Bain Raises $3.4B For Latest Fund, Eyes Marinas, Powered Land
Bain Capital raised more than $3B to buy into specialty sectors as the firm continues an alternative asset buying blitz.
The Boston-based investment giant announced Tuesday it closed its third real estate fund with $3.4B in capital commitments, behind the firm’s $3.8B target but ahead of its last fund's $3B raise. The cash will be used to target hard-to-access real estate sectors in which active ownership can accelerate performance, adding to Bain’s expanding portfolio of eclectic real estate assets.
“We are grateful for the continued support of our limited partners,” Ryan Cotton, who has led Bain Capital’s real estate division since 2023, said in a statement. “Looking ahead, we believe we are competitively advantaged to capitalize on long-term secular trends driven by changes in how people live, work, and spend.”
Bain Capital Real Estate Fund III’s core areas of focus include urban infill industrial, open-air retail, leisure and hospitality, medical, townhomes, senior housing, marinas, storage facilities and digital real estate assets.
Roughly 30% of the fund's capital has already been deployed, a spokesperson for the firm told Bisnow. One of its acquisitions was the Kent Narrows Boatel in Maryland, a 375-slip boat storage facility on the Chesapeake Bay that Bain acquired late last year in a partnership with BlueWater Marinas.
Its digital real estate assets include powered land and exposure to Hscale, a European data center platform, the spokesperson said.
Investors in the fund include new and existing clients, with $300M coming from current or former Bain employees. The private equity giant has some $215B in assets under management, with $10.7B in invested and committed capital as part of its real estate business at the end of September.
The fund’s close follows a December deal between Bain and real estate investment firm 11North to spend $1.6B on high-quality and value-add grocery-anchored retail. Funding for that partnership came from two unnamed “global institutional investors” and other Bain clients.
Bain and 11North had previously partnered on the $395M acquisition of 10 open-air retail properties in Florida and South Carolina in August.
Bain first teamed up with BlueWater in 2024 on the acquisition of a dry-stack marina, Boathouse Marine Center in South Florida, in an off-market deal.
Bain also announced plans this month for an initial public offering of Bob’s Discount Furniture, which it acquired in 2014, to help fund a planned doubling of its 120 locations across 17 states.
In November, Bain’s private equity arm acquired Concert Golf Partners and its 39 courses across the U.S. from Clearlake Partners in a deal that was estimated to have cleared $1B, including debt.
Bain said its strategy for the combined $5B in capital fits inside its longstanding thematic investment approach that relies on long-dated secular trends to unlock opportunities in demand-driven, supply-constrained sectors.
The investment firm has been an active buyer in the past year, focusing on distressed assets targeted through its special situations team, Bisnow reported in February.
"At a high level, we are definitely on offense," Cotton said at the time. "We're healthy. We have capital. Those are differentiators in this market at the moment, and a lot of the activity we are seeing is not forced selling but stressed selling."
