds of $216M and were executed at a 7.5% capitalization rate.
The REIT was part of a joint venture that defaulted on an $85M loan on a seven-hotel portfolio in Manhattan, The Real Deal reported in January. The lender, Mack Real Estate, took over the distressed portfolio this week for roughly 40% of its 2016 value.
Hersha Chief Financial Officer Ashish Parikh said on the REIT's Q4 earnings call on Feb. 24 that it had a minority interest in the Manhattan portfolio and that equity interest was transferred early last month. He said it has no remaining economic or legal commitments to the joint venture.
The company reported a net loss of $190.5M in Q4. It had $23.6M of cash on hand and $112M remaining in its credit facility as of year-end. It received $200M in additional borrowing capacity last month through a deal with affiliates of Goldman Sachs. It has pursued a strategy of selling older assets to generate additional liquidity.
"Our disposition strategy focused on generating efficiently priced liquidity by selling certain older, more mature assets from our various clusters that will require more capital investment in the coming two to three years relative to the rest of the portfolio," Hersha CEO Jay Shah said in a Feb. 17 release.
