Goldman Sachs Raising $500M Japan Value-Add Real Estate Fund 

After closing out 2025 with a flurry of deals, Japan is set to keep its spot at the centre of Asia real estate investment this year with Goldman Sachs raising a $500 million fund targeting acquisitions in the country.

Seeking to leverage a more than three-decade track record in Japan’s property sector, the US finance giant is raising capital from third party investors to pursue value-add opportunities in Japanese data centres, rental residential, logistics and hospitality, according to sources familiar with the fundraising who spoke with Mingtiandi. News of the investment fund was first reported by Bloomberg.

The fundraising by Goldman Sachs Asset Management, the firm’s third-party capital management division, would support expansion of the company’s Japan real estate strategies after more than 28 percent of acquisitions of income-earning property assets in Asia Pacific during the first three quarters of 2025 took place in Japan, according to statistics from MSCI.

With the Japanese yen having declined nearly 6 percent against the US dollar in the past six months, and borrowing costs in the country still lower than in most global markets, real estate investors are ramping up activity in Asia’s second-largest economy with GIC, KKR, Blackstone and PAG having made major investments there during December.

First Closing This Quarter

Goldman Sachs is aiming to achieve a first closing on its Japan fund by the end of the first quarter, Mingtiandi can confirm, with the company currently in discussion with potential investors in the vehicle.

The company has been expanding its management of third party investments in real estate during recent years, with Nikhil Reddy having been named head of Asia Pacific real estate at Goldman Sachs Asset Management in 2023.

Having opened a Tokyo office in 1974 before making its first property investments in the country in 1995, Goldman Sachs last year realised profits on a set of office floors in the Japanese capital. The company sold the 14th through the 18th floors of the GranTokyo South Tower to East Japan Railway Co for more than JPY 50 billion (then $337 million), according to a report by Bloomberg.

During the second half of 2024 the Goldman team made a series of rental residential acquisitions, picking up a set of Fukuoka apartments in November that year for JPY 12.7 billion, after buying a set of eight rental residential properties in the Greater Tokyo area for around $80 million a few months earlier. 

Both of those acquisitions came around the same time that the company took private Tokyo stock exchange-listed residential investment firm Nihon Housing in a deal valuing the company at JPY 77 billion.

In 2023 the company had joined with Singapore’s SC Capital Partners and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority to purchase a portfolio of 27 Japanese resort hotels for $900 million in the country’s biggest hospitality investment of that year. Having led a consortium which sold AirTrunk to Macquarie Asset Management in 2020, Goldman has also been active in Japan’s data centre market.

Japanese Wave

After investors traded nearly $37 billion in income-earning Japanese properties during the first three quarters of 2025, ranking the country tops among APAC markets per MSCI, the country padded its lead in the closing days of the year as investors announced a series of large transactions.

Just before the Christmas holiday, PAG and KKR announced an agreement to acquire Sapporo Real Estate in a deal which values the property division of beverage maker Sapporo Holdings at JPY 477 billion ($3 billion).

That deal was revealed just one day after Blackstone said that it was acquiring a Tokyo warehouse in a deal worth approximately JPY 100 billion, which ranked as Japan’s biggest logistics transaction of 2025. 

Mingtiandi reported on 22 December that Samty Holdings, an Osaka-based asset manager controlled by Chinese superinvestor Zhang Lei’s Hillhouse Investment Management, had raised around $500 million from Singapore’s GIC for Japanese residential investments. 

More such deals could be on the way in 2026, with Goldman Sachs’ Manhattan competitor Morgan Stanley having announced in September last year that it had reached a final close on JPY 131 billion in capital to invest in opportunities in Japanese residential, office and industrial real estate.