ASIA-PACIFIC - Franklin Templeton Real Estate Advisors (FTREA) has identified a new generation of local real estate managers in Asia Pacific, which the fund of funds manager is currently assessing for its second vehicle targeting the region.

Glenn Uren, managing director at FTREA, said he was "devoting significant time to uncovering" investment opportunities arising from a "new crop of local emerging managers".

FTREA, the global real estate investment arm of Franklin Templeton Investments, has announced it is launching its second Franklin Templeton Asian Real Estate Fund.

The first vehicle launched $383m from investors across Europe and Australia and is currently invested in 10 private real estate funds across the Asia-Pacific region.

The second fund will again be a closed-ended vehicle investing in non-listed real estate funds across the Asia-Pacific, and is tailored to European and Asia-Pacific-based investors.

Uren said he was seeing increased interest from both institutional investors looking to maintain their allocation weighting to the region and to gain exposure to the region for the first time.

"Asia is never an easy place to invest, as there are potential slip-ups for inexperienced investors everywhere, so our multi-manager fund provides an easy and effective means to do so," he said.

"For the newer investors, they are wondering how to get invested in Asian private real estate, whether through closed or open-ended funds, co-investments, secondaries, etc. Our fund will consider all these opportunities for them."

Franklin Templeton believes the fund will offer attractive opportunities for diversification and the potential for attractive risk-adjusted returns as it seeks to identify specialist managers and will take advantage of inefficiencies and recent distress in local property markets.

Uren said now was a good time to launch a new vehicle, because he was seeing "a number of attractive investment opportunities" across the region.

"Obviously the markets have recovered. There will be challenges along the way, but macroeconomic data across the region, particularly in Greater China, has shown significant concrete improvement," he said.

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