How One Firm Is Leaning Into A Growing Secondaries Market

Real estate secondaries have risen in prominence over the last few years as a tool for liquidity in a market environment with lower transaction volumes and slower fundraising cycles. 

UK-based Partners Group has had its hands in the secondaries market for almost 20 years, putting in $6B across more than 120 real estate secondaries transactions since 2008. Henrik Orrbeck, co-head of real estate for Partners, said the market has evolved from a blunt liquidity tool for aging portfolios to a more targeted way for managers to execute business plans and for investors to rebalance. 

“When it started, the focus, to a large degree, was buying at a large discount,” Orrbeck told Bisnow. “Now it's more of a sharp tool that facilitates those very, very specific needs, and as such, the portfolios are more focused than maybe they were in the beginning.”

An increase in market interest in real estate secondaries globally over the last couple of years has been a well-documented trend. 

Global real estate secondaries transaction volume hit $25.1B in 2025, up 3% from $24.3B in 2024, according to CBRE. General-partner-led secondaries accounted for $16.1B, 64% of total estimated volume, while limited-partner-led secondaries totaled $8.8B, up 15% from 2024. 

In the current marketplace, some investors may be slightly overexposed to meet commitments to new-vintage funds and have to release exposure to older ones, creating opportunities for secondaries investors, Orrbeck said. Different investors in a fund can also have different needs, with some preferring to stay in and others looking to get out. 

Partners is targeting a $1.5B fundraise for its fifth real estate secondaries program, which the company announced last month with more than $650M in commitments.

“We are in a market environment that is clearly dominated by a reduced level of distributions and sometimes even a lack of distribution, and I think that fundamentally just creates a need for a lot of investors to rebalance their portfolios,” Orrbeck said.

Partners’ investments are highly thematic, Orrbeck said, and the firm’s preferred asset classes at the moment are living and industrial. The seed funds for its fifth program predominantly had exposure to those asset classes and a large overlap in geographic exposure with the firm’s direct portfolios. 

The company's targeted asset classes mirror trends in the broader secondaries market. Industrial transactions led global secondaries markets at $6.7B in 2025, with multifamily in second at $5B, according to CBRE. Other living sectors, like student and senior housing, grew by 67% and 92%, respectively, in secondaries transaction volumes.

The company is largely steering clear of office in its funds, Orrbeck said. 

“Structurally, we continue to be cautious with office, and it's not a targeted asset for us, and it would be less likely that you would see something like that coming into one of our funds at this stage,” he said. 

The bulk of Partners Group’s secondaries deals are GP-led transactions, in which a fund manager moves one or more assets into a new vehicle to extend its ownership and give existing investors the option to cash out or remain invested. Orrbeck said the advantage of a GP-led deal is that there is a greater opportunity to shape the underlying portfolio and more data available for decision-making. 

Still, Orrbeck sees opportunity in limited-partner-led deals, which can be more difficult to underwrite, with less clarity on the underlying assets. But with Partners investing 70% of its overall real estate business directly, Orrbeck said the company often has insight into the properties in indirect portfolios, giving it an advantage in assessing leasing, valuations and other fundamentals.

“I often find that we have a little bit of an edge in the underwriting because we can compare and contrast to what we see on the direct side,” Orrbeck said.  

Fundraising will continue to be more challenging, with fundraising periods lengthening due to geopolitical volatility and elevated interest rates, Orrbeck said. Capital is increasingly being raised by specialized managers focused on particular sectors, geographies or secondaries strategies. 

For newer investors in the space, Orrbeck said he has been fielding a lot of questions about realistic discounts, potential Day 1 markups, and the pros and cons of LP-led versus GP-led deals. Partners is also receiving increased interest in European secondaries opportunities, he said.

“We have a significant increase in new discussions,” Orrbeck said. “People are saying, ‘We haven't done secondaries in the past. We hear an awful lot about it. What's your take? How do you guys do it?’”