CBRE Investment Management Makes a $1.6 Billion Bet on Net Lease

Share this article!

CBRE Investment Management is making a sizable move deeper into net lease real estate, acquiring Tenet Equity and a fully leased portfolio valued at $1.6 billion.

The transaction gives CBRE IM a 208-property portfolio totaling roughly 12 million square feet across 39 states and, just as importantly, a ready-made origination platform focused on sale-leaseback financing for middle-market companies.

CBRE Investment Management said the portfolio has a weighted average lease term of 16.7 years and is fully leased. Cerberus Capital Management, which founded Tenet in 2021 with management, separately confirmed the $1.6 billion sale.

WRE NEWS CALL OUT: CBRE is not simply buying 208 properties. It is acquiring the platform that originated and manages them — and using that platform to launch a broader net-lease investment strategy.

Why the platform matters as much as the properties

Tenet specializes in sale-leaseback transactions. In a typical deal, a company sells real estate it owns and then leases the property back under a long-term agreement, freeing capital tied up in the building while allowing the business to remain in place.

For occupiers, the structure can create another source of financing. For investors, long leases can produce contractual income with comparatively limited property-level capital requirements.

CBRE IM said Tenet’s portfolio spans more than 65 tenants in multiple industries. The company also estimates that several trillion dollars of operational real estate remains on the balance sheets of middle-market North American companies, while institutions currently own only a small share of that addressable market.

That estimate is CBRE IM’s view of the opportunity, not an independent market forecast. But it explains why the acquisition is being paired with a new investment strategy rather than treated as a one-time portfolio purchase.

The acquisition lands in a growing net-lease market

The timing is notable. CBRE’s own market research shows U.S. net-lease investment volume reached $12.8 billion in the second quarter of 2026, up 13% from a year earlier and equal to 10% of all commercial real estate investment volume. For the 12 months ending in the second quarter, net-lease volume rose 14% to $57 billion.

Industrial properties have been driving much of that activity. CBRE reported $8.1 billion of industrial net-lease investment in the second quarter, a 28% year-over-year increase, with industrial accounting for 63% of total net-lease volume. Retail represented 22% and office 14%.

Pricing has remained relatively steady even with Treasury yields elevated. CBRE put the average net-lease capitalization rate at 6.9% in the second quarter while the average 10-year Treasury yield was 4.5%, leaving a 241-basis-point spread. Those figures do not describe the Tenet portfolio specifically, but they provide important context for why a large institutional manager would want an origination engine capable of sourcing long-duration leases at scale.

A financing story hiding inside a real estate deal

The transaction also reflects the increasingly blurred line between commercial real estate ownership and corporate finance.

Sale-leasebacks can provide companies with liquidity without requiring them to move operations or give up control of facilities that may be critical to manufacturing, distribution or other business functions. That makes the structure especially relevant when conventional borrowing costs are elevated or balance-sheet flexibility is at a premium.

Tenet was built around that market. Cerberus said the company became a national provider of triple-net-lease financing to middle-market companies and financial sponsors after its 2021 launch.

CBRE IM is now adding that origination capability to its own real-assets platform. Akash Shivashankara, a senior portfolio manager at CBRE IM, will lead the new strategy.

What CBRE is really buying

The 208 properties are only one part of the acquisition. Tenet was founded by Cerberus and management in 2021 and built around sourcing and underwriting triple-net-lease financing for middle-market companies and financial sponsors. Cerberus described the business as a national platform with both origination and portfolio-management capabilities.

That infrastructure can be difficult to replicate quickly. Sale-leaseback investing requires a pipeline of corporate relationships, property underwriting and, critically, credit analysis of the operating company that will remain responsible for rent over a long lease term. CBRE IM is therefore acquiring a team and a sourcing channel alongside the existing rent stream.

CBRE IM said the portfolio covers more than 65 tenants across industries and has a weighted average lease term of 16.7 years. The company is making the investment on behalf of several investment strategies and has put senior portfolio manager Akash Shivashankara in charge of the new strategy.

The income profile is central to the thesis

CBRE IM Co-CEO and Chief Investment Officer Adam Gallistel described net lease as a sector capable of producing durable, growing income through long lease terms and relatively low capital requirements.

That is the core investment argument behind the transaction. The portfolio is fully leased, the leases average more than 16 years in remaining term, and the strategy is built around properties occupied by operating businesses rather than short-duration tenancy.

The trade-off is that long leases shift more attention toward tenant credit quality and the durability of the underlying business. A property can be fully leased and still carry risk if a tenant’s financial condition weakens. That is why Tenet’s model combines real estate analysis with credit underwriting.

Where the risk sits in a long-duration lease

Triple-net leases shift taxes, insurance and much of the property operating responsibility to the tenant, which can make the landlord’s cash flows look comparatively simple. They do not eliminate risk. In a 15- or 20-year lease, the tenant’s ability to keep paying can matter as much as the building itself.

That is particularly important in middle-market sale-leasebacks, where the real estate may be highly specialized or essential to a company’s operations. A mission-critical facility can make a lease sticky, but specialized properties can also be harder to release or sell if the tenant fails. The underwriting therefore sits at the intersection of corporate credit and real estate value.

The interest-rate environment adds another consideration. Net-lease investors compare property yields with Treasury rates and other fixed-income alternatives. CBRE’s second-quarter data showed the average cap-rate spread over the 10-year Treasury had narrowed to 241 basis points. Stable cap rates alongside higher Treasury yields can put more pressure on acquisition underwriting and the growth assumptions embedded in new deals.

What the deal says about commercial real estate capital

For commercial real estate professionals, the acquisition is notable because it shows institutional capital continuing to seek structures tied to predictable cash flow even as higher interest rates and uneven property fundamentals complicate other parts of the market.

It also gives CBRE IM another route into transactions that start with a corporate financing need rather than a traditional property sale.

WRE News has been tracking how lenders and real estate investors are expanding capacity in specialized parts of the market, including the recent John Marshall–Bank of Clarke merger, where greater lending capacity was part of the strategic case.

The Tenet transaction is different in structure, but the broader theme is similar: capital providers are looking for scale and platforms that can originate repeat business rather than relying solely on one-off asset purchases.

CBRE IM now owns both the portfolio and the machinery that built it. That makes the $1.6 billion price tag only part of the story.