US - The Iowa Public Employees Retirement System (IPERS) has approved new commitments to its separate account real estate managers to the tune of $359.2m (€299.4m).
IPERS now works with five separate account managers. These are Clarion Partners, Invesco Realty Advisors, RREEF, TA Associates and UBS Realty Investors.
The pension fund will be awarding a specific allocation to each manager but who will tackle which account has yet to be decided.
IPERS’ senior investment officer Pat Reinhardt said: "The primary factor in this will be based on the portfolio that the adviser currently manages. No one manager can control more than 30% of IPERS’ real estate portfolio. Other factors would be performance and acquisition capacity."
Geographically, the managers will have a national mandate. They will be looking for properties in all the major metropolitan areas.
The majority of the properties that IPERS buys are core assets across the four main property types. But there is some room in the portfolio for value-added transactions. The pension fund goes after the latter type of deal as a way to enhance returns.
IPERS has room for additional real estate within its portfolio. It has a targeted real estate allocation of 8% but to-date has only fulfilled 7% of this. The pension fund had total assets of $19.5bn.
