NORTH AMERICA – The Ohio Public Employees Retirement System (Ohio PERS) has placed an additional $210m (€152m) of real estate into its investment portfolio over the second quarter.

All of the capital was invested by the pension fund’s separate account real estate managers. 

The investment strategies included a combination of debt and equity in a variety of property types including apartments and retail.

The managers involved in the transactions were Emmes, Faison, Heitman, PCCP, UBS Realty Investors, Sarofim Realty Advisors, Waterfall and Landmark Partners.

Ohio PERS still has an additional $956m allocated for investment by it separate account managers as part of the pension fund’s 2013 annual plan. 

This capital can be used for asset repositioning, development and acquisition activities.

The pension fund does not anticipate its investment staff will make any additional commitments to closed-end or open-ended funds for the rest of 2013. 

However, it may consider re-up opportunities with select opportunistic closed-end fund managers if it believes Ohio PERS has the capacity for additional non-core investments.

In other news, the Texas Permanent School Fund has approved a commitment of up to $100m into the Prime Property Fund.

This is a core, open-ended commingled fund managed by Morgan Stanley Real Estate Advisor

The fund invests in a mixture of office, industrial, retail and apartments in the US.

Texas Permanent made the decision to invest capital into the Prime Property based on the recommendation of its real estate consultant, Courtland Partners.

The pension fund has now nearly reached its $250m allocation for calendar year 2013 for core open-ended commingled funds. 

It had planned a total of $460m of real estate commitments for the year. 

The balance was $110m for value-added and $100m for opportunistic, closed-end commingled funds.