Why US hotel investors should focus on 'grinding it out till 2029'

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Co-Star| LOS ANGELES — The hotel transaction market is going to pick up in 2026, said Greg Friedman, managing principal and CEO of Peachtree Group. But the full recovery is going to be a slow process.

In an interview at the Americas Lodging Investment Summit, Friedman said 2026 is going to be "somewhat similar" to 2025 as the investment market recovers and recalibrates to its environment.

"You know, four years ago, [it was] about 'survive to 2025,' and I feel like now it's about grinding it out till 2029," he said, "because it's going to take several years to really recover from this higher for longer, long-term interest rate environment."

Last year was rough almost across the board, but Peachtree found opportunities with its diversified portfolio and credit business, Friedman said.

"It was very volatile, especially from a hotel perspective. I think one of the ways we were able to mitigate it is that we're pretty diversified across our investments, because it's not just hotels," he said. "And within hotels, we invest on the equity side as well as the credit side. The credit side proved to be a little bit more resilient in 2025 versus the equity side, and we were able to deploy capital, I would say, on a more scalable level, on the credit side, as it relates to hotels."
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For more from Peachtree's Greg Friedman with Co-Star, watch the video, read, or listen to the podcast embedded above.

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