Real Estate Fundraising Recovers, but Not Due to Multifamily

Article originally posted on HERE on January 22, 2026

Real estate fundraising has bounced back, increasing 29 percent year-over-year to $222.2 billion in 2025, according to the latest PERE fundraising report. This represented the first annual volume growth since 2021.

Investors, however, were not as convinced on the multifamily front alone, with capital earmarked for such assets making up 32 percent of fundraising in 2025, down from 49 percent in 2024. Industrial strategies likewise lost ground, down to 16 percent from 26 percent. Data center funds gained the most, attracting a whopping 37 percent of capital, up from just 2 percent in 2024.

Debt and value-add strategies fell out of favor as well, while opportunistic and core-plus approaches drew more attention. Fundraising for opportunistic investment vehicles accounted for 33 percent of capital in 2025, up from 18 percent in 2024, while core-plus stood at 10 percent, up from 5 percent.

These trends carried on into 2026, with Benefit Street Partners closing a $10 billion opportunistic debt fund earlier this month. Deployment is set for states including Florida, Texas and Tennessee.

Such Sun Belt markets are also favored by value-add investors, with The Milestone Group closing its sixth fund at $1.1 billion last year. These strategies aren’t region-locked: For example, Mesirow’s $1.2 billion fund plans deployment across the top 30 U.S. metros.

Investor interests also aligned with concerns about affordability nationwide. In fact, several companies wrapped up their largest such vehicles ever in 2025, including Jonathan Rose with a $660 million fund and Hillpointe with a $750 million vehicle.

Notably, Blackstone and Brookfield raised a combined $35 billion in 2025, amounting to 16 percent of all capital. In 2024, the duo had raised just 0.8 percent of total funds, or $1.3 billion combined. That year also stood out as the weakest since 2020, with total capital raised at just $172 billion.

Fundraising takes longer, but managers reach more goals

While 2025 registered a rebound in terms of raised capital overall across CRE, the year also continued a trend of funds consistently taking longer to close. It took 25 months for the average investment vehicle to reach closure as of, up from 23.7 months in 2024. For context, it took about 15 months for funds to close in 2020 and 2021.

More than half of fund managers reached or surpassed their goals last year, with 52 percent of vehicles closing on or above targets, up from 39 percent in 2024 and 44 percent in 2023. However, the figure scored below those of 2021 (58 percent) and 2022 (55 percent).