A total of 24 private equity real estate funds recorded final closings during first quarter 2015, according to Institutional Real Estate FundTracker. The quarterly volume of $31.6 billion ranks as the highest first-quarter total since FundTracker began collecting data in 2007, and it is the highest amount raised since third quarter 2008 ($36.6 billion). The funds have an average fund size of $1.32 billion.

Compared with fundraising volumes of the past few years, this quarterly amount raised was more than one-third of 2014’s 12-month total ($91.7 billion), 40 percent of the total for 2013 ($79.2 billion) and more than half of the fundraising volume for 2012 ($60.7 billion).

One of the main reasons for this spike in fundraising was the closing of The Blackstone Group’s Blackstone Real Estate Partners VIII. The opportunistic fund raised a total of $15.8 billion, and the March closing put BREP VIII into the record books as the largest real estate priv