UNITED STATES - Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund has decided not to make a specific allocation to real estate over the next 12 months, but officials have not ruled out purchases should opportunities surface.

Brad Child, senior investment officer for real estate for Oregon, said: "We will be considering some investment opportunities as they are presented to us from our investment managers. We do have the capability of investing capital above our targeted allocation for real estate."

Oregon PERF has now invested $4.8bn (€3.4bn) in real estate to the end of June 2009, which equates to 10.8% of its $44.5bn in total plan assets.

The pension fund has an 11% targeted allocation to real estate, with a range of +/- 5%.

Oregon PERF's last real estate move was made in May when it allocated $300m to REITs.

Pension fund officials felt it was necessary to maintain its REIT portfolio and aim for a targeted allocation of 20% of its real estate portfolio.

"We had seen the value of our REIT portfolio drop to a level where it ended up being below our 20% allocation for REITs," said Child. "There was some rebalancing of our real estate portfolio to be taken care of and we think that REITs will be part of the early improvements in the marketplace as they now have more access to capital than private real estate companies do, and we could be part of this," he added.

Oregon PERF is splitting this new allocation between its existing REIT managers: LaSalle Investment Management, Cohen & Steers, Woodbourne, European Investors, Morgan Stanley and Presima.

The pension fund had placed the fair market value of its REIT portfolio at $402.8m to the end of March 2009.

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