UNITED STATES - New York State Teachers Retirement System is thinking of withdrawing $225m (€153m) from two US core open-ended commingled funds.

It is a rare occurrence for a pension fund in the United States to pursue this strategy as most pension funds and their real estate consultants are long-term players when it comes to investing capital in core open-ended commingled funds.

However, pension fund officials discussed the prospect of pulling assets out of the UBS Real Estate Separate Account (RESA) and Prudential Property Investment Separate Account (PRISA) at its November 2 board meeting.

NYSTRS believes the two commingled funds have posted significant gains for the pension fund and think this would be a good time to book some of the profits.

That said, the pension fund has yet not made any decisions as to where it will reinvest the capital - which is expected to be up to $150m from RESA and as much as $75m from PRISA.

NYSTRS first invested in both commingled funds in 1985 with an initial commitment of $75m to each fund, and a further $50m each in 1997.

NYSTRS now places the value of its investments in the commingled funds at $470m for RESA and $395.5m for PRISA.

Both funds only invest in US property assets of office, industrial, retail and apartments.  One of the exceptions to this rule is that PRISA does have some self storage assets in its portfolio.

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