New York State Common Retirement Fund (NYSCRF) has backed Cortland’s latest value-add US apartment fund with a $300m (€276.4m) commitment.

The $268.3bn pension fund said it has placed the capital into Cortland Enhanced Value Fund VI.

Cortland is seeking to raise $1bn and a hard cap of $1.5bn for the new fund. The manager’s previous fund in the series, which had a final close in May 2021, raised $650m in total. NYSCRF made a $150m commitment to the Cortland Enhanced Value Fund V in 2020.

NYSCRF said Cortland has ”demonstrated an end-to-end business model with a highly internalised approach to delivering the best-in-class community and resident experience, strong relationships with both buyers and sellers of apartment properties in the fund’s target markets and strong historical investment performance”.

Fund VI mainly targets assets located in the Southeast and Southwest regions of the US. The fund expects to generate net internal rate of returns of 12% to 13% and gross returns of 14% to 17%, according to NYSCRF.

The pension fund has also placed a $15m commitment into the NW1 NE IOS fund as part of its emerging manager programme for real estate.

NW1 Partners is seeking to raise $250m for NW1 NE IOS to invest in industrial outdoor storage assets in the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden.

NYSCRF said it also acquired the 240-unit Mountain Park apartment complex in Phoenix, Arizona for $70.6m through its existing separate account with LaSalle Investment Management.

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