Blackstone鈥檚 core-plus real estate business has grown from zero to $27bn (鈧�21.7bn) in four years, according to its end-of-year figures released today.
The alternatives fund manager, more commonly associated with higher-return real estate strategies, has moved into core-plus activities in response to widespread institutional demand for income-producing investments.
Its report for the fourth quarter of last year shows that its core-plus assets under management (AUM) rose 91% year on year during the period.
Blackstone moved into core-plus real estate in early 2014. Later that year 91传媒在线 reported that Blackstone planned to launch its first core-plus fund.
Late last year, Jon Gray, head of real estate at Blackstone, told 91传媒在线 that there was no target size for the core-plus business, 鈥渂ut we see lot of potential for growth鈥�.
He said: 鈥淔our years ago, core-plus was at zero dollars. It鈥檚 still early days for this business and we鈥檙e keeping our focus on delivering returns for our investors.鈥�
Blackstone鈥檚 total real estate AUM has risen from $102bn in Q4 2016 to $115bn at the end of 2017.
But its credit business has grown faster 鈥� from $93.3bn to $138bn 鈥� meaning real estate is no longer the largest business line of Blackstone.
Its total AUM, including private equity and hedge funds, rose from $367bn to $434bn.
Blackstone attributed much of the growth of its credit business to inflows from its new Blackstone Insurance Solutions platform, and its acquisition of Harvest Fund Advisors.
Despite suggestions of a slowdown in real estate capital raising last year, Blackstone鈥檚 real estate inflows were $23.8bn in 2017.
It also made $24.5bn in realisations and deployed $19.9bn in capital.
Blackstone is also building up a $100bn infrastructure business from scratch. Earlier this month, IPE Real Assets reported that a US pension fund had been confirmed as an investors in its debut fund.
