This year, an edge of less than $1 million is all that is needed to keep the last-place manager in the PERE 100, PERE’s ranking of the world’s biggest private real estate managers by capital raised over the last five years for closed-end, discretionary investment vehicles.
With $1.851 billion, Berlin-based development specialist DLE Group inched out the $1.850 billion raised by Stockholm-headquartered Niam. The Nordics-focused specialist soared 33 places to top this year’s PERE 200. But that $1 million was the difference between a promotion to PERE’s top-flight ranking and leading the mid-tier ranking.
Why does it matter which ranking a manager belongs to? Because the trends associated with the biggest managers in private real estate can be markedly different to those relevant to the mid-tier, and that is important for how institutional investors think about allocations. The PERE 100 is as prescient an indicator of the institutional support for the world’s biggest allocators as you will find. As such, it underscores how the globally focused and multi-strategy firms are faring.
This year, the PERE 100’s constituent managers attracted a record $722.2 billion in aggregate, up 13.3 percent from last year, which itself was up almost 25 percent on 2021. Chief among the trends this reveals is the dominance of the sector’s heavyweights, Blackstone and Brookfield.
However, their fundraising superiority masks the increase in capital flows to the more specific, if complementary, strategies of other managers. This theme plays out in the second tier of managers, too, where firms operating from a wider range of locations are attracting greater investment. The $121.8 billion raised by the managers of the PERE 200 is also 9.8 percent more than last year’s cohort.
Repositioning scenarios are materializing across many of private real estate’s most significant markets. PERE’s 100 and 200 rankings offer clarity on the available money that will play some part in addressing those scenarios in the coming years. Promoted, relegated or keeping a place in one of these rankings, all the firms included will expect to play a part in what is shaping up to be the reset of a generation.
Cresset Partners advanced from 127 in 2022 to 112 in 2023.
Click here to read the Top 200 in private equity in real estate list from PERE
Disclosure: Cresset Partners was recognized by PERE’s list of Top Private Real Estate Firms for 2023. Rankings are based on the amount of private real estate direct investment capital raised from January 2018 until March 2023. Cresset paid no application fee to participate.
