HotelHinge Research  ·  Mid-year transaction roundup

U.S. Hotel Transactions, First Half 2026: What the Public Record Shows

Published Jul 10, 2026 · Sourced to the public record · A roundup of the six 2026 monthly rundowns

We closed out the first six monthly rundowns of 2026. Read end to end, the half tells a clearer story than any single month. Every figure below is drawn from one of those six reports, and each report links each trade to its county deed record or to the outlet that carried it. Recorded and reported figures are kept in separate lanes so a headline is never quietly inflated.

The half in one table

Each month's priced total, split into the deed-recorded lane and the trade-press-reported lane, with the deal count in parentheses. The two lanes never overlap, and unpriced ownership changes and distress events are excluded from every figure here (they sit in their own sections inside each monthly report).

Totals are the sum of the six published monthly rundowns and carry the same "+" caveat: the public record accrues on a lag, so each month keeps filling in after it closes and these figures are provisional. Recorded figures are county deed or assessor filings; reported figures are attributed to the named outlet that carried them.

Five things the first half showed

One trophy resort can move a whole month

The single largest trade of the half was the $835 million JW Marriott Marco Island Beach Resort in Florida, together with two adjacent golf courses, bought from MassMutual. The buyer disclosed the pending deal in a March SEC filing, JLL arranged the sale and $690 million in financing, and it closed in May. It was described as the largest single real estate transaction in Southwest Florida history. That one reported deal lifted March's tape above $1.2 billion; strip it out and the other five months land in a much tighter band, a reminder that a single trophy resort can move a monthly number more than the whole rest of the tape. The full chain is in the March rundown.

The clearest value signal was a reset, not a record

In January the Embassy Suites La Jolla in San Diego traded for $111 million, close to half the $215.6 million its prior owner (BioMed Realty, a Blackstone company) paid in December 2021. Deals like that are why HotelHinge shows the recorded and reported price against the deed, not the memory of the last cycle. See the January rundown.

Deed records did most of the quiet work

Of the 123 priced trades, 95 came from county deed and assessor recordings, parcel by parcel, most of which never surfaced in the trade-press deal sheets. That long tail runs from landmark assets down to a single motel, and it is the part of the market that only shows up if you read the public record directly. The 28 reported trades are the larger, entity-level deals the press covers; the recorded lane is where the breadth of the market lives.

The honest lanes stayed visible all half

Named ownership changes with no disclosed price stayed in their own unpriced tier ("Through the Grapevine") inside each monthly report and were never counted in the dollar totals above. Foreclosures and lender takebacks were labeled as debt figures, never counted as sale volume. A distress event is not a trade, and keeping those lanes separate is what lets the six-month picture add up cleanly.

The landmark story of the half was a federal one

In June the federal government sold the fee interest in the Old Post Office Building in Washington, home to the Waldorf Astoria Washington DC, to the lender that already held the leasehold; the deed recorded at $80 million. Earlier in the year the Hyatt Regency San Francisco (821 rooms) was put under contract to Blackstone Real Estate for a reported $279 million. Both, with their full sourced chains, are in the June rundown.

The half's largest priced trades

The biggest priced transactions of the first half, each drawn from that deal's own sources in the linked monthly report.

• JW Marriott Marco Island Beach Resort · Marco Island, FL$835M
  Reported. Bought from MassMutual with two adjacent golf courses; set in March, closed in May. March.
• Hyatt Regency San Francisco · San Francisco, CA$279M
  Reported. 821 rooms; Sunstone Hotel Investors to funds affiliated with Blackstone Real Estate, announced June. June.
• Embassy Suites La Jolla · San Diego, CA$111M
  Reported. Sold by BioMed Realty (a Blackstone company) for roughly half its December 2021 price. January.
• Waldorf Astoria Washington DC · Washington, DC$80M
  Recorded + reported. The federal government sold the fee to the leasehold owner; deed recorded June 11. June.
• 21c Museum Hotel Nashville · Nashville, TN$70M
  Recorded. The largest deed-recorded trade of March, the month the recorded lane peaked. March.

Read the six reports

Every trade in the tables above lives in one of the six monthly rundowns, each with its full priced table, the unpriced "Through the Grapevine" section, and the distress pipeline, every row linked to its source.

• U.S. Hotel Transactions, January 2026
• U.S. Hotel Transactions, February 2026
• U.S. Hotel Transactions, March 2026
• U.S. Hotel Transactions, April 2026
• U.S. Hotel Transactions, May 2026
• U.S. Hotel Transactions, June 2026

Where this sits in the U.S. hotel map

The half's trades are a live slice of a bigger picture: the HotelHinge census tracks 46,101 U.S. hotels across 51 markets, each with public-record ownership, sales, and financing attached to the property. These monthly rundowns are the free read on what is moving; the full property-level database, and the aggregate U.S. hotel statistics behind it, are a login away.