Real estate investment funds that closed in 2018 spent significantly less time in the market than those closing in the previous two years. Last year, the average fund reaching final closing was on offer about 16.5 months. This held true for mega- and non-mega-funds alike. When looking at averages, the trimmed mean is a more accurate measure than the standard average because it drops the top and bottom outliers. By that measure, we see funds in 2016 and 2017 took 19 months to reach their targets compared with the 16 months recorded in 2018.

The past three years also have been good for the average fund size. Mega-funds are obviously towering over non-mega-funds, but even when the outlier $15 billion funds are removed from the average by incorporating the trimmed mean, the average size is still increasing. For funds closing in 2016, the trimmed mean stood at $590 million. This number grew to $606 million in 2017 and $801 million in 2018.

We are still early in the game whe