Samira Madhany.
Samira Madhany
Managing Director, U.S. Real Estate Group at Carlyle Group
Unsurprisingly perhaps, the Carlyle Group — a global investment firm with $325 billion in assets under management as of March 31 — had a busy year last year. The Washington, D.C.-based firm raised $10 billion and invested approximately $6 billion in U.S. real estate. And Samira Madhany was a big part of it in her role managing new investment opportunities, including for development, across the United States.
“Carlyle’s sector and geographic selection strategy pre-COVID was grounded in demographic and technological trends which resulted in targeting residential and niche asset classes, like single-family rental and active adult,” Madhany said. “We did not invest in office, hotel and retail, and COVID had an outsized impact on these sectors relative to those we have been investing in. We continue to have conviction in our investment strategy post-COVID.”
In 2021, Carlyle raised approximately $8 billion for its ninth U.S. real estate opportunity fund, Carlyle Realty Partners IX (CRP IX), exceeding its $6 billion initial targets. CRP IX will seek to continue Carlyle Realty’s established investment strategy focused on opportunistic U.S. real estate. Carlyle Realty Partners VIII, its predecessor, raised $5.5 billion in commitments in 2018, according to Carlyle.
“We believe affordability is the paramount consideration with respect to the housing market, of which the multifamily market is a component,” said Madhany, “We tend to focus on those markets which are in front of continuing migration patterns, and from a cost perspective, are trying to identify those projects which can present lower rents for their potential tenants.”
Madhany — whose investment focus is on multifamily, medical office and senior housing (all of them especially desired asset classes coming out of the pandemic — joined Carlyle in 2006 after working on the investment side at CarrAmerica Realty Corporation.
“There is continued construction activity in D.C. in the multifamily sector,” Madhany said of the company’s homefield. “It is delivering in front of strong demand trends, however. It appears that Northern Virginia will resume attractin a larger share of employment growth, ahead of the District and Maryland.”
