Braemar Secures $60 Million Loan for Ritz-Carlton Lake Tahoe

Braemar Hotels & Resorts announced on November 3, 2026 (BHR ) that it had refinanced the mortgage on the 170-room Ritz-Carlton Lake Tahoe in Truckee, California, with a $60 million loan. The completed financing replaces a floating-rate mortgage and moves the luxury hotel owner’s next hard debt maturity to December 2028.

The new financing has a three-year initial term and two one-year extension options. It floats at SOFR plus 2.65%, while the replaced loan had a $43.4 million outstanding balance, floated at SOFR plus 3.25% and had a final maturity in January 2027. The change is a 60-basis-point reduction in the spread, calculated from the two reported margins over SOFR. An additional $15 million may be drawn in the future subject to certain conditions, rather than being part of the initial loan amount.

“We are pleased with the execution of this refinancing, which extends the debt maturity on one of our premier luxury assets and capitalizes on tighter interest rate spreads in the market,” said Richard J. Stockton, Braemar’s president and chief executive officer.

From Short-Term Extension to Refinancing

Braemar had already used a short extension to address the loan. On June 29, 2026, the company extended the same mortgage from an initial maturity of July 15, 2026 to October 15, 2026, with another three-month extension available at its discretion on the same pricing terms. It was Braemar’s only remaining 2026 maturity at that point. Stockton said at the time that refinancing the loan later in 2026 would leave no other final maturities until 2028.

Management’s October 8, 2026 investor presentation subsequently described the planned Lake Tahoe transaction as a single-asset spread-reduction and cash-out refinancing. Management estimated a 50-to-70-basis-point reduction in the SOFR spread, $200,000 to $300,000 of 2027 interest savings and a final-maturity change from 2027 to 2031. The spread and maturity figures were based on then-current lender terms, while the savings estimate used then-current loan balances and one-month Term SOFR forward curves. The 2031 maturity assumed full use of extension options; none of these figures represents realized savings. The completed spread reduction falls within that range.

Property Earnings and the Wider Debt Plan

The larger mortgage sits against modest trailing property earnings. For the 12 months ended June 30, 2026, Braemar reported $54.6 million of total hotel revenue, a $7.8 million hotel net loss and $7.6 million of Hotel EBITDA at Lake Tahoe. Hotel EBITDA is Braemar’s company-defined measure of property-level net income or loss before interest expense and loan-cost amortization, depreciation and amortization, income taxes and non-hotel EBITDA ownership expense, less EBITDA attributable to noncontrolling interests in consolidated entities. Hotel EBITDA margin was 13.8%, and gross investment in the property was $168 million at that date.

Lake Tahoe is also only one component of the financing program outlined in October. The other proposal would combine the Ritz-Carlton St. Thomas, Ritz-Carlton Reserve Dorado Beach, The Notary Hotel and Sofitel Chicago Magnificent Mile into a separate four-property CMBS loan. Across that planned pool and the Lake Tahoe transaction, management estimated total incremental interest savings of $4.8 million to $5.5 million and a 154-basis-point reduction in the weighted-average interest rate.

The Lake Tahoe deal completes one part of that plan; it does not establish the savings estimated for the full program. It replaces a near-term maturity with a larger property loan at a tighter spread. The remaining question is how the separate four-hotel refinancing is executed and whether its final terms deliver the economics management outlined in October.