Investment group cashes out of Boca hotel with $14M sale

Just two years after scooping up a Ramada Boca Raton hotel out of bankruptcy, real estate group Equity Management Partners has sold the property for $14 million, according to county records. The buyer is hotel investor Bakul Sanghvi.

The deal is another sign of investment activity in Boca, where a new wave of development is helping buoy property values.

Sanghvi, who owns and operates hotels around the U.S., paid roughly $76,502 per room for the 183-room hotel at 701 Northwest 53rd Street. The property is within Boca’s 700-acre Park at Broken Sound commerce campus, which was recently rebranded in an effort to spur more mixed-use development.

Equity, led by Ben Mallah, bought the hotel at a bankruptcy auction for $9.25 million in 2014. According to the South Florida Business Journal, the property was in bad shape at the time, with only 90 of its rooms deemed habitable.

Mallah, who specializes in rehab projects, started renovating the property soon after the deal closed, giving the Ramada a fresh coat of paint and upgrading its rooms, according to county records.

The deal worked out to a cool $4.8 million premium over what Equity paid two years ago, not including renovation costs.

Sanghvi financed the deal with a $10.5 million loan from Legacy Bank of Florida, county records show.

Boca’s hospitality and retail industries have seen a significant uptick in new development recently, thanks in part to shrinking vacancies and growing rental rates.