The PERE Podcast

In this episode, we explore a trend reshaping the relationship between public and private real estate markets: listed REITs stepping confidently into private capital fundraising.  

While many first-time private managers continue to face an uphill battle in securing commitments, a different cohort is gaining meaningful traction. Last week, data center specialist Digital Realty raised $3.25 billion for its debut private fund, targeting hyperscale development in the US. The fundraising effort ranks alongside the top five private real estate funds closed so far this year.  

Meanwhile, sale-leaseback specialist REIT Realty Income is accelerating its own private market push. In just a few months, the REIT has launched two major private joint ventures, most recently with Apollo Global Management. In March, Apollo said it will deploy $1 billion for a 49 percent stake in the newly formed JV with Realty Income. Earlier this year, the REIT formed a US logistics venture with Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC for a total capitalization of $1.5 billion.  

In this episode, Realty Income’s president and CEO Sumit Roy joins Jonathan Brasse, PEI’s editor-in-chief, real estate, to unpack how scale, performance, track record, sector specialization and meaningful co-investment are in line with investor demands. Roy also reveals how the firm plans to double, or even triple, its private partnerships by this time next year. 

The discussion points to a shift that the market is increasingly seeing unfold: more specialist listed REITs are becoming suitably positioned to follow in the footsteps of firms like Realty Income and Digital Realty, becoming a new type of contender in private real estate fundraising in the process.

The institutional real estate fund management world is taking this market cycle as a moment to recompose itself. And over the last week, a clear theme of reflection has emerged: industrial portfolios will need to be fine-tuned to prepare for a real estate reset over the next five years.

The days of simply buying, financing, holding and selling have long been gone even within the most favorably viewed asset categories. The industrial sector is currently presenting a compelling case study for how the most scaled names are actively revisiting their holdings. Often, a blend of acquisitions, debt packages and exits are being assembled any given week to continually sharpen industrial sector exposure.

Last week, EQT Real Estate’s industrial reconfiguration was on display. As reported in PERE Deals, the firm bought nine industrial buildings across Southern New Jersey from New York Life Investment Management for about $309 million – adding about two million square feet of prime industrial space to its portfolio. By the end of the week, EQT found itself on the other side of the table. The firm closed a $650 million sale to Ares Management that included 36 industrial assets across 13 states, offloading equally prime pieces in its portfolio. The net result: a more concentrated stateside industrial footprint in what is still regarded as one of the best categories for Class A trades and financings.

EQT’s recalibration is not happening in a vacuum compared with other real estate equity managers. Blackstone, alongside its Link Logistics subsidiary, closed a $163.1 million purchase of a four-warehouse portfolio from Clarion Partners in South Florida this week. As seen in previous reports, Blackstone had been reducing its industrial concentration across the region and was arguably in a selling stance – having shed more than $1 billion-worth of industrial assets across South Florida from 2024 onward.

Aasif Bade, founder and chief executive officer at Ambrose, joins us this week to further unpack how industrial sector investors are approaching the sector to land prime opportunities across primary, secondary and tertiary geographies. As he notes, even within individual cities, industrial investment opportunities can look vastly different because of the most familiar refrain for evaluating industrial deal potential: location.

All this sets the stage for a sector that is now having to compete for investor attention and electrical grid capacity alongside data center strategies, the latter of which took the top spot for sector-based strategy raises according to PERE's full-year fundraising report for 2025.

This episode is sponsored by LaSalle and Nuveen Real Estate

Liquidity is returning to European real estate credit markets. Growing confidence that interest rates have stabilized and prices have reset is encouraging debt investors to provide a steady flow of capital to sponsors. And that is helping to kickstart transaction activity.

European banks are back with an appetite for new business. That means competition between lenders is heating up, especially to provide low-risk senior finance. Fewer lenders are stepping forward to finance more complex situations, though, creating an opening for debt funds as the market regains momentum.

In this special episode, recorded in January 2026, Isabelle Brennan, senior managing director at LaSalle, and Christian Janssen, head of real estate debt for Europe at Nuveen Real Estate, pinpoint the lending opportunities available to private credit providers as the market enters a new cycle.

The conditions are finally in place to generate an increase in borrowing for new transactions, not just refinancings, Brennan suggests. Meanwhile, lower pricing for loan-on-loan finance has seen an increase in the use of back leverage, which is helping debt funds generate attractive equity-like returns. Macroeconomic uncertainty caused the market to stall briefly in 2025, but the year ended with a surge of activity, says Janssen, and that has continued into 2026.

The global real estate market has hinged its outlook of resurgence on maintaining relatively stable financing market conditions, but pressure is building up that may force global central banks to hold off on interest rate relief for longer – in turn forcing more stalls on dealmaking.

Select real estate fund managers in the US were predicting anywhere from two to four interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve in 2026. However, economic pressure stemming from the Iran war is expected to dampen how the Fed, European Central Bank and Bank of England will approach any changes in the coming quarters.

With each central bank converging last week, commercial real estate investment managers received clear signals that any hopes for an industry rebound may need to be delayed, with interest rates holding steady and the possibility of future increases still on the table.

In the US real estate market, the ever-present maturity wall is looming and asset owners and sponsors are finding themselves re-sourcing debt at a significant premium to the days of low to no interest rate pressure. Across the US market, there is an estimated $936 billion of maturing loans due this year – an almost 20 percent jump compared to 2025 according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association. The commercial mortgage-backed securities market, as an example, has an estimated $76.6 billion of debt due to mature in 2026 with extension options wearing thin.

The road ahead is by no means smooth for institutional real estate investment managers, and global central banks’ next response to macroeconomic pressure could determine if 2026 will truly be the year of the fix as market participants have postulated.

PERE podcast host Lucy Scott sits down with Real Estate Capital Europe's editor Daniel Cunningham and PERE EMEA editor Charlotte D’Souza to catch-up on the insights from this year’s MIPIM conference in Cannes.

Join the team as they discuss how the US and Israel war on Iran – which was into its 11th day as delegates arrived for the annual event – was affecting sentiment and hear their thoughts on whether market participants see the crisis as likely to derail real estate’s recovery.

Daniel and Charlotte also provide their feedback on capital flows, gathered from dozens of meetings held with senior managers and lenders over the course of the week. Find out why investors are seeking to commit to commingled funds, showing preference for club deals, joint ventures and separate accounts, and how, on the debt side, lenders are faring as they continue to compete for deals.