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Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust is selling its 49.9% stake in two major casinos in Las Vegas: MGM Grand Las Vegas and the Mandalay Bay, in a deal that values the properties at a combined $5.5B.
BREIT, Blackstone Inc.'s nontraded REIT, has owned its stake in the hotels for about three years, acquiring them from MGM Grand. The sale would net Blackstone about $700M in profit, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing sources familiar with the deal.
“The sale ... enables us to further concentrate BREIT’s portfolio in its highest growth sectors, including logistics and rental housing,” Blackstone Real Estate Senior Managing Director Scott Trebilco said in a statement.
Blackstone has recently exited other Vegas properties at a profit as well, including the sale of the Cosmopolitan on the Strip for more than $5.6B in September. Blackstone told investors that deal represented the company’s most profitable single-asset sale ever.
The buyer of the minority stake in the MGM Grand and Mandalay Bay is gaming and hospitality specialist Vici Properties. That company already owns the other 50.1% of the assets, which are on 226 acres at the southern end of the Las Vegas Strip.
The two assets total about 11,000 rooms, and include about 321K SF of gaming space, with 191 table games and 2,235 slot machines and electronic table games. They also feature 3M SF of exhibition and meeting space, plus various restaurants and entertainment venues.
Visitors have returned in droves to Vegas. Compared with the same month in 2019, hotel revenue overall spiked 51% in October 2022, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. About 3.6 million people visited the city this October.
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