The fed funds rate is 3.50%-3.75%. May CPI came in at 4.2%, up from 3.8% in April. Kevin Warsh has been Chair for five weeks. Nine of eighteen FOMC members project at least one hike this year. Six of those nine expect two.

That's the setup. Here's the decomposition that matters.

A 25-basis-point increase on a $15M floating-rate hotel loan is $37,500 in annual debt service. On $40M, it's $100,000. Those are the easy numbers. The harder number: current hotel bridge and PIP loan rates are already 8.50%-10.80%. Construction loans are 7.50%-9.50%. Bank term loans for hospitality assets sit at 7.60%-8.60% on a five-year. Add 25 or 50 basis points to any of those and recalculate your debt service coverage ratio. For a select-service property running a 1.25x DSCR on trailing NOI... a 50-basis-point move could push that below lender covenant thresholds without a single room going unsold.

The timing is what makes this acute. Inflation is accelerating (May PCE at 4.1% year-over-year, core CPI at 2.85%), consumer confidence is soft, and leisure demand is showing early signs of plateau. That's NOI pressure from the revenue side meeting debt service pressure from the capital side. I've analyzed portfolios where this exact convergence forced dispositions that owners didn't want and buyers didn't pay fairly for. The owner who stress-tested at current rates plus 50 basis points had options. The owner who assumed rates would ease had a conversation with a special servicer.

Bank of America now projects three quarter-point hikes in September, October, and December. Deutsche Bank expects two. Even if the actual outcome is one hike or none, the market is pricing uncertainty into spreads today. CMBS full-service rates at 6.50%-7.50% already reflect this. If you're refinancing a maturing loan in the next 12-18 months, your replacement debt is more expensive than your current debt regardless of what the Fed does next. The question is how much more expensive, and whether your trailing NOI supports the new service at a coverage ratio your lender will accept.

One more number. Total hotel debt service as a percentage of NOI is the metric that determines whether a rate hike is manageable or existential. For a property where debt service consumes 55% of NOI, a $100,000 increase on a $40M loan is absorbable. For a property at 75%... that same $100,000 might be the difference between a distribution and a capital call. Same rate hike. Completely different outcomes depending on which line you're reading on the capital stack. Check again.

SOFR at 3.60% as of June 11, with futures pricing near 4% by mid-2027, means the "higher for longer" thesis isn't a thesis anymore. It's the operating environment. Hotel CMBS maturities tell the story in one stat: nearly 70% of the $18.7 billion in hotel CMBS loans coming due in 2026 carry floating rates. That is a refinancing wall hitting an industry where debt service coverage ratios have already compressed 217 basis points since Q1 2024.

The per-room math is straightforward. A $20M floating-rate loan at SOFR + 250 basis points is pricing around 7.8-8.2% today. Another 25 basis points from the Fed adds $50,000 annually. On a 150-key select-service property, that's $333 per key per year in incremental debt service. Owners who underwrote these deals in 2021 or 2022 modeled debt costs at 4.5-5.0%. They're servicing at 8%. The gap between the pro forma and the P&L is not a rounding error. It's the difference between a 1.4x DSCR and a covenant breach.

The rate caps are worse. I've seen portfolios where the cap purchased in 2022 at a 2% strike rate is expiring this quarter. Replacing it at today's rates... the cost to hedge benchmark rates has gone up tremendously, and the strike rate itself is meaningfully higher. An owner who budgeted $80,000 for cap renewal is looking at multiples of that. This isn't a line item most GMs track. It should be, because when the cap renewal blows through the reserve, the cash comes from somewhere... and that somewhere is usually the capital plan.

Current spreads make refinancing even uglier. Loans originated in 2021-2022 at SOFR + 250 are legacy pricing. Debt funds today are quoting SOFR + 350 to 550 for transitional hotel deals. A property that refinances a $20M loan at SOFR + 400 instead of SOFR + 250 adds $300,000 in annual interest expense before any movement in the base rate. Lenders are requiring DSCRs of 1.35-1.40x. Properties that were comfortably above that threshold 18 months ago are now at the line or below it.

One structural positive deserves acknowledgment. Construction financing at 7.50-9.50% has effectively frozen new supply. Projects that penciled at 5% debt cost do not pencil at 8%. For existing operators, this is a supply constraint that supports rate integrity over the next 24-36 months. But that only matters if you survive the debt service pressure long enough to benefit from it. An owner I spoke with last month put it simply: "I'm going to own the best-performing hotel in my comp set and still lose money this year because of my balance sheet." He wasn't wrong. His RevPAR index was 112. His DSCR was 1.08.

$48 billion in CMBS hotel loan maturities hit between 2025 and 2026. That is the largest concentration of any commercial property type. Hotel mortgage spreads already widened to 375 basis points over comparable treasuries in Q4 2025 (a 125-150 basis point premium over multifamily and industrial). The Fed held rates last week. The market is now pricing a hike.

Four FOMC dissents. First time that's happened since October 1992. Three regional presidents argued the committee's easing bias was wrong... that the next move could be up, not down. A fourth wanted a cut. That's not consensus. That's a committee that doesn't agree on direction, which means the rate path everyone underwrote in 2022 (originate floating, refi when rates drop, capture the spread) is broken. Rates didn't drop. They might rise. And 30% of hotel mortgage balances mature this year.

Let me decompose what a hike means at property level. A 25-basis-point increase on a $20 million floating-rate loan is $50,000 in annual debt service. The source article equates that to 3-6 lost room nights per month at a 300-room hotel running 70% occupancy and $150 ADR. Check again. $50,000 divided by 12 months is $4,167. Divided by $150 ADR, that's 28 room nights per month. Not 3-6. Twenty-eight. At 50 basis points, it's 56 room nights per month. That's the real number, and it changes the severity of this story considerably. (I flag math errors because math errors in debt analysis get people into trouble. Ask anyone who trusted a franchise sales projection without checking the denominator.)

The squeeze isn't just debt service. CPI printed 3.3% in March. PCE ran 4.5% in Q1. Labor, insurance, F&B, utilities... all inflating. RevPAR has to outrun both operating cost inflation and rising debt service simultaneously. For a property that underwrote 5% annual RevPAR growth and got 2%, the gap between the pro forma and reality is now wide enough to trip a debt service coverage covenant. I've audited portfolios where the DSCR cushion looked comfortable at origination and evaporated within 18 months when two assumptions moved against the owner at once. Two assumptions are moving right now.

One more variable. Jerome Powell's term as chair ends May 15. Kevin Warsh, the incoming nominee, has advanced through the Senate Banking Committee. A leadership transition at the Fed during a period of internal disagreement adds uncertainty to the rate path that no pro forma can model. Owners with loans maturing in the next 18 months are refinancing into a market where spreads are already elevated, the benchmark rate may rise, and the new chair's policy stance is untested. That is not a "watch and wait" situation. That is a "call your lender this week" situation.