The PERE Podcast

How Harrison Street raised $1bn for niche real estate in just four weeks

This week, PERE revealed that Chicago-based alternatives specialist Harrison Street held a first close for its 10th flagship US real estate fund, Harrison Street Real Estate Partners X, with $1 billion in commitments – after just one month on the road.

The fundraise comes as economic and geopolitical uncertainty threaten a potential real estate recovery. The speed of the first close, which brings Harrison Street a third of the way to its $3 billion hard-cap for HSREP X, is also notable when considering the average time most real estate funds spend in the market has stretched to 23 months, according to PERE’s latest fundraising report.

In this episode, Lucy Scott, Greg Dool and PERE senior reporter Harrison Connery discuss why the fund – launched in April, per SEC filings – has attracted so much attention. We also hear from David Hodes, founder and co-managing partner of advisory boutique Hodes Weill & Associates, who tells PEI Group's real estate editor-in-chief Jonathan Brasse why Harrison Street's vision for its 10th US vehicle was able to tempt institutional investors, both old and new, to back it.

As the US real estate debt market resets, private credit steps in

This episode is sponsored by LaSalle Debt Investors and Kayne Anderson

In the wake of rising rates and falling transaction volumes, US real estate debt markets are undergoing a significant transformation. Traditional lenders – especially regional banks – have stepped back, opening space for private credit providers to play a larger role.

As a looming wave of loan maturities approaches, participants are preparing for both stress and opportunity. They're deploying capital selectively, often in the form of rescue financing, while building platforms that can flex across cycles. What emerges isn’t a market in freefall or overdrive, but a reset where discipline and structure matter more than ever.

Joining us in this episode is David Selznick, chief investment officer of Kayne Anderson’s real estate group, and Craig Oram, president and fund manager at LaSalle Debt Investors. They share how their firms are adapting by focusing on refinancings, leaning into necessity-based assets like multifamily and industrial, and underwriting with more scrutiny than ever before.

LaSalle’s Klinksiek: ‘We are not going back to the simplicity of the sheds and beds mantra’

How should investors think about private real estate portfolio construction amid today’s highly uncertain macroeconomic volatility? Brian Klinksiek, head of research and strategy at LaSalle Investment Management, has a compelling answer.

The Chicago-headquartered manager's latest research note – The Trade War, Relatively Speaking: Tariffs and Real Estate Fair Value – is the second of two papers looking at the subject of tariffs. It is a guide of key ideas for real estate investors – ideas that will hold true at a time when the future “steady state” of trade policy remains unknowable.

In this episode, Klinksiek explains LaSalle's "theory of relativities" in conversation with Jonathan Brasse, PEI’s real estate editor-in-chief. This theory prioritizes diversification, a permanent allocation to private real estate credit, and being focused on aspects of the market that are not likely to change, no matter what comes next.

'A jumbo jet in turbulent skies': How Brookfield raised $16bn and counting

Brookfield Asset Management is nearing a final close on its largest real estate fundraise yet. The New York-based manager’s opportunistic Strategic Real Estate Partners V fund has raised $16 billion from institutional investors, and a further $2 billion is expected to come from private wealth investors and regional sidecars in the coming months, PERE understands.

This is the biggest real estate fundraise since Blackstone Real Estate Partners X was closed in 2023, for which US manager Blackstone collected $30.4 billion in capital commitments. Brookfield's success comes as difficult times persist for fund managers. The latest PERE fundraising report revealed total capital commitments to private real estate funds declined for the third consecutive year, reaching $131 billion in 2024 – a 50 percent drop from the $256 billion raised in 2021.

This episode delves into the details of Brookfield’s global fundraise. Listen as host Lucy Scott, PEI Group real estate editor-in-chief Jonathan Brasse and PERE EMEA editor Charlotte D’Souza discuss the significance of the fundraise and what it tells us about investor sentiment today.

Also hear from Lowell Baron, president and chief investment officer of Brookfield’s real estate group, who shares insights on the markets that the firm is eyeing at a time of continued macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty.

READ: The latest PERE fundraising report

Correction: A previous version of this episode erroneously cited a transaction between Brookfield and Harrison Street in Q1 2025 for a US residential portfolio. Brookfield purchased a US student housing portfolio in December 2024, according to PERE Deals data, for which the seller is unknown.

Norges Bank's next real estate chief and what he means for its $70bn property portfolio

After a six-month search, Norges Bank Investment Management has found its next global real estate chief: Alex Knapp, who joins after 17 years at Houston-based manager Hines, where he was chief investment officer for Europe.

Starting next month, Knapp will take the helm of NBIM’s massive $70 billion global listed and unlisted real estate portfolio, managed on behalf of Norway’s $1.7 trillion sovereign wealth fund. But his duties in leading the manager’s property business will look a bit different from those of his predecessors – including the fact that Knapp will remain based in London, rather than Oslo.

This episode spotlights the details of Knapp’s appointment and what it suggests about NBIM’s evolving investment strategy in the real estate sector. Listen as host Lucy Scott, PEI Group real estate editor-in-chief Jonathan Brasse, PERE editor Evelyn Lee and PERE senior reporter Harrison Connery break it all down, with a guest appearance from Serene Hamzawi, managing partner at executive search firm Sousou Partners.

Read also: Norway’s sovereign wealth fund appoints Knapp as global real estate head

StepStone's record fundraise and a 'perfect storm' for secondaries

On the heels of PERE's exclusive report last week on New York-based manager StepStone Group raising the private real estate sector's largest-ever secondaries fund, we spotlight the massive capital haul and the emergence of real estate secondaries more broadly as a major fundraising theme in a time of market dislocation.

Indeed, StepStone is not the only private real estate manager eyeing big opportunities in the once-nascent strategy. Its $4.5 billion fundraise for StepStone Real Estate Partners V bested a previous record set less than a year ago by Goldman Sachs Asset Management's Vintage Real Estate Partners III. Meanwhile, Brookfield is preparing to launch its second real estate secondaries vehicle after closing its first on $1.3 billion in commitments last August, and Neuberger Berman closed a $1 billion vehicle of its own in February.

What is driving all of this momentum? A "perfect storm" of factors, including high interest rates, illiquidity and dislocation in capital markets, persistent inflation and, most recently, tariff disruption. Listen as host Greg Dool, PEI Group real estate editor-in-chief Jonathan Brasse and PERE editor Evelyn Lee break it all down, with guest appearances from Secondaries Investor editor Madeleine Farman and Achal Gandhi, chief investment officer for indirect strategies at CBRE Investment Management.

Tariff policies disrupt the CMBS market. Does it bode ill for real estate borrowers?

As real estate investors scramble to size up the effects of tariffs on global markets, some of the earliest impacts are already emerging in the commercial mortgage-backed securities market.

US manager Pretium Partners is reportedly pumping the brakes on a $778.5 million single-family residential securitization it had planned to price on April 24, while a report this week from ratings agency Scope Ratings suggests that tariffs could threaten a significant recovery in European CMBS issuance since the start of the year.

On a new episode of The PERE Podcast, Lucy Scott is joined by Daniel Cunningham and Samantha Rowan – editors of Real Estate Capital Europe and PERE Credit, respectively – to break down the latest CMBS headlines and explore what it all means for borrowers and real estate debt investors going forward. Also sharing his perspective on the outlook is Benjamin Bouchet, a senior director at Scope Ratings and the author of its latest research report.

Real estate stages a fundraising comeback. Will it last?

A long-awaited recovery in private real estate fundraising finally arrived in the first three months of 2025, with PERE’s latest report showing a year-on-year increase in capital allocations to the asset class for the first time since 2022.

Now, as an oncoming trade war and inflationary pressure cloud the industry’s outlook, the question becomes: Will the recovery last?

In this episode, PERE editors Jonathan Brasse, Charlotte D’Souza, Greg Dool and Evelyn Lee explore the biggest takeaways from PERE’s fundraising report – including the close of Blackstone’s largest-ever European vehicle – and break down the biggest factors that will impact allocations to the asset class going forward.

Also sharing their perspectives on the real estate fundraising environment are Geoffrey Regnery, partner at Chicago-based manager Harrison Street, and Nancy Lashine, founder and managing partner of capital advisory firm Park Madison Partners.