hans detlefsen
Unintended Consequences: How Chicago’s Airbnb Policies Are Backfiring
Hans Detlefsen | February 14, 2022
By Hans Detlefsen As Airbnb and other short-term-rental platforms have grown during the past decade, regulators and hotel industry associations have fought to limit their impacts. The hotel industry has generally viewed these new platforms as competitive threats. As such, the hotel industry sought to level the playing field by asking municipalities to impose taxes and regulations on short-term rentals that would be comparable to what hotels experience. Overview of Short-Term Rental Policies in Chicago In Chicago, the effort to constrain the short-term rental industry went farther than just leveling the playing field. Airbnb bookings ...
Airbnb’s Market Share: U.S. Lodging Demand Analysis
Hans Detlefsen | June 20, 2019
By Hans Detlefsen In this article, Hotel Appraisers & Advisors (HA&A) estimates Airbnb’s market share of U.S. lodging demand. This year’s edition of our study differs from prior publications in two major ways. Firstly, we isolate data from Airbnb, while excluding data from other, smaller home-sharing companies that were included in prior publications. Secondly, we have focused our analysis on Airbnb demand that we believe is most like traditional hotel lodging demand. We exclude, for example, the rental of shared rooms or rooms with shared living quarters. Since its creation in 2007, Airbnb has become a dominant channel for ...
Hotel Underwriting Tips
Hans Detlefsen | September 18, 2018
By Hans Detlefsen As the owner of a hotel appraisal and advisory company, I get the opportunity to review hundreds of hotel appraisals, feasibility studies, investment pitch books, and offering memoranda each year. One of the things I've learned over the past two decades is that a few small changes in underwriting assumptions can greatly affect how hotel deals looks to investors. If these underwriting assumptions are not carefully considered, then they can represent big pitfalls for investors, appraisers, and others involved in the underwriting process. The following is a list of 12 issues and pitfalls I encounter frequently. This is no...
Airbnb’s Market Share of U.S. Lodging Demand Increasing at a Decelerating Rate
Hans Detlefsen | April 25, 2018
By Hans Detlefsen Since 2007, when Airbnb was created, the U.S. lodging industry has experienced a rapid increase in both traditional hotel demand and lodging demand occurring in the sharing economy. Airbnb has become a dominant channel for listing available lodging units in the sharing economy.[1] In this article, Hotel Appraisers & Advisors (HA&A) estimates Airbnb's market share of U.S. lodging demand, measured by room nights booked. We also discuss historical growth rates and the recent deceleration of Airbnb's demand growth pace. HA&A collaborated with AirDNA[2] and relied on numerous other data providers, such as STR, S...
Ranking Hotel REITs 2018: Dividends, Profit Margins, and Overhead
Hans Detlefsen | April 24, 2018
By Hans Detlefsen Hotel Appraisers & Advisors (HA&A) is pleased to announce our third annual ranking of hotel real estate investment trusts (REITs). HA&A currently monitors 16 hotel REITs, discussed throughout this report. Some hotel REITs are more effective than others at generating earnings and passing profits on to investors. In this year's report, we rank each of these hotel REITs according to three metrics: (1) dividend yields; (2) profit margins; and (3) overhead expenses. Our 2018 rankings are based on year-end 2017 data from each of the 16 hotel REIT companies we monitor. Hotel REITs offer some of the highest dividen...
How Long Do Economic Cycles Last?
Hans Detlefsen | March 26, 2018
By Hans Detlefsen In June of 1857 the U.S. economy entered its 30th consecutive month of expansion. But banks were already starting to feel the impact of bad loans piling up. As the gold rush slowed, the pace of migration westward across the country also slowed. Railroad stocks began to decline. Land speculators lost big when new railroad construction projects did not materialize as they had hoped. When international newspapers reported that the British government had circumvented rules pertaining to gold reserves, U.S. depositors wondered whether something like that could happen here. Banks came under increasing pressure to meet withdr...
Ranking Hotel REITS 2017: Dividends, EBITDA & Overhead
Hans Detlefsen | September 19, 2017
Which Hotel REITs Generate the Highest EBITDA Margins and Pass Along the Most Money to Investors? By Hans Detlefsen and Matthew Glodz Hotel Appraisers & Advisors (HA&A) is pleased to announce our second annual ranking of hotel real estate investment trusts (REITs). HA&A currently monitors 16 hotel REITs, discussed throughout this report. Some hotel REITs are more effective than others at generating earnings and passing profits on to investors. In this year's report, we rank each of these hotel REITs according to three metrics: (1) dividend yields; (2) EBITDA margins; and (3) overhead expenses. Our 2017 rankings are based on...
Hotel Cap Rates Inching Up: Is It a Good Time to Sell Hotels?
Hans Detlefsen | June 7, 2017
By Hans Detlefsen Introduction For the past seven years, hotel capitalization rates (cap rates) have generally declined, according to investor surveys. The last time hotel cap rates increased for consecutive survey periods was in 2008, as the investment community realized the U.S. economy was in the early stages of a severe economic recession. From 2008 through early 2010, hotel cap rates jumped roughly 150 to 250 basis points, depending on which survey and hotel chain scale you observed. Since then, hotel cap rates have declined roughly 200 to 300 basis points, according to the same surveys. At the beginning of 2017, hotel cap rates st...
