Global investment giant KKR has promoted a managing director to a newly created role as the chief investment officer of a fund that invests in private real estate at a time when higher interest rates have seized lending and other market activity.

Julia Butler will oversee investment management of KKR Real Estate Select Trust, or Krest, which makes private real estate equity and credit investments, the New York-based investment firm said in a statement.

A senior leader of KKR’s real estate business with two decades of experience as both an equity and credit investor, Butler has “played an integral role” in expanding KKR’s real estate business to over $65 billion in assets under management, Krest Chairman and Global Head of KKR Real Estate Ralph Rosenberg said in the statement.

Krest is just one of KKR’s real estate funds. KKR Real Estate Partners Americas, for instance, targets “opportunistic” real estate investments primarily in the United States while KKR Real Estate Finance Trust focuses on originating senior commercial mortgage loans, KKR said on its website.

Real estate has been a part of the investment firm’s strategy since 1981 before KKR in 2011 formed a dedicated real estate platform.

Krest has a net asset value of about $1.5 billion as of April 30, a KKR spokesperson told CoStar News.

"We believe we are entering a once-a-decade real estate investing environment with the debt capital markets pullback creating potential attractive new investment opportunities for” Krest, said Krest Chief Executive and Chief Operating Officer of KKR Global Real Estate Billy Butcher in the statement.

Prior to joining KKR in 2017, Butler was an executive vice president at publicly traded real estate investment trust iStar where she was responsible for sourcing, managing and executing on new investment opportunities in the United States and Europe, KKR said.

There are “significant opportunities on the horizon for private real estate investors with a long-term outlook,” Butler said in the statement.