Drake Real Estate Partners has announced the final close of its fifth flagship vehicle, Drake Real Estate Partners Fund V, raising more than $515 million in capital commitments — exceeding its original $500 million target. The milestone reflects the firm’s strategic shift from an investor base rooted in large Latin American family offices to a predominantly U.S. institutional capital foundation for this vintage. 

“Drake focuses on niche real estate sectors, and smaller, under-the-radar opportunities that are often overlooked,” said Nicolas Ibanez, co-founder and President of Drake. “In a market undergoing a structural reset, managers with flexible capital are able to pivot amid this shift and play with a big advantage.” 

True to its value-add strategy, the firm specializes in acquiring income-producing real estate assets, often well below replacement cost, and enhancing value through hands-on repositioning, operational improvements, and leasing efforts. The team prioritizes smaller transactions — typically deploying between $5 million and $25 million of equity per deal — with a strong preference for sourcing properties directly from long-term, non-institutional owners, thereby bypassing highly competitive brokered processes. 

In recent years, Drake has focused increasingly on fragmented sub-sectors within industrial and residential real estate, including industrial outdoor storage (IOS), small bay industrial, and manufactured housing. IOS remains one of Fund V’s highest conviction strategies. The fund also continues to pursue traditional property types such as multifamily and data centers when opportunities arise. 

In residential, manufactured housing has been a primary theme for DREP Fund V, with the firm leveraging a land-lease approach — owning and leasing the land beneath residents’ homes to generate consistent income. Additionally, Fund V has made an opportunistic investment through a GP stake in a more than 1,000-megawatt hyperscale data center development platform anchored by blue-chip tenants. 

Founded in 2012, Drake Real Estate Partners has completed over $3 billion in transactions to date. 

Pictured: Image of an industrial outdoor storage asset within DREP Fund V portfolio.