(Reuters) – Blackstone has raised $8 billion in its most recent real estate debt fund, the world’s largest alternative asset manager said on Friday, a sign that the property sector is seeing a recovery after a couple of tumultuous years.
The fund – Blackstone Real Estate Debt Strategies V – will be active in North America, Europe and Australia and make loans and buy existing loans, according to the company.
Investors including Blackstone and wealthy individuals are scouting for office properties in New York as companies call employees back to the office, fueling a nascent recovery in the battered commercial real estate market.
In Europe, soaring demand for high-quality offices is pushing rents to records in central London, giving investors cause for optimism even as overall office sale volumes remain at multi-year lows.
Real estate investors, consultants and bankers say demand is rising for top-quality offices in New York, spurring them to strike more deals.
Blackstone’s current office exposure accounts for less than 2% of its real estate holdings, versus more than 60% in 2007, according to company data.
(Reporting by Jaiveer Singh Shekhawat in Bengaluru and Saeed Azhar in New York; Editing by Maju Samuel)
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