LOS ANGELES—Solstar Investments has purchased two Marriott Hotel properties outside of Las Vegas, GlobeSt.com reports exclusively. The two properties include the 120-room Marriott SpringHill Suites Hotel and the 108-room Marriott TownePlace Suites Hotel. The purchase price for the two properties was not disclosed, however, industry sources unrelated to the deal say the combined purchase price was $20 million.

“We have been targeting hotel debt for the past three-to-four years through the recession,” David Mirharooni of Brickstar Capital, an affiliate of Solstar Investments, tells GlobeSt.com. “It is a really good time in Vegas to purchase select-service hotels. For the past six-months to a year, we have been bidding on select-service hotel assets in the Las Vegas and Henderson, NV, markets, and we ended up falling in love with these two assets. They are right off the freeway, and Henderson is a growing market that is very business friendly. There are a lot of great things happening in that market that attracted us to the property.”

The two properties were both built in 2009, and purchased directly from the builder, Campbell Lodging. Solstar plans to perform a property improvement plan on each of the properties, as recommended by Marriott. The improvement plans will cost a total of $3 million in addition to the purchase price. “We found that there was a unique opportunity to improve these assets with a property improvement plan, and by doing so we can increase our net operating income tremendously over the next year,” says Mirharooni. “We thought that was a unique opportunity since we purchased it from the developer to reposition and make it into an even better performing Marriott select-service brand.”

Eddia Mirharooni, Steven Barklis, Gary Elam and Mirharooni launched Solstar Investments last year to take advantage of growth in the select-service and assisted living sectors, and the company is looking to purchase assets occupied by operating businesses. “We feel like the select-service, not the hospitality industry in general, is more recession proof,” explains Mirharooni about the company's interest in the sector. “These types of properties have performed well over the past three years, and so we feel like there is going to be a tremendous amount of growth in this hotel sector. We have to rent rooms on a daily basis, and we have the ability to set the market prices on a daily basis, which will allow us to get a higher rental revenue going forward. This is a good business to be in.”

The purchase was financed by GE Capital Franchise Finance, and Sklar Kirsh served as the buyer's legal counsel on the transaction. “This transaction required significant coordination among GE as lender, Marriott as franchisor, 24-7 as hotel manager and the equity investors within the Buyer's partnership group," Andrew Kirsh of Sklar Kirsh tells GlobeSt.com. “This is a great transaction for Solstar Investments, who is able to enter a very competitive hospitality market in great Las Vegas region.”

The Las Vegas market is picking up across property sectors. Avison Young recently announced the expansion of its Las Vegas team to take advantage of improving market conditions there.