Cap Rates Continue Their Trend Downward in Q2 Summary | By Gregory Hartmann

As the next installment to my March 2009 article published in Hotel News Now, I thought it best to literally pick up where I left off on that date. In the last paragraph of that article I concluded that because Strategic Hotel Capital (BEE on NYSE) has a cap rate below 10%, over 200 basis points below the next lowest, its share price may still have potential for further declines. At that time, cap rates ranged from 9.6% (for BEE) to 15.4% (for Host) and averaged 12.8% for all seven REITS based on their March 2, 2009 share prices and 2008 year-end statistics. My final sentence read, "So whether you are lowering your income on a TTM basis or forecasting 2009, you can safely anticipate most of those cap rates to trend downward through 2010."