BGO has pulled the plug on its nontraded REIT nearly three years after launch — and without ever selling a share to an outside investor.
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Miami Beach-based BGO, which has nearly $90B in assets under management, filed a termination of registration for BGO Industrial Real Estate Income Trust with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, formally ending the life of a nontraded REIT that started with a stake in a 29-property portfolio but failed to draw investor interest.
BGO IREIT launched in 2023 with the investment firm's part owner at the time, Sun Life Financial, contributing a 56.5% interest in a 9.4M SF portfolio of industrial properties spread across the Midwest to seed the fund. The REIT had $197.3M in total assets at the end of 2025 and valued the properties in its portfolio at a combined $971M, according to its most recent filing with the SEC.
The REIT has lost more than $3M in each of the last two years, and the portfolio’s assets are facing upcoming maturity dates, given it was launched with a $560M senior loan in two tranches at four- and five-year terms.
BGO was fully acquired in March by Sun Life Financial in a $1.2B deal, but it continues to operate independently. The firm didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Sun Life, a Toronto-based insurance giant, formed BGO in 2019 and held a 56% stake in the firm after launch. BGO’s total portfolio is spread across 12 countries and all the core asset classes.
BGO IREIT launched with up to $5B in shares offered exclusively through financial advisers. It was BGO's first push into the retail investment channel, AltsWire reported at the time. The outlet was the first to report on the REIT’s latest SEC filing.
Its assets were 98% occupied at the end of the year and are split across multibuilding developments in the St. Louis, Cincinnati and Kansas City markets and a single 757K SF property in the Chicago area.
The pure-play industrial REIT's launch in 2023 came as the two largest players in the space, Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust and Starwood Real Estate Income Trust, were capping redemptions as investors tried to pull cash amid general concerns over commercial real estate valuations as the sector looked for its post-pandemic footing.
Blackstone eventually cleared its backlog and by mid-2024 was back to fulfilling all redemption requests. SREIT, however, still had nearly $1B in outstanding requests at the end of 2025 and fully halted redemptions again last month to avoid selling properties into what CEO Barry Sternlicht sees as a less-than-optimal environment.
While nontraded REIT fundraising dried up for a period, there are recent signs of life. BREIT raised $1.2B in the first quarter, its highest quarterly capital raise in three years, and redemption requests are down. JLL Income Property Trust also secured a new $1B credit facility with a syndicate of lenders in March that could fuel deals.
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