Emerging trends in CRE fundraising: AI integration, wealth channels, and strategic capital deployment by 2030

"Transparency is going to be a theme that investors will focus on over the next several years."

At the Real Estate Private Funds conference, Taryn Crawford, Managing Director of Capital Markets at American Landmark Apartments, not only participated in the insightful "Capital Raising in a Higher-for-Longer World" panel but also shared her expertise on key commercial real estate (CRE) fundraising trends. From the transformative role of AI integration and the expansion of wealth channels to the growing emphasis on transparency, Taryn highlights strategies shaping the industry's evolution. Explore emerging opportunities in residential, senior living, and digital infrastructure sectors, while gaining insights into how liquidity challenges are redefining the future of CRE fundraising.

From a fundraising perspective, what emerging trends do you believe will have the greatest impact on CRE by 2030, and how are you positioning your business to adapt?

It feels like the primary areas of focus generally are identifying strategic ways to access the wealth channels, integrating AI into your business and fundraising efforts, and focusing on operators and niche strategies. For American Landmark, it’s been a competitive advantage to fall into that vertically integrated operator category. By controlling the entire lifecycle of our assets, we believe we create more alignment with our investors and can better mitigate risk and provide transparency to our partners. From an AI perspective, we recently appointed a Chief Technology Officer to transform the way we integrate technology, and specifically AI, across all aspects of the firm. We really want to focus on integrating AI throughout our infrastructure, not just to create efficiency but also to enhance our decision-making in our investment, operational, and fundraising processes. And in terms of the wealth channels, while institutional capital remains our primary focus, we are expanding our footprint within the Family Office and RIA space with a recent hire in my team. By dedicating specialized resources to these channels, we believe we will be better positioned to build long-term relationships with a new group of sophisticated investors and ultimately further diversify our source of capital.

What do you see as the biggest challenges to raising capital for commercial real estate in the coming years, and what strategies can fund managers and investors employ to overcome them?

Liquidity is top of mind. While the market is recovering, lack of liquidity remains a huge challenge for investors. Recently we’ve seen managers exploring more creative exit strategies, which helps to alleviate that grid lock effect, with the increase in recaps and secondary strategies. I also think transparency is going to be a theme that investors will focus on over the next several years. With significant disruption in the market in 2022 through 2024, a lot of funds have faced performance headwinds. The managers best positioned to navigate this environment will be the ones who prioritize transparency and proactive communication with their investors.

Looking ahead to 2026, where do you see the most significant opportunities for capital deployment in commercial real estate?

I still believe residential has a lot of opportunity and holds a place in most institutional investors’ allocations. The structural shortage of housing in the U.S. remains a theme. While multifamily navigated elevated supply in 2024, construction starts are now at historical lows and the lack of new deliveries will reinforce multifamily fundamentals. I also think senior living has strong fundamentals. And outside of residential, digital infrastructure is still compelling but there’s uncertainty about the longer-term outlook for data centers, for example, and questions around power availability. Credit remains high conviction as well, although we are observing a pivot back towards equity allocations.