PLEASANT HILL — The Sonesta Select hotel in Pleasant Hill was purchased at a price that suggests property values remain too feeble to fuel a robust rebound for the Bay Area lodging market.

The 135-room hotel at 2250 Contra Costa Blvd. was bought for $12 million, according to documents filed on Sept. 25 with the Contra Costa County Recorder’s Office.

An affiliate controlled by the Vinod and Nayna Patel family trust acquired the hotel, county and state government public records show. Hospitality Properties Trust, a real estate investment trust, or REIT, acted through an affiliate to sell it.

The hotel is near the interchange of Interstate 680 and Contra Costa Boulevard. It’s also next to downtown Pleasant Hill, a lively hub of shops, restaurants and a movie complex.

Bought at about 38% below the property’s assessed value of $19.4 million in January, as calculated by the Contra Costa County Assessor’s Office, the price paid offers an indication that weak property values still haunt the region’s lodging sector.

An assessed value is just one metric that can be used to gauge how much a property was worth at a certain point in time. Appraisals, which often aren’t made public, can also provide a value estimate.

Plunging property values, loan defaults, bankruptcies, and foreclosures have haunted the Bay Area hotel sector in recent years, ailments that emerged in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020.

Occupancy levels have been improving, but the financial foundations that underpin hotel properties have weakened.

Lenders have foreclosed on some of the largest hotels in the Bay Area due to failed property loans.

The Signia by Hilton hotel, a 541-room lodging tower in downtown San Jose, was seized through a foreclosure in May.

In July, the Oakland Marriott City Center hotel, a 500-room tower, was taken back through a foreclosure by its lender.

Big hotels in San Francisco have also plunged into foreclosure. In 2023, the Huntington Hotel atop the city’s famed Nob Hill was seized by a lender.

In San Francisco, the 155-room Four Seasons at Embarcadero faces foreclosure, real estate records show. The 1,919-room Hilton San Francisco Union Square and the 1,024-room Parc 55 San Francisco hotel were forced into a receivership-orchestrated sale after their owner ceased making payments on the hotels’ $725 million loan. The 189-room Barnes San Francisco hotel faces foreclosure due to a failed loan, public documents show.