UBS Asset Management’s $22.7bn (€20.2bn) core US real estate fund plans to be a net seller this year, earmarking $2bn of assets to be offloaded, according to an investor.
A board meeting report from the Ventura County Employees’ Retirement System (VCERA) shows that the UBS Trumbull Property Fund plans to sell $2bn of assets in 2019 and acquire $750m.
Dan Gallagher, CIO for VCERA, said the sale and acquisition plans were based on UBS Asset Management’s “view of the market” as stated during a board meeting with the pension fund.
According to the board meeting report, UBS Asset Management plans to sell hotel assets, which make up 3% of the portfolio, and acquire apartments and industrial and logistics assets.
The UBS Trumbull Property Fund was known to have built up $1.27bn of redemption requests at the end of September 2018, according to a board meeting report from the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation Board, but the size of its current redemption queue has not been disclosed.
Gallagher said “the issue of the commingled fund’s exit queue was not mentioned during the meeting”.
UBS Asset Management did not respond to a request for comment.
Capital flows into open-ended core US real estate funds stabilised in 2018, after redemptions outweighed subscriptions among funds in the NFI-ODCE index. In 2018, $18.4bn flowed into US core funds and $17.4bn exited, resulting in a net inflow of $918m, according to NCREIF, a reversal of 2017’s net outflow of $1.1bn.
