Nobu Hotels plans a 50-room San Juan hotel; boutique hotels in the city sold for $64,000 to $135,000 a room
Nobu Hotels plans to open a 50-room hotel with a Nobu restaurant in San Juan in 2028, its first property in Puerto Rico, tourinews.es reported on October 2, 2026. The brand will develop it with the real estate company KTT, the outlet said, and it did not name a site.
Nobu operates about 20 hotels and has close to 30 projects in development, among them New York and Bangkok, according to the outlet.
What San Juan hotels sold for
The closest recorded sales in the city are boutique hotels of 22 to 52 rooms. The Ivy Hotel, a 26-room property at 1149 Magdalena Avenue in Condado, sold for $3.5 million on February 13, 2024, according to RED Atlas property records. That is about $134,600 a room and $6,076 per square meter of its 576 m2. The same building sold for $2.175 million in March 2019, so its price rose 61% in five years.
In Old San Juan, the Plaza de Armas Hotel at 202 San José Street sold for $3.9 million on May 20, 2025, or $2,151 per m2 across 1,813 m2. A permit record at the address lists 52 rooms, which puts the sale at $75,000 a room for a hotel almost the size of Nobu's. The building had changed hands for $3 million in December 2021, and its 2022 remodeling permit was amended for a higher cost estimate that year and again in 2024.
At 1317 Ashford Avenue, the address of the 22-room Canario Boutique Hotel, a deed recorded a $1.4 million sale on December 23, 2024, about $63,600 a room.
What sellers ask
Asking prices run well above those sales. A 24-room boutique hotel in Santurce listed at $6.6 million, or $275,000 a room, before it came off the market in August 2026. A 26-room hotel in Condado-Miramar asked $5.5 million, about $211,500 a room. In Old San Juan, a remodeled building with 15 short-term rental units and a shop is listed at $4.2 million, or $280,000 a unit, and a historic hotel sold with its restaurant operation asked $12 million, $5,616 per m2, until October 1, 2026.
What that means for 50 rooms
At the Ivy's recorded price per room, 50 rooms come to about $6.7 million. At the asking prices of $211,500 to $280,000 a room, they come to $10.6 million to $14 million. Both bands describe existing boutique hotels, not a branded luxury hotel built new.
Across the island, the largest hospitality sale of the last 24 months was a resort in Río Grande that sold for $160 million on June 3, 2026, about $915 per m2 of its 174,784 m2.
The San Juan hotel pipeline
The closest project in size is a 54-room hotel with a restaurant, a gym and a rooftop at 804 Ponce de León Avenue in Miramar. It was filed as The Advocate Hotel in August 2024 and came back on October 15, 2026, as Ayland Hotel, with an extension or reopening request that the permit record marks incomplete. The 56-room Hotel Abitta on Clemenceau Street in Condado and the 43-room Hotel Palacio Provincial in Old San Juan also have filings marked incomplete.
Larger projects have cleared early reviews. A 109-room hotel at One Distrito in the Convention Center District received an approved infrastructure recommendation in July 2026, and a 257-room Homewood Suites and Hampton by Hilton on Fernández Juncos Avenue received an approved use recommendation in September 2026.
