Blackstone Goes All-In on Industrial, Ventures Boldly Into Retail

NEW YORK CITY- Blackstone is all-in on industrial, viewing the favored asset class that has seen vacancies at record-lows thanks to e-commerce as poised for even greater growth as more and more investors seek to gobble up warehouses closer to dense city centers. 

And aside from betting on the tried and true industrial asset class, the alternative asset manager is tooting its horn about venturing off the beaten path as it continues to tap into the retail market more broadly through its non-traded REIT the Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust, according to Stephen Schwarzman, chairman, CEO and co-founder of Blackstone at Goodwin’s Real Estate Capital Markets Conference 2020. 

Blackstone started buying warehouse logistics in 2010, betting it was a good investment as e-commerce behemoth Amazon began to increase its market share, predicting that other retailers would follow suit, thus leading Blackstone to sell-off its shopping malls and acquire an estimated one billion square feet of warehouses across the world to date. “Once you understood what was happening with online shopping and that every retailer in scale would need to do something similar [to Amazon],  the whole game was gonna change,” Schwarzman said.