CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA—The year just past left more than a few commercial real-estate records in the dust, including merger and acquisition activity. SNL Financial says 2015 established a new high-watermark (34) for the number of M&A deals announced in real estate, although the dollar volume of SNL-covered deals came in second to 2007's $113.6 billion.

The 34 M&A deals SNL reported for calendar '15 compares to 26 in '07 and is more than twice the 16 registered in 2014. Dollar volume was $79.3 billion, not including five deals in which the dollar value wasn't disclosed. That compares to $42.3 billion for all of '14; in fact, the fourth quarter of '15 alone surpassed all four quarters of the year prior.

A key player in '07's entity-level acquisitions was the Blackstone Group, and the asset management giant was active once again in '15. Blackstone's $8-billion takeover of BioMed Realty Trust represented the largest REIT privatization announced last year; together with Blackstone's two other takeouts, it represented 20% of the total SNL-covered real estate deal value in '15. The other two were Blackstone's $2-billion privatization of shopping center REIT Excel Trust Inc., and its $6-billion acquisition of Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc.