Blackstone Inc.’s $69 billion real estate trust hit a monthly redemption limit in January, as the firm’s crown jewel continues to wrestle with a line of investors seeking to get money out.
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Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust told investors Wednesday that it fulfilled repurchase requests for 2% of its net asset value. That accounted for about 25% of what investors wanted to pull out, according to a letter. January repurchase requests were north of $5 billion, according to Bloomberg calculations.
Blackstone President Jon Gray had previously cautioned that a chunk of redemptions in January involved unfulfilled requests from November and December.
January requests were “in line with the aggregate unfulfilled amount for November and December,” Blackstone said in a statement Wednesday. “We expect it will take some time to work through this backlog and that flows will normalize over time as BREIT continues to deliver for investors.”
Blackstone built BREIT into a massive real estate trust owning properties from Las Vegas’s lavish Bellagio hotel and casino to student housing and storage centers. Its success helped expand the private equity firm’s reach with rich individuals.
But the trust faced challenges last year as more investors sought to pull money out, given volatile markets. BREIT hit redemption limits toward the end of last year, causing it to restrict how much investors could take out in December.
Read the full article here by Dawn Lim, John Gittelsohn, Advisor Perspectives.