Financial giant Blackstone Group went on a massive shopping spree in 2015, spending a whopping $9.6 billion on New York real estate. The total made the private equity corporation the city's most aggressive property investor last year.
Blackstone bought Stuy Town along with Ivanhoe Cambridge from a real estate group led by CWCapital Assessment management. The financial firm paid a hefty $5.46 billion to close the deal in December 2015.
In February, Blackstone struck a deal with Scott Rechler's RXR Realty to purchase its 50 percent stake in six New York-area office buildings. The properties included in the contract were 620 Sixth Avenue, 1330 Sixth Avenue, 340 Madison Avenue and the Starrett-Lehigh Building at 601 West 26th Street. The Wall Street Journal reported the deal's worth to be roughly $4 billion.
Blackstone made the $4-billion acquisition using its core-plus real estate fund, which it also utilized to purchase Vornado Realty Trust's 1740 Broadway for $605 million in 2014.
A month later, Blackstone received a mega offer from General Electric executives which is bound to become one of the largest real estate deals in US history. GE proposed selling its entire $26.5 billion global property portfolio all at once to Blackstone.
"We were not expecting the call. They had been selling off parts of their real estate holdings and we had bought some smaller portfolios," said Blackstone Global Chief Investment Officer Kenneth Caplan.
On April 12, GE announced their deal. Blackstone would buy $14 billion worth of GE's properties and mortgages, Wells Fargo a $9 billion worth of loans and other investors would purchase the rest.
The deal solidified Blackstone's image as a strong force in the real estate industry. With the GE deal, they proved that they can close a multibillion-dollar global portfolio acquisition in just three weeks instead of months or years.
"How many other players could have done the GE deal? Over time, they have gotten to a size and scale where they can do deals few others can," said Scott Rechler, head of RXR Realty.
