Meketa Investment Group, Kansas Public Employees Retirement System’s (PERS) investment consultant has called on the pension fund to focus more on non-core real estate investment in the interim.

For this year, the pension fund had up to $350m and $110m set aside for core and non-core real estate investments respectively.

Meketa stated in a meeting document that Kansas PERS should consider investing more capital into non-core property funds, a strategy the consultant believes tend to be more focused on particular geographies and property types.

Investing in non-core real estate funds would allow the pension fund to be more selective and be more strategic with its portfolio weightings.

Meketa believes non-core funds also have greater flexibility to acquire assets at attractive/distressed prices.

According to Meketa, the issue with core real estate is that it has exposure to certain property types that have been impacted by the economic uncertainty and will not be able to get out of them anytime soon.

A previous version of this article incorrectly referred to Meketa Investment Group as Kansas Public Employees Retirement System’s real estate consultant. Meketa is the general investment consultant for Kansas Public Employees Retirement System 

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