BETHESDA, MD-Pebblebrook Hotel Trust has been very active inrecent days, both by continuing its acquisition spree and bytapping the capital markets to pay for it. The REIT just closed apublic offering of 10.9 million common shares, netting itself$226.3 million in proceeds. It plans to use the financing toacquire hotels, it says.

Make that numerous hotels. The REIT has been steadily gobbling upproperties in markets it views as strategic, a category thatincludes local properties and marquee hotels in California, amongothers. For example, it justacquired The Westin Gaslamp Quarter hotel for $110million all-cash. The 450-room, upper upscale, full-service hotelis located in San Diego in the heart of the Gaslamp Quarter.Seattle is another favored market for the REIT, which acquired189-key Hotel Monaco Seattle for $51.2 million, again in cash.

REITs' liquidity have served them well, both in riding out therecession and now, as they start to make investments, NAREIT’s BradCase hastold GlobeSt.com in previous interviews.In the pasttwo years, REITs have tapped the public equity and unsecured debtmarkets for more than $100 billion, he said. In Q1 2011alone, REITs raised almost $25 billion, putting the industrywell on its way to top the $47 billion raised in 2010. The onlyyear that topped that amount was in 2006, when REITs hauled in arecord $49 billion.