REAL ESTATE - The New Jersey Division of Investment has approved a $100m(€77m) commitment into the Blackstone Real Estate Partners VI. The pension fund approved this investment at its board meeting on January 18.

The pension fund will put the investment in the fund into the tactical portfolio of its real estate assets. The real estate manager on the fund is Blackstone Real Estate Group. The company is targeting an $8bn capital raise for its latest investment fund.

Blackstone has an investment strategy that looks to invest in real estate that needs improving. These would be assets that have flaws, to improve the properties and sell all of them to the capital looking for core assets.

The transactions for the fund will include a mixture of deals in the US and internationally. Some would be public to private transactions. An example of this was the offer that was made for the acquisition for Equity Office Properties. There is a total of $6.2bn of equity in the deal. Part of the funding for this deal could come from Real Estate Partners VI.

A variety of property types will be considered for the commingled fund. These would be office buildings in recovering markets, hotel repositionings and international investments.

New Jersey is expecting that it will invest $1.8bn in real estate for the 2007 fiscal year. It had originally planned to invest $1.1bn for the year. The increase has come about to take advantage of some investment opportunities in the real estate market.

So far the total commitments for real estate for fiscal ’07 are at $1.3bn. These commitments have been put into the strategic portfolio and the tactical portfolio. Some of the investment funds have included a global and international strategy.

New Jersey will continue to be a buyer of enhanced core assets. The pension fund will still go after relationships with value-added and opportunistic partners to take advantage of dislocations in pricing in various areas from development to redevelopment of traditional assets to non-core strategies.