Blackstone’s president and chief operating officer said this week during the firm’s annual real estate conference being held in Florida that ‘tonnes of negative stories’ were helping the firm.
Jon Gray was giving a to-camera social media hot take after being on stage at the event.
He said: ‘We're talking to our real estate investors. It's our annual meeting, with pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and endowments who have been investing with Blackstone real estate now for decades.’
Super negative
‘And what's great here is we're able to separate the headlines, which are super negative on real estate. And yet what people here understand is that provides us real air cover to invest in this uncertainty.’
‘It's a bit like the middle of 2009 when values fell for another few years there were tonnes of negative stories, but you wanted to invest then. So now we're leaning in as we see less new construction, interest rates starting to come down, spreads tighten. We want to invest before that all-clear sign.’
'These highly sophisticated investors get that and that's what makes this a really dynamic discussion.’
