Total global real estate assets under management (AUM) hit €3.3 trillion in 2020, despite the challenges of the global pandemic, according to the Fund Manager Survey 2021 published this week by ANREV, INREV and NCREIF.
The latest results build further on the massive gains of the past decade with total AUM more than tripling from €0.9 trillion in 2009 to €3.3 trillion at the end of 2020.
A significant proportion of total AUM (37%) is attributed to the top 10 global managers, while the largest 39 managers in the upper quartile of respondents by number account for 78% of the total. Interestingly, despite the greatest concentration of global AUM in larger fund managers, the growth in 2020 came from the lower quartiles, albeit the overall impact is very marginal. This year’s survey saw a rise in the number of participants to 154 – up from 140 the previous year.
Global top 10
The top two slots are unchanged from last year with the Blackstone Group leading the pack of managers with AUM of €260.5 bn, followed by Brookfield Asset Management on €172.4 bn.
Prologis is at number three with AUM of €121.0 bn, moving up from 6th place in 2019 – the result of strong value growth in the logistics / industrial sector. PGIM Real Estate are fourth with €118.8 billion, and Nuveen retains its fifth-place ranking with an AUM of €108.4 billion.
The remainder of the global top 10 is made up of: AXA IM Alts (6th – €96.0 bn), CBRE Global Investors (7th – €92.3 bn), UBS Asset management (8th – €88.7 bn), MetLife Investment Management (9th – €82.9 bn) and Capitaland (10th – €81.7 bn). Each of the top 10 fund managers posted an AUM of at least €80 bn in 2020.
Hines, which was fifth on the list last year, has dropped to 14th in the current survey and Swiss Life dropped from 9th to 11th over the same period.
Around the regions
With 39.1% of total global AUM, European strategies account for the lion’s share, overtaking those in North America (32.2%) in 2020. Asia Pacific strategies contribute 17.9% to the total, while global strategies are at 10.5%.
At an individual manager level, AXA IM Alts tops the European strategies list with AUM of €76.1 bn, followed by Swiss Life Asset Management in second place (€73.7 bn) and The Blackstone Group (€65.9 bn) in third. All of the managers included in the European strategies’ top ten list posted AUM of more than €39 bn.
Vehicles, dry powder and M&A activity Non-listed real estate vehicles account for a substantial 83.1% of the total global AUM. Looking closer at the non-listed real estate vehicles only, non-listed real estate funds continue to dominate globally, with a 56% share. Next are separate accounts investing directly, followed by JVs and clubs.
The proportion of total global AUM attributed to non-listed real estate debt products rose from 7.6% in 2019 to 9.4% in 2020. In Europe, the uptick was even more marked – climbing to 8.1% from 3.6% the year before. These shifts offer further evidence of the growing importance of debt products to investors.
For the first time, the Fund Manager Survey captures data related to dry powder held by managers to assess the state of the industry in terms of total contractually committed capital from investors, which is available and ready for deployment but is not yet invested. It reveals a total of €195 billion of dry powder or 9.3% of total global AUM based on the 64% sample of respondents to this question.
Lonneke Löwik, INREV CEO, said: ‘The evolution of the global growth in fund managers’ AUM speaks to a continuing robust appetite for the asset class. This is particularly encouraging given the challenges of 2020 in light of the global health pandemic. The details also reveal some interesting signposts for the future, healthy levels of dry powder that indicate the capacity to execute deals, as well as strong demand for non-listed real estate funds and considerable emphasis on the European debt products. All of the above provide a broad level of comfort for the year ahead, and especially as many global economies are also starting to recover.’
