Metropolitan in $139m real estate close

The Carlyle subsidiary has been in market since January last year seeking $1bn to invest in real estate secondaries.

Metropolitan Real Estate Equity Management has hit a $139 million first close on its sophomore real estate secondaries fund, having launched in January 2017.

Metropolitan Real Estate Partners Secondaries Fund II made its first sale in April 2017 and has received commitments from 24 individual investors, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

The firm has employed TCG Securities of Washington DC and New York’s Morgan Stanley Smith Barney as placement agents, the filing noted.

Secondaries Investor reported in January 2017 that Metropolitan, Carlyle’s real estate-focused secondaries and fund of funds unit, was returning to market with its second real estate secondaries fund, seeking as much as $1 billion.

Its debut Metropolitan Real Estate Partners Secondaries & Co-Investments Program hit final close on $550 million, above its $450 million target, in February 2016, according to PERE data. It had been in the market for around one year and a half.

Investors in the fund included Arkansas Teacher Retirement System and Nebraska Investment Council.

The firm played a part in last year’s biggest real estate secondaries transaction, the sale of $2 billion of fund stakes by endowment Harvard Management Company. Metropolitan acquired a portfolio worth $250 million as part of the deal, as Secondaries Investor reported.

Metropolitan was acquired by Carlyle in 2013. It had around $1.8 billion in assets under management as of the end of 2017, according to its website.

Real estate accounted for 14 percent of the $58 billion in secondaries deal volume last year, according to Greenhill Cogent’s latest yearly report.