The industry’s top four players are responsible for almost 27% of all capital.
A new survey shows that real estate is still one of the most essential types of institutional assets, with world assets under management at US$4.1 trillion.
According to an annual survey of fund managers by the Asian Association for Investors in Non-Listed Real Estate Vehicles (ANREV), the European Association for Investors in Non-Listed Real Estate Vehicles (INREV), and the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF), the average AUM per manager rose by 10% from US$32.5 billion in 2021 to US$35.7 billion in 2022.
This is happening at the same time that the business as a whole is getting smaller. The top quartile of survey respondents is 80% of the total global AUM (US$3.3 trillion). The average AUM of the top 10 fund managers was US$195.3 billion, and the total AUM of the top 10 managers was more than US$1.9 trillion.
In 2022, the top five operators stayed the same: Blackstone, Brookfield, Prologis, PGIM, and Nuveen. The top 10 reported real estate allocations of more than US$100 billion, and the most significant player, Blackstone, went over US$500 billion after adding more than US$33 billion to its overall AUM.
In this year’s poll, the AUMs of the top four managers add up to almost 27% of all the real estate capital.
In the Asia-Pacific region, the top managers are becoming those in the industrial and transportation fields. Hong Kong-based ESR is at the top of the list in the area. Its rise through mergers and acquisitions has put it far ahead of the following company on the list, GLP Capital Partners. The company is also in the top 10 in the world, coming in at number 7 in a poll.
With Charter Hall in third place and Goodman in fourth, three of the top four industrial and transportation companies are Asian.
Amélie Delaunay, senior head of research and professional standards at ANREV, says that the concentration of AUM in more prominent fund managers in 2022 shows that the non-listed real estate industry is still consolidating. “It’s interesting that the top three non-listed real estate AUM managers in APAC are ESR, GLP, and Goodman, which only invest in the industrial and logistics sectors. Five years ago, the top three managers were more diversified.”
The top fund managers worldwide still put the most money into North American real estate. North American strategies are still the most popular. They comprise 39% of the total AUM, US$1.6 trillion, and are still the most popular. European methods are the second biggest. They contain 29% of all assets, or US$1.2 trillion, and are the second most important. The poll shows that Asia-Pacific strategies are worth about 18%, or $754 billion, and global plans are worth about 14%, or $565 billion.
