Sacramento County Employees’ Retirement System (SCERS) is planning to extend its exposure to US student housing into Europe.
Steve Davis, chief investment officer for the pension fund, said: “There is a sizeable supply-demand imbalance for student housing in Europe.”
He said eurozone countries countries would be considered alongside the UK.
SCERS made its first real estate debt investment in Europe in 2013 but does not currently have any exposure to student housing in the region.
Davis said the strategies for investing in the property type “could be existing stabilised assets for core commingled funds or transitional assets for value-add funds”.
The target return would be 15-18%.
European student housing has been identified as one of four themes of the pension fund’s 2018 real estate investment plan, alongside cold-storage and manufactured housing in the US, and value-add investments in Japan.
SCERS plans to commit as much as $105m to real estate strategies this year.
This would be in addition to its ongoing efforts to trade $250m of separate-account assets in exchange for a stake in a core real estate fund. SCERS is continuing to work on this with its real estate consultant.
