UNITED STATES - San Joaquin County Employees' Retirement Association is thinking of increasing its exposure to real estate to as much as a tenth of its assets.

Annette St.Urbain, chief executive officer of the $2.15bn (€1.5bn) pension fund, said the San Joaquin pension fund currently has 7.3% allocation but is considering growth to 10% in real estate.

"We have recently found some strong investment opportunities within the asset class that have produced some good results for the pension fund and we would like to keep this momentum going," said St.Urbain.

It has been a while since San Joaquin County last changed its real estate allocation as the existing strategy has been in place since April 2006.

Like other pension funds, it is anticipated new approved allocation will be place in a mixture of value-added or opportunistic commingled funds, having recently committed $35m (€25.6m) to the AMB Institutional Alliance Fund III - an industrial-only commingled fund managed by AMB Property Corp.

It has, similarly, placed $30m in assets with the Greenfield Partners V and $20m to Legacy Partners Realty III value added funds along with $45m into two opportunity funds.