NEW YORK CITY-The new LWHA Q3 2012 Major US Hotel SalesSurvey has been released and shows that hotel REITscontinue to be active, while coastal markets are prime. In terms ofREITs, the survey highlighted that Chesapeake LodgingTrust and Pebblebrook Hotel Trustpurchased two and three major hotels respectively as examples.

So far in 2012, the typical markets on the East and West coastshave seen impressive activity. According to the survey, 13transactions, or roughly one half of the quarterly total, includedassets located in California, Florida and New York. Here in theEast, the $400-million sale of the Grand Hyatt Washington DC andthe $362-million transaction of the Essex House here were both hugein the last quarter.

Information in the survey includes 81 single-asset saletransactions over $10 million each that are not part of a portfolioallocation. These transactions totaled more than $4.5billion, and included 20,000 hotel rooms with an average sale priceper room of $230,000. Last year across the same time span, 99 majorUS hotel sales transacted for a total of more than $7.0 billion.The average sale price per room was slightly under $230,000 LWHAsays.