LOS ANGELES—Atlanta-based Peachtree Hotel Group concluded a record 2018 with 14 hotel acquisitions and 10 ground-up development projects, totaling $495 million.
“We looked at a tremendous number of opportunities last year and passed on the majority of them,” said Brian Waldman, SVP of investments for Peachtree. “We pursued only a small fraction of the total deals we underwrote and believe we picked the most attractive opportunities. Beyond the traditional marketed opportunities, our team did a fantastic job creating our own ‘off market’ opportunities by leveraging our deep industry relationships rather than simply being reactive to what the market brought to us.”
The hotel group made the following acquisitions in 2018:
- The 161-room SpringHill Suites Navarre Beach, FL
- The 198-room Crowne Plaza in Wauwatosa, WI
- The 138-room Hampton Inn & Suites in Jekyll Island, GA
- The 129-room Four Points by Sheraton in Knoxville, TN
- The 117-room Fairfield Inn & Suites in Charlottesville, VA
- The 112-room TownePlace Suites in Southaven, MS
- The 92-room Homewood Suites in Buckhead, GA
- The 147-room Hilton Garden Inn in Kansas City, MO
- The 109-room TownePlace Suites in Chandler, AZ
- The 120-room Hampton Inn in Columbia, MO
- The 94-room Homewood Suites in Daytona Beach, FL
- The 90-room Staybridge Suites in Madison, WI
- The 91-room Staybridge Suites in Middleton, WI
- The 86-room Homewood Suites in Covington, LA
The new acquisitions total approximately $285 million and bring the company’s portfolio to 46 hotels, totaling 5,511 rooms nationwide.
The hotel group also executed on 10 development deals last year, including the following:
- The 165-room Element in Orlando, FL
- The 140-room Hotel Indigo in Gainesville, FL
- The 136-room Fairfield Inn & Suites in St. Louis, MO
- The 105-room Homewood Suites in Destin, FL
- The 130-room Home2 Suites in Lawrenceville, GA
- The 119-room Courtyard in Plainfield, IN
- The 100-room Courtyard in Kennesaw, GA
- The 98-room Hilton Garden Inn in Jackson, TN
- The 90-room Home2 Suites in St. Augustine, FL
- The 106-room Home2 Suites in San Antonio, TX
“We are off to a great start in 2019,” he said. “We expect to close two acquisitions in the next few weeks and have a robust acquisition pipeline behind that. On the development side, we also have a deep pipeline of opportunities that we are pursuing but did not close or get capitalized as of year-end 2018. There is a much longer lead time for development projects, so the majority of our success in 2019 will be the direct results of seeds we planted in 2018.
“At the end of 2018, we also launched a strategy to focus on investing in opportunity zones,” he continued. “We closed on our first project last year. We already have several others signed up and a robust pipeline. I anticipate that investing in opportunity zones will be a major focus for us in 2019. What is interesting about our opportunity-zones strategy relative to our other investment strategies is that we have the ability to develop ground-up and manage, but I foresee a tremendous amount of our growth coming from joint ventures with strong partners that have the ability and qualifications to take the lead on development and management.”