The world’s largest private equity investor, Blackstone, has scored over $7.8 billion in the third instalment of its opportunistic real estate fund series, per a filing on the SEC website.

The fund juggernaut has now achieved over 86% of its $9-billion target for the Blackstone Real Estate Partners Asia III (BREP ASIA III) fund despite the ‘periodic reassertion of COVID-19’ that Jonathan Gray, president and chief operating officer at Blackstone, acknowledged in its second-quarter earnings call as an obstacle for both growth and market stability in Asia.

“Combined with our BREP funds in Europe and Asia, we will have $50 billion of opportunistic real estate capital to deploy globally, only 12% of which is invested today. This is a very advantageous position given the current environment,” Gray added in the same event.

Participating in Blackstone Real Estate Partners Asia III are predominantly US state funds, including New Mexico State Investment Council (NMSIC), Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund, State Board of Administration of Florida, Minnesota State Board of Investments and Virginia Retirement System — which committed up to $200 million in January this year.

BREP ASIA III is part of Blackstone’s Asian opportunistic real estate fund that targets the acquisition of well-located but undermanaged properties under the strategy buy-fix-sell. Attempting to replicate the success of its precursor funds, the third instalment aims to invest in diverse asset classes, including new economy assets, multifamily and commercial properties in the Asia-Pacific region.

Its investment destinations will scatter across China, Japan, India, Australia, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand and Taiwan, according to NMSIC.

DealStreetAsia understands that Blackstone has been divesting the $7.1-billion capital it raised for the second instalment of the fund series, which was closed in 2018, in value-add assets across gateway cities in Asia.

Their investment destinations include Japan where the firm had snapped up 19 multifamily properties in partnership with Alyssa Partners for $157 million in May, according to a report first published by Mingtiandi.

Blackstone did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

The news comes less than a month after Blackstone’s competitor LaSalle Investment Management fund announced that it had earmarked $2.2 billion for its value-add property vehicle, LaSalle Asia Opportunity VI.