By Meghan Hall
A Holiday Inn Express and Suites has sold in the Seattle suburb of Auburn, Wash. According to documents on file with King County, private investors affiliated with JOAJOA Inc. purchased the downtown hotel for $23.51 million, or about $196,916 per key. The sellers of the property were Palma Investment Co. LLC and LC & L Daebak, Inc. associated with another set of private investors from Olympia, Wash.
The hotel is located at 507 C St. SW. King County Assessor’s data shows that the hotel was constructed in 2018 and totals 67,677 square feet spread across 120 rooms. The hotel sits on a 2.55 acre lot. The hotel features a number of amenities, including a fitness center, express breakfast, electric vehicle charging and laundry facilities.
The hotel is located just off of State Route 167, The Outlet Collection Seattle, anchored by a Walmart Supercenter, Auburn Municipal Airport, and a second retail center anchored by Lowe’s and Fred Meyer. The surrounding neighborhood is mostly residential and an easy drive from Tacoma and Seattle.
In recent months, several other hotels throughout the region have traded. In October of 2021, KKR purchased a Federal Way’s Courtyard Marriott for $25.4 million. In December, SRM Development purchased a Holiday Inn Express in Bellevue for $32.5 million; however, the original asking price by the seller was $52.5 million, according to previous reporting by The Registry.
A fourth quarter report produced by brokerage firm Kidder Mathews highlights how the Puget Sound hospitality market, while not fully back to normal, has begun to recover. During 2021, average room occupancy was about 50.2 percent. While hotels in core, downtown markets continued to struggle with occupancy, South Lake Union, North Seattle and Everett, among other suburban markets, showed “strong improvement.”
Room rates also increased. By the end of 2021, the average price of a room was $190 per night, up from $171 per night during 2020. Transaction volume during the last year rose to 35 sales, the highest transaction volume in recent years. With such fundamentals at play, the hotel market is still recovering, but at the very least is on the right track.
