New York State Common Retirement Fund (NYSCRF) has made around $800m (€752m) in new US real estate investments, half of which was issued as a credit facility.

The pension fund said it provided a $400m refinancing loan for 754 Fifth Avenue, a fully-let 237,000sqft retail property in New York City.

NYSCRF declined a request to comment on the terms of the loan.

NYSCRF has added $300m to its existing separate account relationship with Asana Partners. The pension fund first formed a relationship with Asana Partners in 2017, when it committed $300m to target core and core-plus retail and mixed-use properties in urban and near urban walkable neighborhood locations in the US.    

“The Asana platform is led by a very well-tenured team with decades of experience that pre-dates the formation of the Asana platform in 2015 and the CRF believes that the current portfolio reflects the strongest demographic attributes of any mixed-use portfolio of scale that has been assembled in the US,” NYSCRF told IPE Real Assets.

According to the pension fund, the new latest investment will help further diversify the portfolio in specified Sunbelt and Mountain West markets where population demographics are migrating, along with adding scale in current Asana markets by adding bolt-on acquisitions. The new allocation will be targeting a gross internal rate of return of 7% to 10% and a leverage amount of 45% to 50%.   Asana Partners did not respond to a request for comment.

NYSCRF said it has also paid $111.4m to acquire Lowe’s Bulk Distribution Center in Savannah, a newly developed 1.2m sqft industrial asset in Savannah, Georgia. 

The transaction was sourced as part of a separate account with MetLife Investment Management, which declined a request for comment.

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