HotelHinge · Hotel transaction intelligence
How to Find Hotel Sale Comps from Public Records
Quick answer: A hotel sale comp is a recent arms-length sale of a similar hotel, expressed as price per key (sale price divided by room count). Comps come from recorded deeds and assessor rolls, the same public records the enterprise terminals repackage. You can pull and normalize them yourself, no enterprise subscription required.
If you are buying, lending against, or appraising a hotel, every number you produce eventually leans on one question: what have similar hotels actually sold for? Those reference sales are called comparable sales, or comps. The reassuring part is that hotel comparable sales are not a proprietary dataset locked inside an expensive platform. They are public records, and with a little method you can assemble a clean comp set on your own.
This guide covers what a hotel sale comp is, where the data lives, how to build a comp set, how to adjust it, and the traps that quietly ruin one.
What is a hotel sale comp?
A hotel sale comp is a recent, arms-length sale of a hotel similar enough to your subject property that its price tells you something about your property's value. The word that does the work is arms-length: a sale between unrelated parties, each acting in their own interest, with the property exposed to the market. A transfer between affiliated companies or a family member is not a comp, because the price was not set by the market.
Because hotels come in wildly different sizes, you cannot compare raw sale prices directly. A $40,000,000 sale and a $9,000,000 sale tell you nothing until you normalize them. That is what price per key does.
Why price per key is the unit
Price per key is simply the sale price divided by the room (key) count. A 100-room hotel that sells for $9,000,000 traded at $90,000 per key. A 300-room hotel that sells for $40,000,000 traded at about $133,000 per key. Now the two are on the same scale and the comparison means something.
Price per key is the lingua franca of hotel comparable sales for one reason: it lets different-sized hotels be compared at a glance. It is not the whole story (it ignores how the hotels earn), but it is the anchor every other valuation method circles back to. For how per-key comps feed a full valuation, see How to Value a Hotel: Methods, Cap Rates & Comps.
Where do hotel comps come from?
Three public sources hold almost everything you need:
- County recorder deeds. When a hotel changes hands, the deed is recorded with the county recorder or clerk. The deed (and often an accompanying transfer-tax declaration) carries the parties, the date, and, in most jurisdictions, the price.
- Assessor rolls. The county assessor lists the parcel, its use code, and frequently the room count and an assessed value. This is where you confirm the property is a hotel and recover the key count you need for price per key.
- Disclosed filings. When a hotel sells inside an entity-level or portfolio transaction, the deal may surface in corporate or securities disclosures rather than a simple deed.
Here is the part worth internalizing: the legacy industry terminals do not have a secret pipeline. They largely collect these same county records, clean them, and license them back at enterprise prices. The records themselves are public. What you are paying for with a terminal is the aggregation, not the data.
How to build a comp set
A good comp set is a small group of sales that resemble your subject property on the dimensions that drive price. Match on three things:
- Chain scale. Compare like with like: economy, midscale, upscale, or luxury. An economy roadside hotel and a luxury resort live in different per-key worlds, so a luxury sale is not a comp for an economy property.
- Market. Prefer sales in the same metro or submarket. If the local set is thin, widen to comparable markets (similar demand drivers and seasonality) rather than reaching for a distant city.
- Recency. Favor recent sales. The hotel market drifts, so a sale from several years ago is a weaker signal than one from the last year or two, and may need a date adjustment.
How many do you need? There is no magic number. A handful of close, recent, arms-length sales beats a long list of loosely related ones. Gather what you can that genuinely matches, then let quality, not count, govern how much weight you give the set.
How to adjust comps
No two hotels are identical, so raw per-key numbers need adjustment before you trust them. You are asking, for each comp, whether it should read higher or lower than your subject and by roughly how much. The five factors below cover most of the gap.
| Adjustment factor | Why it matters | How to handle it |
|---|---|---|
| Chain scale | Per-key values cluster by scale; an upscale sale overstates value for a midscale subject | Keep comps in the same scale band; if you must reach, adjust the per-key down or up |
| Location / market | Demand, seasonality, and barriers to entry differ by submarket | Weight in-market comps most; treat out-of-market sales as directional only |
| Sale date | The market drifts over time, so an older price reflects an older market | Discount older sales; lean on the most recent transactions |
| Condition / PIP | A tired hotel or a pending brand property improvement plan lowers effective value | Adjust down for deferred capital; note when a buyer assumed a PIP obligation |
| Transaction type | Distressed, related-party, or portfolio sales do not reflect normal market pricing | Exclude non-arms-length deals; flag distressed sales rather than blending them in |
The goal is not false precision. It is to move each comp toward what it would have sold for if it were your property, so the adjusted set clusters in a defensible range.
The pitfalls that ruin a comp set
Most bad valuations trace back to a bad comp that looked fine. Watch for three in particular:
- Portfolio and bulk sales. When several hotels trade in one transaction for one price, the recorded figure is a blended number. Allocating it evenly across properties invents a per-key value that no single hotel actually traded at.
- Related-party transfers. A sale between affiliated entities, or a transfer into a new ownership vehicle, can record a price that was never market-tested. These show up as deeds but are not comps.
- Non-arms-length deeds. Gifts, estate transfers, foreclosures, and nominal-dollar deeds all appear in the record. Each carries a price that does not mean what a market sale's price means.
The discipline is simple to state and easy to skip: verify that each comp is a true, arms-length market sale before it earns a place in the set. One contaminated comp can pull a whole valuation off.
From comps to a value (and a confirmed owner)
A clean, adjusted comp set is the sales-comparison input to a hotel valuation. You apply the per-key range to your subject's room count, then reconcile it against the income and cost approaches, which is the full method in How to Value a Hotel: Methods, Cap Rates & Comps. Comps anchor the conversation; the income approach usually leads it for a stabilized hotel.
One more check belongs alongside the comps. When you trace a sale, confirm that the recorded seller is the property's real owner and not just a single-purpose entity standing in for someone else. The how-to is in Who Owns That Hotel? How to Find Hotel Owners in Public Records. The same public record that holds the comp holds the answer to who actually sold.
The public-record method vs the enterprise terminal
You can do all of this by hand: pull deeds at the county recorder, cross-reference the assessor roll for room counts, screen out the non-market transfers, normalize to price per key, and adjust. It works, and it is honest, because every number traces to a source you can cite. The cost is time, county by county.
The enterprise terminals sell you the time back, repackaging the public record into a polished interface behind an annual contract. That is the trade. The data is the same public record either way; the only question is whether you assemble it or rent it.
Frequently asked questions
Where do hotel sale comps come from?
Hotel sale comps come from the public record: deeds recorded with the county recorder or clerk when a property changes hands, the assessor roll that lists room counts and assessed values, and disclosed filings for entity-level or portfolio deals. The expensive industry terminals largely collect those same county records and license them back at enterprise prices.
What is price per key?
Price per key is a hotel's sale price divided by its room count. It is the standard unit for hotel comparable sales because it normalizes for size, so a 120-room sale and an 80-room sale can be compared on the same scale. A $9,000,000 sale of a 100-room hotel is $90,000 per key.
How many comps do you need?
There is no fixed minimum, but a useful set usually has several recent arms-length sales of hotels in the same chain scale and a similar market. More comps tighten the range; fewer but closer comps can beat a larger set of loosely related sales. Quality of match matters more than raw count.
Are hotel sale comps public record?
Yes. Real estate transfers are recorded at the county level, and assessor rolls are public, so the sale price, parties, and date for most hotel sales are matters of public record. Some details, like an allocated price inside a portfolio deal, may not be itemized, which is why each comp should be verified as a true market sale.