Liberty Group closes $56 million hotel fund

Hotel developer and investor Liberty Group has finalized its second lodging acquisition fund, with plans to buy select-service and extended-stay properties through 2020.

Liberty Hospitality Fund II LP, of which Liberty Group and affiliates are the single-largest equity investor, raised $56.3 million beginning in January. In all, the firm hopes to deploy $165 million through leveraging the fund's equity.

The fund follows an initial Liberty fund, which completed raising $25 million in capital in 2014. Since that time, the fund has purchased more than $65 million in hotel properties, including Marriott- and Wyndham-flagged assets.

The first fund, which acquired several distressed properties that suffered under last decade's economic recession, has recently disposed of four of its hotels, in Charleston and Hilton Head, S.C.

“The deals may be a little different now. We won't be buying purely distressed properties, but we still feel there's an opportunity to create value through capital and managerial improvements, which is what we specialize in,” says Punit Shah, Liberty Group's CEO and the general partner of the second fund.

“There are still good opportunities, we just may have to look a little deeper and work a little harder to find them.”

Tampa-based Liberty Group has owned more than 50 hotels, containing some 4,000 rooms valued in excess of $425 million, throughout its nearly four-decade history.