Reviewed through 1 August 2026
Real estate has been the slowest-moving line in family office portfolios for years. That is now over. The UBS 2026 report puts the global average real estate weighting at eleven percent of portfolios in 2025, the same level as 2024. Among offices that intend to change allocation in the next twelve months, the target is eight percent, a meaningful single-line cut.
The US is the exception, and the gap is widening. US family offices now allocate an average of twenty percent of their portfolios to real estate, double the level of three years ago. The drivers are not exotic. Residential supply shortages, depreciation tax shields, and direct ownership structures that compete with fund vehicles on a fee basis.
20%
US family office real estate allocation
2x the global average. Driven by supply, tax, and direct-ownership economics.
Direct ownership is winning from funds
Globally, FINTRX tracked fifty-five direct real estate transactions by family offices in the first half of 2026. Thirty-one of thirty-nine unique buyers were single family offices. The asset-class preference is multi-family residential, retail, and office in that order, with logistics and data centers increasingly part of direct programmes.
Family-office direct real estate holdings reached an estimated USD 487 billion globally in 2025, up thirty-four percent from 2022. Fund allocation fell from forty-five percent of family-office real estate budgets in 2022 to thirty-two percent in 2025. That is a structural rather than cyclical shift.
Where family office capital is invested by region
ChartChart
Where family office capital is invested (%)
North America + Western Europe at 78%. Africa at 1% of the global portfolio.
Source: UBS Global Family Office Report 2026.
The question for most offices is no longer whether real estate belongs in the portfolio. It is whether the office can run it directly.
Where Vereles sees the work
For offices cutting fund exposure and building direct, the work is operating. Deal underwriting, property management, capex planning, and the financing ladder through a rate cycle. Most offices cannot run that pipeline without a structured interface between the family and a property manager or operating partner. We design that interface and the operating reports the principal and trustee need to read.
What a principal takes away.
- 01Real estate is being trimmed at the margin, not exited. Direct ownership is replacing fund allocation, not stocks.
- 02US offices sit at 20% real estate, double the global average. Tax and supply economics, not enthusiasm, are driving the gap.
- 03Before adding direct exposure, an office needs the operating layer. Underwriting, capex planning, and a financing ladder that holds through a rate cycle.
- 04For non-US offices, the surprise is the gap closing on the US. Fund vehicles are repricing while direct economics are increasingly competitive on a fee basis.