New York State Teachers’ Retirement System (NYSTRS) has hired CBRE Global Investors as a separate account manager for the first time.

The pension fund told IPE Real Estate that it had hired the investment manager for a non-discretionary strategy to invest in core-plus real estate in the US.

NYSTRS said: “There is no set allocation. They were hired as an adviser to source and manage transactions as attractive deals become available.”

The pension fund’s previous investments with CBRE Global Investors were all done through close-ended value-add and opportunistic funds.

NYSTRS has also reduced its real estate debt target allocation from 8% to 7%. The move will enable it to create a 1% private debt allocation.

The pension fund said: “This is a logical rebalancing of the system’s private debt portfolio based on the current yields available in the first-mortgage space.”

NYSTRS has significant room to invest more capital into real estate debt. At the middle of this year, real estate debt accounted for approximately 4.5% of the pension fund’s total portfolio.