An Apple REIT Companies' spokeswoman says that her company has no comment on the sale of the hotel and Atlanta-based Mark Fair, managing director of Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels, which represented the seller, did not respond to a request for comment before press time.

The transaction appears to be an arms-length sale which is a rarity today, says Guy Trusty, president of Lodging & Hospitality Realty, based in Coral Gables, a Miami suburb. The way hotels are changing hands today, he says, "usually they are taken through a foreclosure or someone buys the note from the lender."

The last sale of the Hampton Inn & Suites Miami-West was in 2006 for $14.5 million, says Trusty, but that sale may have been an internal one, not an arms-length sale. The hotel was one that Miami-based Carlos Rodriguez, who was principal of Cardel Hotel, Ltd., built, he says. At about the same time, Rodriguez sold his company to GFII DVI Cardel Doral, says Trusty. In theory, It is possible that that the $14.5 million sale was part of the merging of the two companies, but even if that price was the result of an internal sale, "it still represented a market level price," says Trusty.