NORTH AMERICA – The California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) has hired Pacific Urban Residential for a new separate account relationship for apartments in the US. 

The initial allocation for the relationship is $200m (€147.5m.)

Ted Eliopoulos, acting CIO at the pension fund, said: “With years of experience in the multifamily space, Pacific Urban Residential is a natural for our programme. 

“We’re excited to work with them as we identify and acquire multifamily assets with both strong returns and the potential for future appreciation.”

The separate account will focus on the investment of B-quality apartments. 

This will be the first time CalPERS has had a separate account that invests in these kinds of apartments. 

All of its previous apartment separate accounts targeted A-quality assets.  
CalPERS will be the majority owner of any assets in the partnership, dubbed Pacific Multifamily Investors.

The fund’s strategy will be to buy apartments located in the West of the US.

Pacific Urban has full investment discretion on the separate account, which means it can make final decisions without pension fund approval.

Pacific Multifamily Investors is a planned multi-year investment programme for CalPERS. 

The pension fund will look to allocate capital to the partnership on an annual basis, depending on the success of the manager placing the initial capital in the market.

CalPERS currently holds $2.5bn of apartments in its real estate portfolio. 

Eliopoulos said adding another partner to the programme to bring in high-quality apartment assets would “enhance” the overall risk/return profile for the CalPERS investment portfolio.