Real estate boom drives record earnings for Blackstone

The investment management firm Blackstone delivered record-breaking returns in the fourth quarter thanks to incredible growth in the commercial and residential real estate industries.

The company reported “the most remarkable results in our history on virtually every metric,” said Blackstone co-founder and Chief Executive Stephen Schwarzman as the company announced its fourth quarter earnings results.

Blackstone said its $280 billion real estate business was responsible for approximately half of its profits last year.

Blackstone has made big investments in rental housing, logistics and life science office complex, which account for around 70% of its equity portfolio. Rents in all three sectors have been rising at two-to-three times the rate of inflation, the company said.

With the boom in e-commerce due to the pandemic, there has been a rush to find logistics hubs and warehouses to meet that demand. Vacant properties are more difficult to find, sending rents and prices up.

At the same time, Blackstone has pushed aggressively into rental housing, the Real Deal reported. For instance, it recently said it would buy around $1 billion worth of affordable single-family rental homes, adding around 4,000 such properties to its portfolio in the next two years.

At present, around 80% of Blackstone’s real estate portfolio consists of rental housing and logistics. The company said in the earnings call both sectors are better insulated from inflationary pressures with their shorter-term leases.

“Blackstone’s fourth-quarter results represented a remarkable finish to a record-breaking year,” Schwarzman said.

Blackstone nearly doubled its net income to $2.9 billion since the fourth quarter of 2020. Its real estate investment trust and its Core+ business accounted for the majority of those increases. Its real estate ventures appreciated by 12% and its Core+ segment by 7.2%, The Real Deal reports.