New York State Common Retirement Fund (NYSCRF) is planning to hire a new real estate investment consultant.

The $268.3bn (€249bn) pension fund has issued a request for proposal (RFP) for an investment consultant with the responsibility of recommending new commitments for NYSCRF’s $23bn real estate portfolio.

Real estate represents 8.4% of the pension fund’s total plan assets compared with a 9% allocation target for the asset class.

According to the RFP, interested firms are required to have a minimum of five years of experience providing commercial real estate consulting services to at least three institutional investors.

The consultant must also have clients with aggregate real estate investments of at least $3bn. The firm’s clients must include at least one US public pension fund with over $25bn in total assets under management.

Interested firms need to send in their proposals by 8 May. NYSCRF expects to make a final decision in September for the new consultant to begin in December this year.

According to people familiar with the matter, the pension’s current real estate consultant is Townsend Group. NYSCRF did not respond to a request to confirm its current consultant.

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