Blackstone to make real estate play?

May 19, 2008

Recall that just before the credit crisis really hit home, the Blackstone Group was raising brows for its aggressive forays into commercial real estate; namely, its $36 billion purchase of the Equity Offices Properties Trust. It flipped a lot of profits and made a tidy one for itself (we were led to believe), even though a few properties were tricky to exit. Since then, real estate gains have been hard to come by. In the first quarter, revenue from real estate was down more than 90 percent. Now, the Financial Times reports that Blackstone is thinking about buying some of the properties it once sold at discounted prices, essentially betting that they will rise in price all over again. Its strategy may include buying the debt once used to purchase those assets. Lots of private equity firms are mulling distressed assets investments; it has to put its funds to work, somehow.

For more:
- here's the Financial Times article