UNITED STATES - The Florida State Board of Administration's real estate portfolio outperformed all other asset classes in the 12 months leading up to the end of June 2012, delivering a return of 12.8%.
Ash Williams, chief investment officer at the pension fund, attributed the performance to having 85% of the $9.3bn property portfolio invested in core assets.
The weight of capital chasing core properties in the US had led to significant value rises in this part of Florida's real estate portfolio, Williams added.
The pension fund achieved returns in other asset classes of 7.84% for fixed income, 6.83% for private equity, 3.72% for strategic investments, 0.25% for cash and -5.11% for global equity. The investor had an overall return of 0.29% on all of its asset classes combined.
Florida is still allocating capital to real estate, with a view to investing $1bn by the end of the year, most of which is likely to be in non-core real estate due to concerns over current core pricing.
Most recently it committed $100m to Rockpoint Real Estate Fund IV, a global opportunity fund that makes equity and debt investments in the US, Europe and Japan.
The pension fund had invested 7.5% of its $152bn in total assets under management in real estate at the end of June, placing it a little bit above its 7% targeted allocation for the asset class.
