Data for the first seven months of 2018 provide an optimistic indication this will be a good year for real estate capital raising. During the past three years, the total capital raised has fallen each year. Along with this decline, the average size of mega-funds — those funds holding a final closing after raising $1 billion or more in commitments — also has decreased each year. At the moment, however, 2018 is showing a reversal of this trend, with mega-fund average size jumping, and total capital raised coming in ahead of the previous year.

As of Aug. 1, 2018, real estate investment funds had closed on $64.2 billion. (It is likely this number will increase as additional data is captured and added to Institutional Real Estate, Inc.’s FundTracker database.) At this time in 2017, $57.9 billion had been raised by funds holding a final closing. Mega-funds accounted for 61 percent of that total in 2017, and 60 percent year-to-date 2018.

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