Boylston Gets $57M in Financing for 157-Key Boston Hotel

By Barbra Murray, Contributing Editor

Residence Inn Boston/Back Bay Fenway has been attracting the attention of Boston visitors since its opening last year, and now the 175-room extended-stay property has caught the eye of the lending community. With the assistance of capital markets intermediary HFF, owner Boylston Properties just obtained $56.5 million in permanent financing for the asset through Cornerstone Real Estate Advisors.

“There was a lot of interest; life companies, CMBS lenders, banks–the whole gamut,” Frederic Wittmann, senior managing director with HFF, told Commercial Property Executive.

The prospective lenders had their reasons for clamoring for the opportunity to supply financing for Residence Inn Boston/Back Bay, which Cornerstone ultimately provided in the form of a 10-year, fixed-rate loan. Standing eight-stories high at 125 Brookline Ave., the hotel has location on its side.

“It’s close to Longwood [Medical and Academic Area] and near demand generators like Boston University and Fenway Park,” Wittmann added.

Additionally, the success of the nearly 155,000-square-foot property, which also features 6,000 square feet of ground-level retail space, since its debut in July 2013 certainly did not go unnoticed by the competing lenders. As Wittmann noted, “It opened and quickly became one of the best Residence Inn performers.” As a matter of fact, Residence Inn Boston/Back Bay ranked as one of the top five performing Residence Inns in the U.S. last year.

“The hotel is on one of these sites that clearly wasn’t obvious to hotel developers and it got built and now it’s obvious that it is a great site for a hotel, particularly for an extended-stay property,” he said. “It was the right product in the right moment and Cornerstone realized it.”

And the solid sponsorship undoubtedly was a factor as well. There was plenty for Cornerstone to love in this financing opportunity.

“Cornerstone is a very practiced, experienced and knowledgeable hotel lender, and they just got it–not that they were an outlier. Others got it and wanted to finance it as well, but Cornerstone had an attractive set of terms and conditions,” Wittmann concluded.

Wittmann was joined by Robyn King, a senior real estate analyst with HFF in representing Boylston Properties.