NEW YORK CITY—Fund manager AllianceBernstein has surpassed its $1-billion target for US Real Estate Partners II LP. ABREP II closed at $1.2 billion after less than 12 months in the market, coming in at more than 75% larger than its predecessor, which closed in April 2012 at $680 million. It's the second large opportunistic fund to close in less than a week, following Fortress Investment Group's $1-billion close on Fortress Real Estate Opportunities Fund II.

Although European pension funds were among the newcomers to the client base for ABREP II, the fund's focus is squarely on domestic special situations investing. Its strategy will be consistent with that of ABREP I, which invested in asset classes including multifamily, office, hospitality and land across a spectrum of investment profiles ranging from cash-flowing assets to major repositioning and development. To date, ABREP II has committed approximately $170 million through five investments.

“The fact that we were able to raise more than $1 billion in such a short period of time we believe is a testament to the confidence the marketplace has in the team we have assembled at AB, our investment discipline and our track record,” says Jay Nydick, co-CIO of AB's real estate group. While all of the institutional investors from the US and Asia who participated in ABREP I also returned for the new fund, AB diversified the client base for ABREP II.

The new fund's limited partners include insurers, endowments and foundations, family offices and individual investors, along with pension funds from Canada and Europe. “What really appealed to our investor base is, for many of them, this was their first entry into the U.S. real estate market,” Brahm Cramer, co-CIO with Nydick, told Bloomberg Business this past Friday.

ABREP II represents the latest step in the continued growth and evolution of AB's real estate group, launched in 2009 to build out a leading private equity real estate platform. The group has now closed nearly $4 billion in capital commitments across dedicated opportunistic private equity and debt whole loan strategies.

Two years ago, AB expanded the real estate platform with its first commercial real estate debt fund, which closed at $750 million. The firm thus far has gotten $610 million of commitments to its second CRE debt fund.

Real estate is one plan of an alternative assets platform that currently manages more than $20 billion in assets. It includes multi-manager offerings, absolute return equity and fixed income strategies, and a growing roster of private market offerings targeting both commercial and residential real estate, middle market lending and infrastructure. Earlier this month, AB said its global total of AUM, including both equity and fixed income, had reached $500 billion.