A total of 24 private equity real estate funds recorded final closings during the first quarter of 2015, according to Institutional Real Estate FundTracker. The quarterly volume of $31.6 billion (€28 billion) ranks as the highest first quarter total since FundTracker began collecting data in 2007, and it’s the highest amount raised since Q3 2008 ($36.6 billion, €32.4 billion). The funds have an average fund size of $1.32 billion (€1.17 billion). When looking at previous totals throughout the past few years, this quarterly total was more than one-third of last year’s 12-month total ($91.7 billion, €81.2 billion), 40 percent of the total fundraising volume for 2013 ($79.2 billion, €70.1 billion) and more than half of the fundraising volume for 2012 ($60.7 billion, €53.7 billion).

One of the main reasons for this spike in fundraising was the closing of The Blackstone Group’s Blackstone Real Estate Partners VIII. The opportunistic fund raised a total of $15.8 bi