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Questions, answered

Yes, your flag can sit on a ground lease. Here is what the franchisor checks.

Hotel owners ask it before every acquisition and refinance: will the brand stay if the land is leased? Major flags operate on ground leases across the country. What matters is the paper — the term, the transfer language, and what happens to the franchise if the operator ever changes.

Franchisors care about three things. Our lease answers all three.
Term
99 years outruns any franchise agreement and every renewal cycle
·
Transfer
Leasehold freely transferable to a comparable operator — brands recognize the standard
·
Survival
New-lease and cure rights mean a default never strands the flag
A franchise agreement wants to know the hotel will exist, be operated by someone qualified, and be reinvested in (the PIP) for the life of the license. A 99-year lease with institutional transfer language satisfies that more durably than most fee ownership — owners sell hotels far more often than 99-year leases expire. Comfort letters between franchisor, leasehold lender, and ground lessor paper the edges; they are routine, and we sign them.
Why hotels specifically

Hotel stacks love land capital.

Hotels carry the highest cost of capital in real estate — which makes the spread between hotel yields and ground-lease pricing the widest in the business. Taking the land out of a hotel acquisition can cut the equity check dramatically while trailing income covers the rent from day one, and the leasehold loan that remains shows a debt yield lenders rarely see on hospitality. Operating history, brand, management agreement: all untouched.

Questions, answered

FAQ.

Will the franchisor need to approve the ground lease?

Typically they review it during licensing or relicensing. What they look for — long remaining term, operator transferability, no fee mortgage that can foreclose out the operation — are exactly the features of our form.

What about the PIP?

PIP obligations live at the operating level, unchanged. If anything, the equity our purchase frees up is what funds the PIP without a mezzanine loan.

Does the management or franchise agreement outrank the ground lease?

They coexist at different layers: the lease governs the land, the franchise governs the brand, and comfort letters align them for the lender. Standard hotel structuring.

Get your number

Buying or refinancing a flagged hotel?

Send the trailing 12 and the stack. We will show you the acquisition with land capital in it, and what it does to your equity and your lender's debt yield.

Email us the property