The Blackstone Group, which has an office in Boston, reported strong earnings in the second quarter, propped up by a massive national real estate portfolio that has improved as the commercial property market has bounced back.

The firm posted a profit of $703 million on revenue of $1.3 billion, compared to a loss of $193 million during the same time last year.

The majority of Blackstone’s businesses continued to grow as the outlook for private equity brightened, according to the earnings report. The value of the company’s holdings increased 9 percent, with the firm seeing a boost from the public offerings of two portfolio companies, Kosmos and Vanguard. Revenue for the division increased to $399.4 million from $83.9 million in the period a year earlier.

Blackstone, a major commercial real estate locally and nationally, most recently finalized the purchase of Burlington Square, an 82,000-square-foot strip mall in Burlington when it acquired the U.S. holdings of shopping mall operator Centro. That acquisition helped the real estate group record revenue of $648.5 million for the quarter, up from $208.5 million in the period a year prior. Even so, the advisory business Blackstone operates is lagging. Revenue for the division fell to $104.4 million from $135.6 million during the same time the year before. 

"The carrying values of our investment funds continued to increase, and we once again reported our best quarterly earnings since becoming a public company four years ago," Stephen A. Schwarzman, chief executive of Blackstone, said in a statement. "We experienced inflows across all of our businesses as we captured share and deepened relationships with our limited partner investors. We ended the quarter with record total assets under management of $159 billion, up from $111 billion during the same period last year."