Infrastructure is often mentioned in the same breath as real estate. Both are long-term, income-producing real assets. But real estate has been part of institutional portfolios for decades now, while infrastructure is much newer. As such, fewer investors have allocations to infrastructure than to real estate, and those allocations tend to be smaller than their other real assets buckets.

Despite the long odds, IREI’s FundTracker database indicates that infrastructure fund managers have been very successful in meeting their fundraising expectations during the past couple of years. Since 2013, managers have launched 143 infrastructure-focused funds. 2013 was the high point, with 69 funds opened for business, followed by the 54 launched in 2014 and only 20 launched in the first eight months of 2015. Although 15 fewer funds were launched in 2014 than 2013, the total target amount was nearly identical — managers were looking for $68 billion in 2013, and $67 billion in 2014. The