Real estate investment and development executive Don Peebles and private equity veteran Doug McNeely are launching a fund targeting the country’s oversupply of office space. 

Bisnow/Ciara Long

25 Water St. in Manhattan, known as SoMA, is the largest office-to-resi conversion in the country, with 1,320 apartments.

Peebles, who heads The Peebles Corp., and McNeely, who has held high-level roles at BlackRock and the Carlyle Group, seek to raise up to $1.5B for an office-to-residential conversion fund, Bloomberg first reported. It is the first initiative from the duo’s new firm, Donahue Douglas, which they launched late last year. 

“We’re building a transformational firm, world class, and we really want to impact the way people live, work and invest,” McNeely told Bisnow in an interview Friday. “So we do have great ambition. We’re an alternative asset management company. Our first strategy is this strategy.” 

The firm expects to raise the funds over the next six months.

McNeely told Bisnow the fund has received preliminary interest for two-thirds of its targeted raise. He said the partnership is in conversations with institutional, high net worth, sovereign wealth fund and offshore investors. 

The plan is to deploy the funds into 10 top-tier cities: D.C., New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Charlotte, Miami, Nashville, Dallas, Atlanta and San Francisco.  

“I would say there’s a generational opportunity to invest in these areas,” McNeely said.  

D.C. and New York are at the top of that list. D.C. is of particular interest due to its federal footprint, which the Trump administration has signaled it intends to drastically cut over the next few years. 

But that opportunity extends beyond the nation’s capital, McNeely said.

“The federal government is a property owner across the country, so that might be part of the strategy,” he said.

Peebles founded his namesake investment and development corporation in 1983. The firm has developed more than 10M SF and invested more than $8B across U.S. gateway cities including New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., Charlotte, Atlanta, Miami, San Francisco, and Durham, North Carolina, according to its website.

McNeely joined the Carlyle Group as a partner in 2022 after nearly nine years at BlackRock. He left Carlyle in 2024, he told Bisnow.

Overall office availability nationwide stood at 23.3% at the end of the first quarter, according to Avison Young. 

The nationwide office-to-residential conversion pipeline reached a record 70,700 units early this year, according to a RentCafe study. That is more than triple the 23,100 units that were on the boards in 2022.

“This isn’t a problem — or isn’t an opportunity — that’s going to be solved over the next year or so,” McNeely said. “This is a long-term business for us.”

The Clear Blue Co., Urban Campus and Core and Born Again Church have raised over $100 million from numerous sources to start construction on Northview Housing Development, a 254-unit affordable senior housing community in Nashville. STG Design and Thomas & Hutton serve as the main architects, while Bacar Constructors is the general contractor.

The affordable project is scheduled for completion in December 2026. Upon delivery, Northview Housing will cater to seniors earning between 40 and 80 percent of the area median income. The development is rising at 876 W. Trinity Lane on Born Again Church’s campus in the Haynes-Trinity neighborhood just outside Nashville.

Financing includes $43.9 million in tax-credit equity and $53 million in multifamily tax-exempt bonds provided by The Tennessee Housing Development Agency, as well as a $19 million loan from Amazon’s Housing Equity Fund.

Common-area amenities are set to include a fitness center, a rooftop deck, restaurants, a health clinic, a pharmacy, a salon walking trails and recreational spaces.

Bisnow/Jon Banister

Carlyle co-founder and co-Chair David Rubenstein in conversation with Cushman & Wakefield Executive Vice Chairman Darian LeBlanc at Bisnow’s 2023 D.C. State of the Market.

An investment firm backed by Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein has launched a new fund to invest in commercial real estate, as falling property prices have created buying opportunities. 

Declaration Partners is seeking to raise $400M to invest in multifamily and industrial properties as part of the firm’s second real estate fund, Bloomberg reported. Rubenstein, who is the largest backer of the New York-based firm, provided an anchor allocation along with other investors from the firm’s first fund.

The first fund also targeted multifamily and industrial properties. It closed in 2022 with $240M raised from wealthy individuals and family offices from the U.S., Middle East and Latin America.

This first fund’s investments included an industrial property in the Inland Empire, California, an apartment complex in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a student housing joint venture project in Pittsburgh.

Last year, the firm acquired a 442-unit multifamily property in Pittsburgh and provided preferred equity financing for a 364-unit property near Chicago, Bloomberg reported.

Rubenstein, speaking in June at Bisnow‘s D.C. State of the Market event, said that the distress in the office market has also created major opportunities for investment.

“I would say the best single investment that I know of today is probably going to be commercial real estate debt in downtown office buildings, buying it from the banks when the banks want to get it off their books,” Rubenstein said.

While multifamily and industrial haven’t been as hard hit as office, both still experienced significant drops in pricing last year as rising interest rates took a toll on the industry. According to Green Street’s Commercial Property Price Index, apartment property prices ended the year down 30% from their peak, while industrial prices were down 16%.