GID and an affiliate of StepStone Real Estate have closed a $985 million deal for an 8.0 million-square-foot industrial portfolio that GID already runs, using a structure known as a manager-led secondary rather than a conventional sale to a new owner, the firms announced Oct. 26.
The portfolio covers 87 buildings in eight markets: Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Jacksonville, Portland, San Antonio and Seattle. GID, which has managed the properties since 2021, will stay on as asset manager for the new joint venture it formed with StepStone Real Estate, the real estate arm of Nasdaq-listed StepStone Group. The release describes the deal as one of the largest U.S. industrial transactions of the year to date.
How the deal is built
In a manager-led secondary β also called a GP-led secondary β the firm that already controls a set of assets arranges for a new vehicle, typically capitalized by a secondaries investor, to acquire or recapitalize them. The arrangement can give investors in the original vehicle a way to cash out while the manager keeps operating properties it knows. The release does not identify the selling vehicle, how much equity StepStone committed, the ownership split, or whether debt financed part of the price.
The headline figure works out to roughly $123 per square foot across the portfolio, and the average building is a little over 90,000 square feet. The release characterizes the holdings as infill light industrial β smaller warehouse and flex buildings close to population centers β with “a diverse tenant base,” and says the portfolio “offers the potential for future value creation through active asset management and leasing.” It does not disclose occupancy, rents or tenant names.
What the partners said
“This Manager-led secondary transaction represents a tremendous opportunity for us to invest in a diversified light industrial portfolio at an attractive basis and establish a new partnership with StepStone,” said Rene Circ, president of GID Industrial. “Our longstanding familiarity with the assets provides us with a differentiated understanding of the portfolio, its tenants and the markets in which it operates.”
John Waters, a partner and global co-head of investments at StepStone Real Estate, pointed to supply. “We have been focused on building exposure to infill industrial assets, where structural supply constraints continue to support fundamentals,” he said, adding that GID’s “familiarity with and demonstrated track record managing these assets were important factors in our decision to partner together.”
The parties
GID is a privately held investor, operator, developer and lender with offices in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Dubai, New York, San Francisco and West Palm Beach. It reported $33.3 billion of assets under management as of June 30, 2026, spanning more than 58,000 apartment units and more than 28 million square feet of industrial and commercial space β so this one portfolio accounts for a significant slice of the industrial and commercial space it oversees.
StepStone said it was responsible for about $913 billion of total capital, including $245 billion of assets under management, as of the same date. StepStone has backed similar recapitalizations in other property types; RealtyWire previously covered its recapitalization of a self-storage portfolio with Ardent Companies.
Why it stands out
On our reading, the deal is a marker of how industrial capital is moving in 2026. Rather than selling the portfolio outright to an unrelated buyer, the sponsor kept control and brought in fresh equity β a route that lets long-held assets change hands without testing the open market. It also lands on a busy day for warehouse capital: Morgan Stanley Real Estate Investing separately bought a 935,000-square-foot logistics facility in Stafford, Va., for $172.1 million, and other large multi-market warehouse portfolios have traded recently, including EQT’s sale of a 10.5 million-square-foot Southeast portfolio to LBA Realty.
More coverage of warehouse and logistics deals is in RealtyWire’s Commercial Real Estate section.
