Sixth Street, with Riller Capital, acquired the Pier House Resort & Spa at 1 Duval Street in Key West, Florida from Braemar Hotels & Resorts for $190 million. The property holds 142 keys on five oceanfront acres, with 75 linear feet of private beach, two oceanfront dining venues, a full-service spa and roughly 3,000 square feet of meeting and event space.
Starwood Property Trust provided a $141 million loan. The Plasencia Group advised Braemar; CBRE and Latham & Watkins advised Sixth Street.
The metrics: $1,338,028 per key, loan-to-price of 74.21%, and $38.0 million per acre — all CRE360 arithmetic.
At $1.34 million a key this is not a hotel trade in the conventional sense. Five acres of oceanfront at the head of Duval Street with 75 feet of private beach is an irreplaceable-land trade that happens to have 142 rooms on it.
The seller's motive is the part worth reading. Braemar is not liquidating under pressure; it is moving off an external advisory arrangement toward self-management and deliberately concentrating into a smaller luxury portfolio. Assets leave that kind of process because they no longer fit the target, not because the balance sheet forced the sale. A forced seller sets a floor. A focusing seller sets a market. This print is closer to the second.
The financing is the third data point. A debt fund wrote 74.21% against a single-asset luxury resort with only 3,000 square feet of group space. That is real leverage on real per-key exposure, and it says the lender underwrote the land and the rate, not the meeting-planner calendar.
Implications: when a REIT restructures its management arrangement, its disposition list becomes a pricing signal for the entire luxury segment — track those lists as leading indicators. And note what 74% leverage on a 142-key resort with negligible group business implies: the debt is looking through to residual land value. Sponsors of comparable coastal assets should test what their lender is actually securing against.
Flag: Braemar's 2014 acquisition basis was not disclosed, so no hold-period return can be computed.
Key Takeaways
- $190M across 142 keys is $1,338,028 per key and $38.0M per acre (CRE360 derived)
- The $141M loan is 74.21% of price on an asset with only 3,000 sf of group space — the debt is looking through to land (CRE360 derived)
- A strategic seller shrinking on purpose sets a cleaner comp than a distressed seller shrinking under duress
Sixth Street newsroom, 'Sixth Street Acquires the Pier House Resort & Spa', Aug 2026 · Commercial Observer, 'Sixth Street Acquires Iconic Pier House Hotel in Key West for $190M', Aug 2026 · Hotel Business, 'Sixth Street acquires Pier House Resort & Spa for $190M' · REBusinessOnline, 'Sixth Street, Riller Capital Purchase Pier House Resort in Key West for $190M' · CRE360 analysis
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