NEW YORK CITY-Real estate revenues that more than tripled year over year played a big part in the Blackstone Group’s first-quarter performance, the private equity giant said Thursday. Chairman and CEO Stephen Schwarzman says in a release that the companywide $548.1 million of economic net income for Q1 represented “our strongest quarterly earnings since becoming a public company four years ago, as the values of all of our funds continued to increase.” In Blackstone’s real estate segment, “operating fundamentals continue to improve and two of our global funds moved above their preferred return hurdle and started accruing performance fees,” he says.

Blackstone’s real estate segment had revenues of $555.6 million for Q1 of this year, up more than 360% compared with $152.2 million in Q1 2010. ENI rose to $361 million from $89.3 million the year prior.

The company chalks it up to improved operating performance, primarily across the hospitality and office segments. Blackstone says the unrealized value and cumulative realized proceeds of the segment’s contributed carry funds represented 1.4 times investors’ original investment as of March 31, while the assets backing those funds appreciated 8.7% during the quarter.

The real estate segment’s funds had $2.4 billion of limited partner capital committed to deals which hadn’t yet closed as of the end of last month. That means about 82% of the $10.9-billion BREP VI opportunity fund was invested or committed as of the end of Q1, up from 70% at the end of last year. Blackstone said Thursday it’s begun raising its next major real estate fund; in earnings call earlier this year, the firm said the new fund would be comparable in size to BREP VI.