A Blackstone affiliate is preparing to close on an $845.2M refinancing deal for a nearly 5,000-unit multifamily portfolio.

Cortland University City in Charlotte

The investment giant’s Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust lined up the two-year floating-rate loan with the New York branch of Deutsche Bank AG, Societe Generale Financial Corp., Bank of Montreal and Nomura Corporate Funding Americas LLC, according to a presale report compiled by Fitch Ratings. Fitch expects the loan to close next month. 

BREIT is coming off a rebound year in 2025, reversing two years’ worth of weak returns with $7.2B in inflows and improved performance.

Proceeds will be used to refinance $924.5M of existing debt and pay $14.8M in closing costs. As part of the refinancing, BREIT is contributing roughly $94.1M in new equity to close the gap between the new loan and the debt being paid off.

BREIT acquired 98% of the 12-property portfolio in 2021 from Cortland Sponsors LLC at a reported cost basis of more than $1.2B. 

Blackstone did not immediately respond to Bisnow’s request for comment. 

Cortland retained the other 2% ownership and manages nine of the properties. The remaining three properties are managed by Preferred Apartment Advisors LLC.

The 4,922-unit portfolio includes: 

• the 664-unit Cortland Park 83 built in 1989 in Roswell, Georgia; 
• the 608-unit Cortland Bowery constructed in 1989 in Tampa, Florida; 
• the 510-unit Cortland Watermark built in 1998 in Marietta, Georgia; 
• the 440-unit Cortland Gateway Park constructed in 2002 in Denver; 
• the 426-unit Cortland Southpark Terraces constructed in 2009 in Austin; 
• the 384-unit Cortland Mountain Vista completed in 2009 in Mesa, Arizona; 
• the 376-unit Cortland at Fredericksburg built in 2010 in San Antonio; 
• the 372-unit Cortland University City completed in 2009 in Charlotte, North Carolina; 
• the 323-unit Cortland East Cobb completed in 1991 in Marietta, Georgia; 
• the 284-unit Cortland Falls River built in 2001 in Raleigh, North Carolina;
• the 271-unit Cortland Whitehall completed in 2018 in Charlotte;
• and the 264-unit Cortland West Boynton constructed in 2001 in Boynton Beach, Florida.

The properties are all market-rate apartments with no major concentrations of student, senior or military housing, according to the report. 

As of January, the portfolio units have a weighted average occupancy of nearly 92% and an average monthly rent of $1,728. Occupancy declined from 94% in 2022, reflecting broader softness across the Sun Belt apartment markets as new supply increases competition.

“The properties are generally well located in markets that have above average median income and population growth with nearby demand drivers,” Fitch’s presale report says.

An appraisal of each property conducted by Newmark Valuation & Advisory gave the portfolio an aggregate as-is value of more than $1.14B. Based on that appraisal, the loan-to-value ratio for the financing is 74%.

Since acquiring ownership, BREIT has invested more than $50M in capital improvements. Fitch estimated the portfolio’s net cash flow at $56.2M. 

Alterra IOS has acquired over 300 sites nationwide, today announced the closing of $189 million in financing from Blackstone Mortgage Trust Inc.

Justin Horowitz of Cooper Horowitz worked with Alterra IOS Venture III to market and source the financing. The funding was secured for assets acquired in Alterra’s latest venture. Alterra has now secured over $1 billion in lender financing for the fund, which closed in May 2024 at $925 million in total commitments, exceeding the original fundraising goal of $750 million and reaching its hard cap.

The funding from Blackstone Mortgage Trust backs 49 IOS sites across 22 states, totaling approximately 235 usable acres. This financing comes on the heels of several significant transactions for Alterra in 2024, including the sale of an institutional-grade portfolio of 51 IOS assets to Peakstone Realty Trust in November for $490 million.

“We are thrilled to close our first financing with the Blackstone team and to add another leading institution to a growing list of capital providers supporting our IOS platform,” said Scott Whittle, Chief Financial Officer for Alterra IOS.

KKR and Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust said Thursday that KKR-managed funds would acquire a portfolio of 19 purpose-built student housing properties from BREIT for approximately $1.64 billion. BREIT acquired the portfolio in 2018 for $1.2 billion in a joint venture with Greystar Real Estate Partners.

Spanning more than 10,000 beds, the properties are anchored to 14 leading four-year public universities across 10 states. The majority are located with easy pedestrian access to campus.

Post-closing, the portfolio will be managed by KKR’s University Partners affiliate. “Student housing is a sector that we have long-term conviction in,” said Justin Pattner, partner at KKR and head of real estate equity in the Americas. “We are pleased to be working with Blackstone to complete this transaction which will add a diverse mix of high-quality properties to our portfolio.

“The operating capabilities we have built with University Partners over the past decade and our ability to transact at scale, position us to create value for our investors and to continue investing in great living experiences across these communities,” he continued. “We are deploying into what we view as a compelling market environment to purchase quality real estate.”

Blackstone remains the largest owner of student housing in the U.S., primarily through its 2022 acquisition of American Campus Communities for $12.8 billion.

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP served as legal advisor to KKR. TSB Capital Advisors and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC served as BREIT’s financial advisors. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP served as BREIT’s legal advisor.

One of the biggest names in real estate investment is leading the pack as investors follow job growth and population migration to the Sun Belt.

Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust has struck a deal to acquire Preferred Apartment Communities for $5.8B in cash. The acquisition has been approved by the PAC board of directors and is expected to close in Q2, subject to approval by shareholders.

Overton Rise, a Preferred Apartment Communities property in Atlanta

The price values Atlanta-based PAC at $25 per share. Shares in the REIT closed at $23.27 on Tuesday, itself a higher value than at any time in the last 10 years. A year ago, PAC traded for $8.21 a share.

PAC owns both apartments and retail properties. Its apartment portfolio includes 44 communities totaling about 12,000 units concentrated in the Atlanta; Orlando, Tampa and Jacksonville, Florida; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Nashville, Tennessee, metros.

The company’s retail portfolio includes 54 grocery-anchored assets totaling about 6M SF. Most of those properties are in the Atlanta, Orlando, Nashville and Raleigh, North Carolina, metro markets.

“The company’s grocery-anchored retail portfolio performance has also been strong and resilient, and we believe these types of necessity-oriented assets located in areas with growing populations are well-positioned for continued growth,” Blackstone Real Estate Senior Managing Director Jacob Werner said in a statement.

The deal comes on the heels of BREIT’s $3.7B all-cash acquisition of Resource REIT in January, which will also close in the second quarter of this year. Resource is a nontraded REIT that owns 42 U.S. apartment communities totaling over 12,600 units. Resource’s portfolio, like that of PAC, tends to focus on warmer states, with garden-style assets in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia and Texas. 

These two deals are only the latest sizable buys for BREIT. Last July, the company bought affordable housing assets from American International Group for about $5.1B, and in June, BREIT acquired Chicago-based Home Partners of America for $6B. Home Partners owns more than 17,000 single-family rentals in the United States.

Investment giants Blackstone Group and Starwood Capital have each acquired equity stakes in Extended Stay America, which operates 632 long-term hospitality properties.

The deals come at a time when the U.S. hospitality industry as a whole has cratered, with occupancies at historic lows and many properties permanently closed.

For the week ending April 11, U.S. hotel occupancy was down nearly 70 percentage points from the same week in 2019, to 21%, and revenue per available room, or RevPAR, was down 83.6% to $15.61, according to STR data. As of April 16, about 848,000 hotel rooms were closed, or about 16% of the entire U.S. total of 5.4 million rooms. 

Yet less expensive hotels, which often include properties in the extended-stay segment, are doing somewhat better than the rest of the industry, the Wall Street Journal reports, noting that Extended Stay America has thus far closed none of its properties.

For the week ending April 11, economy hospitality properties experienced 33.6% occupancy, STR reported, with more expensive rooms in far less demand. Luxury and upscale hotels were less than 9% occupied as of April 11.

“For economy-type properties, there is this a strong base of demand that we continue to see, no matter what the economic conditions may be,” STR Senior Vice President Jan Freitag said in a company webinar last week.

“As some Americans lose their homes because they can’t make mortgage payments, you may see the occupancy in the economy and extended-stay properties actually increase as people move into temporary shelter for awhile,” Freitag said.

“There is a significant residential guest component in economy extended stay hotels,” Mark Skinner, a partner at hotel consultancy Highland Group, told Skift. “The second reason is that the construction industry is a very large demand generator for those hotels.”

Extended-stay rooms are 39% occupied, STR reports, as healthcare workers, construction workers, airline crews and others take up the slack from a vastly reduced number of business travelers.

Even in the extended-stay segment, less expensive properties are doing better, STR reports. The lower-priced extended-stay rooms are 51.5% occupied, while upper-priced rooms are 26.5% occupied.

Both investors acquired their piece of Extended Stay at a discount to recent share values.

Blackstone acquired a 4.9% stake in Charlotte, North Carolina-based Extended Stay at about $6.50/share in mid-March, the WSJ reports. Starwood acquired 8.5% of Extended Stay for about $9/share. At the beginning of 2020, the company traded just shy of $20/share.