IRVINE, CA-The number and dollar volume of hotel sales in California slowed in the first half of this year, according to a new report by Atlas Hospitality Group, which foresees a continued slowing as the impact of the capital markets turmoil takes effect. The number of sales dipped by nearly 8% to 177, and the dollar volume of sales dropped by more than 33% to just under $2.1 billion.

Alan X. Reay, president of Atlas, tells GlobeSt.com that the slowing in the first half of this year was not connected to the recent upheaval in the credit markets but had to do with other factors. Reay explains that there were two primary reasons that the sales slowed during the first six months of this year.

First, the state's hotel market was coming off a record sales year of $5.1 billion worth of transactions in 2006 that would have been hard to match in any case. Second, the year 2006 was marked by an atypically high number of large portfolio deals, a phenomenon that is not likely to repeat itself because most of the portfolio deals that were out in the marketplace have now closed.