Blackstone execs have made clear in recent months that they see the commercial real estate market bottoming and are on the hunt for good opportunities. The latest was chief operating officer Jonathan Gray, who said at the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference earlier this week that CRE is showing "early signs of recovery" as market activity continues to pick up. "Now, I'm not saying this is some sort of sharp V-shaped recovery, but as you get to this bottoming period, what you want to do is try to deploy capital into this," he said, according to a transcript from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

He added that new supply has been coming down "dramatically," while the cost of capital is starting to fall.

However, "the market is going to be, I'm sure, for another, some period of time, very negative on real estate, and that's just the way these cycles tend to work," he said.