Stock Market Wobbles Fuel $28B Of Q1 Commercial Real Estate M&A

The commercial real estate M&A landscape roared back to life in the first quarter, tallying more than $28B worth of announced deals. 

Large capital sources, undeterred by the outbreak of war in Iran, have forged ahead on investments in real assets, hedging against an increasingly wobbly and opaque equities market. After years of sitting on billions in raised funds, institutional capital and private capital are looking to buy portfolios and close corporate deals to gain quick and deep exposure to favored asset classes.

“Frankly, I get a call just about every week from major players who would like to acquire us,” said Joe Lubeck, the CEO of multifamily development and investment firm American Landmark. 

The private Tampa-based firm has roughly 40,000 units, and Lubeck values the portfolio around $9B.

But the buyers don’t just want the portfolio. They want the operation as well. 

“It's primarily big institutions that don't have a management presence, per se, and they love the idea of having both assets and a management company,” he said.

He is far from alone. 

The business of mergers, buyouts, acquisitions and public delistings is booming across commercial real estate. The first quarter brought the acquisition of Eastdil Secured by Savills, Public Storage's purchase of National Storage Affiliates, and Peakstone Realty Trust's sale to Brookfield, among others.

“There is a broad range of capital that is trying to get money out, and it’s a very elegant solution to be able to buy a very large portfolio from a public REIT if you still think you're getting value,” said Kristin Gannon, managing director Eastdil Secured, which is set to be acquired in a $1.1B deal announced in March.

Transaction volume in the first three months of the year was equal to nearly three-quarters of all the M&A activity tracked across the sector in 2025, and the momentum that was already building has been further fueled by demand for hard assets as the war in Iran adds uncertainty to equity markets that have begun to wobble.

Since the start of the year, buyers have committed to spending just under $28B across 11 planned or executed deals, according to a Bisnow analysis. The purchase prices for another three acquisitions weren't disclosed, but the target firms were worth a combined $2.7B in market value at the time of their acquisitions.

Last month, Greystar also purchased Native Communities, which manages more than 9,000 homes across 37 properties in the UK, without disclosing financial details of the deal. 

CRE M&A activity in the U.S. totaled $43B across fewer than 400 deals closed in 2025, according to a Deloitte report referencing data from S&P Capital IQ. The 2025 total was less than half the M&A volume for each of the prior two years. But buyouts began picking up late last year.

“People are reallocating and rebalancing their portfolios and taking some money out of the stock market after being reminded of the volatility of it — because the last several years, it's just kind of gone up and to the right, but it obviously can't do that forever,” said Jaime Sturgis, the founder of boutique South Florida brokerage Native Realty. 

Sturgis founded Native in 2017 with a focus on Fort Lauderdale and has since grown it into a leading brokerage through recruitment and his own M&A. Today, he is fielding several calls each quarter from suitors looking to buy his firm — and offering more money to take it.

“I haven't really entertained it in a meaningful way, but, yes, they continue to go up,” Sturgis said of the offers.

The biggest public REIT buyout of 2025 was the acquisition of Hawaii’s largest owner of grocery-anchored shopping centers by Blackstone and San Francisco-based DivcoWest, according to S&P Global. That December deal cost the buyers some $1.5B, a 40% premium on the REIT’s share price that valued the firm at $2.3B. 

In the first quarter, three acquisitions as big or larger have been announced, including the $10.5B all-stock merger between Public Storage and National Storage Affiliates. 

That mammoth deal accounts for roughly a third of M&A activity tracked by Bisnow, but it is just one of eight firms to trade for more than $1B in cash or stock. The smallest deal was Sun Life Financial’s $350M acquisition of Bell Partners and its more than 70,000 multifamily units. That acquisition was part of a series of deals that also included the rollup of two other real estate firms and had a total price tag around $2B. 

“Cap rates are moving in the right direction, and interest rates, while everyone expected more cuts, they're pretty stable in the 5% to low-5% range,” Lubeck said. “We think this is actually an opportune time to invest.”

The Public Storage merger was announced on March 16, more than two weeks after the United States and Israel launched a war with Iran that led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a key global shipping lane, and has since rippled across the Middle East. 

The war has also rebounded around financial markets. The increased prices and volatility in oil markets have helped fuel inflation and sour consumer sentiment. 

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said it was “too soon to know the scope and duration” of the Iran conflict at the central bank’s meeting on March 18, but even then, he conceded that rising energy prices would push up inflation, at least in the near term. 

Untamed inflation complicates any plans Fed officials had for loosening monetary policy, while yields on longer-dated Treasury bonds continue to drift higher. The sticky cost of capital has held back markets throughout the extend-and-pretend era, but buyers have accepted the reality of an elevated rate environment and are forging ahead.

Public market trends have also coalesced to make the right REITs attractive buyout opportunities. Real estate stocks have generally lagged the broader market as investors continue to shake off fears about long-term office use patterns, apartment and industrial overdevelopment in key markets, and weak consumer sentiment. 

REITs have spent years priced below their net asset value, and more shareholders are applying pressure to look for private buyers. 

“The public market is penalizing them for staying public, and so they have a lot of investor pressure to go private or look for a strategic sale or a merger,” said Joe Ianoale, chief investment officer at Monument Capital Management, the real estate investment firm co-founded by New York Yankees legend Alex Rodriguez. “As long as that dynamic exists, you'll see what's happening in the market.”

Private capital is taking advantage of the perceived discount on commercial real estate stocks, buying up at least half a dozen REITs since the start of the year. Multifamily assets have drawn the most interest from well-capitalized buyers, accounting for roughly 31% of transactions by both transaction count and total dollar volume in Bisnow’s analysis. 

Affinius Capital and Vista Hill Partners struck a $3.4B all-cash deal in February to take the Northeast-focused multifamily REIT private, the same month that a management-led group reached a deal to take investment firm Kennedy Wilson private at a $1.6B valuation. 

San Francisco-based TPG Real Estate took over operations of Quarterra, Lennar’s multifamily development business, in January for an undisclosed price but committed $1B to grow the platform. 

“These aren't ‘distressed’ takeouts happening way below net asset value. Most of these are near-NAV takeouts that provide a nice premium to current share price,” Ryan Alfred, the founder of banking intelligence platform AtriumData.ai, wrote in an email. “Unless and until markets price small REITs fairly, we think this trend continues. The PE shops just have too much dry powder and REITs have too few defenses.”