REIT completes $33.5M deal for Fort Lauderdale hotel

The Chatham Lodging Trust, which had announced in July that it was paying $55 million to pick up two Residence Inn hotels in the United States, just closed its South Florida portion of the deal.

The REIT paid $33.5 million for the Residence Inn Fort Lauderdale Intracoastal/Il Lugano, a 105-room hotel that sits on a waterfront lot facing the Intracoastal Waterway.

This is the second of the two hotels to close; the first was the Residence Inn Boston. Both properties were owned by the Claremont Companies, a real estate group headquartered in Massachusetts.

Chatham CEO and President Jeffrey H. Fisher

Claremont paid roughly $19 million for the Fort Lauderdale hotel in July 2014, translating to $14.5 million premium after a year of ownership.

The condo-hotel was built in 2008 under the name II Lugano Hotel and Residences, but was converted to a Marriott-branded property in 2014. The condo portion of the hotel was not included in the sale.

“Our outlook on the industry remains bullish, and we continue to find excellent opportunities to add properties that match our strategy of acquiring premium-branded, high-quality, in-fill hotels with high barriers to entry and growing demand in two of the country’s strongest lodging markets,” Chatham CEO and President Jeffrey H. Fisher said in a statement when the deal was first announced. “The Residence Inn Fort Lauderdale Intracoastal/Il Lugano is an absolute gem of an asset located directly on the Intracoastal Waterway with stunning views in a rapidly growing area of South Florida that we believe will realize outsized growth over the next few years.”