Starwood Capital Group

What does Starwood Capital Group own?
The firm manages investments rather than owning a static portfolio. Its vehicles hold or have held hundreds of thousands of apartments, thousands of hotels, and tens of millions of square feet of office, industrial, and retail property. It sponsors SREIT, advises Starwood Property Trust, and operates platforms including 1 Hotels and, through a consortium, ESR Group.

Is Starwood Capital Group publicly traded?
No. Starwood Capital is privately held and controlled by founder Barry Sternlicht. Related vehicles such as Starwood Property Trust (NYSE: STWD) are publicly traded.

Who founded Starwood Capital Group?
Barry Sternlicht founded the firm in 1991 in Greenwich, Connecticut. Robert Faith co-founded it and departed in 1993 to establish Greystar Real Estate Partners.

Where is Starwood Capital Group headquartered?
The firm is headquartered in Miami Beach, Florida, after relocating from Greenwich, Connecticut. It maintains approximately 20 offices across nine countries.

How much does Starwood Capital manage?
The firm reports over $130 billion in assets under management. Since inception it has raised more than $95 billion of equity capital and invested over $285 billion of assets.

Who owns Starwood Capital Group?
Barry Sternlicht is the principal owner and controlling figure. The firm is privately held with no public shareholders.

What is SREIT's relationship to Starwood Capital?
Starwood Real Estate Income Trust is a non-traded REIT sponsored by Starwood Capital Group Holdings and externally advised by a Starwood affiliate. Starwood earns advisory and incentive fees; the REIT's shareholders own the underlying real estate portfolio.

Barry Sternlicht founded Starwood Capital in 1991 during the savings and loan crisis. Working from Greenwich, Connecticut, he raised capital to buy distressed real estate and real estate debt from the Resolution Trust Corporation at deep discounts. The timing was ideal: distressed supply was enormous and competition was thin.

Through the 1990s, Starwood recycled profits from distressed buying into operating businesses. In 1995, the firm acquired Hotel Investors Trust and Westin Hotels, creating the foundation of what became Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide. Under Sternlicht, Starwood Hotels launched the W brand and acquired Sheraton and Westin outright, becoming one of the largest hotel companies in the world before Marriott purchased it for approximately $13.6 billion in 2016.

The firm built its flagship opportunity fund series in parallel. Starwood Opportunity Funds buy undervalued or mismanaged properties globally, improve them, and sell into strength. Thirteen flagship funds have been raised to date; Starwood Distressed Opportunity Fund XIII closed in 2026 with roughly $10.2 billion in commitments, showing the franchise's continued fundraising power.

Starwood diversified into real estate credit as well. In 2009 the firm launched Starwood Property Trust, now one of the largest commercial mortgage REITs listed in the United States, externally managed by a Starwood affiliate. In Europe, the firm created dedicated real estate finance vehicles, closing roughly $2.7 billion across debt strategies in 2025.

In 2017, Starwood entered the non-traded REIT market, sponsoring Starwood Real Estate Income Trust following Blackstone's successful BREIT model. SREIT grew to become one of the largest non-traded REITs, though heavy redemption requests in 2023 and 2024 forced the firm to cap repurchases under the vehicle's quarterly limits, reducing NAV from a peak above $10 billion to approximately $7.9 billion by late 2026.

Recent years brought continued geographic expansion. In 2025, the firm received approval to open an office in Dubai to pursue Gulf-region investing, and Starwood-led consortia completed major transactions including the take-private of ESR Group, an Asia-Pacific logistics and data center owner. Sternlicht, with a Forbes-estimated net worth around $3 billion as of 2026, remains the face of the firm.

The dominant controversy in recent years involves SREIT's redemption limits. When redemption requests exceeded quarterly caps in 2023 and 2024, Starwood limited payouts under the vehicle's disclosed repurchase plan, drawing criticism from investors who treated the product as more liquid than it is. Starwood executives publicly defended the limits as necessary to protect remaining shareholders, and the restrictions operate within SEC-disclosed terms. Investor plaintiffs' firms have investigated claims related to non-traded REIT share pricing and liquidity disclosures, as they have for BREIT and other funds in the category.