Apollo, Brookfield real estate buying sprees highlight need for housing investment standards

Two of the largest private equity companies in the U.S., Apollo Global Management and Brookfield Asset Management, have been on recent buying sprees, spending billions of dollars to acquire tens of thousands of rental units and manufactured home sites, and both companies are raising funds for more real estate investments.

Given the large-scale housing acquisition by Apollo, Brookfield, and other private equity firms and the increased scrutiny of their rental housing practices, it would be beneficial for pension funds to adopt standards for their real estate investments, such as those adopted by the New York City Employees Retirement System (NYCERS).

According to the NYC Comptroller’s office, which spearheaded the effort, the lack of standards exposes investors to risks such as higher costs due to resident dissatisfaction, high turnover, and a growing number of regulatory and reputational challenges.

Brookfield

Brookfield Asset Management has gotten back into the housing market in a big way recently, a notable change from just a few years before, when Brookfield unloaded $10 billion of U.S. rental housing in a six-month period in 2021-2022.^[1]

In the last few years, Brookfield has acquired thousands of rental units in Europe and the U.S., including buying:

• a 7,300-unit apartment portfolio concentrated in Florida and Texas for $1.5 billion in 2024
• 4,100 units in Las Vegas, Phoenix, Columbus, OH and Charlotte and Chapel Hill, NC for $845 million in 2024
• two properties with about 800 total units in Charlotte, NC and Chandler, AZ for $135 million in 2025

Brookfield currently owns over 200 apartment buildings in the U.S. with about 60,000 total apartment units, according to CoStar.

Earlier this year, Brookfield  bought 5,000 rental apartment units across 47 properties in Madrid from Blackstone, for $1.4 billion. Tenants at these properties are organized with the Sindicato de Inquilinas de Madrid/ Madrid Tenants Union and had a long-standing fight with Blackstone, which had tried to impose massive rent increases. They have vowed that they will not accept rent increases or evictions through non-renewal of leases.

In May 2026, Brookfield’s CEO told analysts on a conference call that the private equity firm is expecting to do $20 billion of real estate deals in a two-month period.

A few months later during its 2^nd quarter earnings call, Brookfield announced that it had deployed its first investment for its Breva H housing fund to acquire Yes! Communities, one of the largest owners of manufactured housing communities in the U.S. with almost 300 parks and over 80,000 home sites in 23 states, in a deal that had been valued at $10 billion.

According to a recent article, Brookfield “is preparing to launch its next massive real estate opportunity fund next year.”

Apollo

Apollo Global Management has similarly been beefing up its rental housing assets.

• Apollo bought Bridge Investment Group and its 55,000 rental units for $1.5 billion in 2025, nearly doubling Apollo’s real estate portfolio.
• In July 2026, Apollo announced that it had raised $850 million for a fund aimed at acquiring manufactured home communities. Apollo already owns Inspire Communities, which owns over 100 manufactured home parks with over 23,000 home sites, generally concentrated in the Sun Belt, according to PESP’s manufactured housing tracker.
• In August 2026, Apollo invested $1 billion for a joint venture with Starwood that will own a 120-property affordable housing portfolio.

In a message to investors at the end of 2025, Scott Weiner, a partner at Apollo, wrote, “Housing remains one of the most powerful, long-term investment themes in global real estate. The US is expected to face a shortfall of roughly four million homes by 2029. New housing starts have fallen sharply due to elevated financing costs and regulatory bottlenecks, tightening supply through at least 2026. At the same time, the cost of owning a home has nearly doubled relative to renting. This widening gap is fueling sustained demand for multifamily, manufactured, student and senior housing — along with build-to-rent models.”

Standards that benefit tenants and investors

The New York City Employees Retirement System (NYCERS) has a Responsible Property Management Standards (RPMS) Policy to support and encourage fair rental practices by investment managers with which the pension fund invests.

NYCERS is one of the largest pension plans in the U.S. with over $101 billion in assets under management.

The property management standards, which are modeled after the city pension plan’s Responsible Contractor Policy, “aim to improve the long-term quality and sustainability of residential rental real estate investments and reduce housing instability for residents.” The standards were developed in consultation with eight of the largest investment and real estate managers, including Black, Brookfield, Cerberus, and KKR.

The policy provides assurance that the residential properties in which NYCERS invests “are maintained and operated to a consistent standard of quality that provides expected financial returns, assures fair and equitable treatment of tenants, and enhances long-term value.”

The standards address issues related to tenant screening and selection, safe housing, positive tenant-landlord relations, tenant rights to free speech and free association, tenant stability, and evictions.

NYCERS’ Responsible Property Management Standards Policy represents a landmark step by investors in acknowledging the serious problems that many tenants currently face and how investment managers can better address those problems. This policy is needed now more than ever and should be adopted by other funds concerned about the quality and sustainability of their real estate investments.

^[1] “Brookfield says multifamily buying spree is paying off,” PERE News, September 15, 2024