The hotel markets are showing opportunity for growth and Amerimar is looking to find value-add properties and rely on their turnaround expertise to earn yield in tight markets, such as London. Amerimar currently owns three US hotels, The Hutton Hotel in Nashville; The Rittenhouse in Philadelphia and The Sheraton Atlanta. Recently it purchased the St. Ermins hotel in London, as its first foray overseas and part of a repositioning strategy. Co-owner and COO Jon Cummins sits down with GlobeSt.com to discuss underwriting and locating the right properties for hospitality value-add and why London jumps out as a good market for them.

GlobeSt.com: What underwriting standards do you look for in a value-add opportunity?

Jon Cummins: Well, what we really look for are assets that we really feel are capable of being more than they are at the point of acquisition. And there are a lot of things that go into that and there are certainly a lot of buildings around the country and around the world that you would look at and say, “That could be nicer or that could be better,” but then do all the dynamics of a location work, do demographics work, the client demand dynamics of the market, etc. What we really do is we start with the asset and the location and then we start drilling down into the pieces of the puzzle to formulate whether or not we may think an asset is capable of being repositioned.