WASHINGTON, DC—HFF has added a dedicated hotel transaction group to its local capital markets team. Cyrus Vazifdar, an associate director in the investment sales group, and Mark Remington, a managing director in the debt group, will make up the group.

The new team will offer lodging-specific capital markets transaction services, including investment sales, debt placement and equity placement. Its focus will be on Mid-Atlantic lodging transactions. The team is part of HFF's national hotel group led by Daniel Peek, which has closed more than $1.2 billion in investment sales, debt placement and equity placement transactions through second quarter 2014.

All together the HFF hotel group is comprised of more than 30 hotel professionals located throughout 23 offices nationwide. Most have worked with each other before. Earlier this year, Peek, director KC Patel, and Vazifdar arranged the sale of the Franklin Marriott Cool Springs, a 300-room full-service hotel, located in Franklin, TN, to cite one example.

In the new group in DC, Vazifdar will focus on hotel and lodging investment sales transactions in the Mid-Atlantic states, with a specific focus on the Washington, DC lodging market. Vazifdar has been with HFF since 2011, initially as a member of HFF Miami before relocating to the Washington, DC office to establish HFF Washington, DC first hotel investment sales practice.

Mark Remington, who has been with HFF since 2004, will focus on hotel and lodging debt and equity placement transactions.

"We are truly pleased to announce that Cyrus Vazifdar has relocated to Washington D.C. from Miami, where he has been a key member of our hotel practice for the past three years," says Peek, in a prepared statement. "Cyrus has contributed greatly to the dramatic growth of our hotel business and will now enhance his role from our office in Washington."

Since 2012, the HFF Hotel Team has executed more than $1.2 billion in Mid-Atlantic hotel transaction activity, including the construction financing for the newly opened Marriott Marquis Convention Center, and the sale of the eight-property Skye Hotel Portfolio.