CBRE IM closes $1.62bn REP2 real estate secondaries fund

CBRE Investment Management has closed its latest real estate secondaries vehicle, Real Estate Partners 2 (REP2), at $1.62 billion in commitments — comfortably above an initial $1.25 billion target. With additional co-investment backing, the vehicle’s total deployment capacity now exceeds $2.25 billion, signalling robust institutional appetite for niche secondaries exposure.

The fund continues a long-running programme: CBRE IM leverages a multi-decade footprint in indirect real estate to buy discounted, income-generating positions across markets. The manager points to a cumulative track record of roughly 15 years and more than $15.5 billion of secondaries-related transactions executed on its platform, positioning REP2 to access complex or off‑market opportunities that often require deep operational relationships.

REP2’s remit spans the United States, Europe and Asia Pacific with a bias toward assets that benefit from structural demand — logistics, resilient housing, and specialised real estate niches such as data‑adjacent facilities are among the themes the team is monitoring. Fund leadership argues that secondaries can deliver opportunistic entry pricing and faster cashflow profiles compared with traditional primary commitments, attractive features as many limited partners seek liquidity and rebalancing options.

Achal Gandhi, Chief Investment Officer for Indirect Private Real Estate at CBRE IM, described the close as validation of a differentiated sourcing approach and noted the fund’s ready capital pool to pursue transactions where market liquidity is constrained. Kilian Toms, REP2’s Fund Manager, highlighted the team’s underwriting capabilities and the practical advantage of pairing primary expertise with secondary dealcraft to unlock value.

The close follows CBRE IM’s internal research indicating the global real estate secondaries market reached roughly $24.3 billion of closed transactions in 2024 — about a 3.8% uptick from the prior year — and underscores how secondary strategies are becoming more mainstream within private real estate. As pricing dispersion widens across asset types and geographies, managers with scale and proprietary data are increasingly able to source discounted positions and structure bespoke solutions for seller LPs.

For the market at large, REP2’s successful raise is another sign that allocators are allocating capital to vehicles designed to capture inefficiencies created by uneven liquidity and shifting valuations. With >$2.25 billion of investment capacity and a global mandate, the fund arrives into a market where disciplined, conviction-led buying is rewarded. Going forward, watchlists suggest activity will concentrate on assets offering stable cash yields and operational upside, while managers compete for differentiated deal flow in a tighter secondaries universe.