NORTH AMERICA – Texas Permanent School Fund has approved two new real estate commitments targeting opportunities in Europe.
The commitments are up to $75m (€55.3m) for the Blackstone Real Estate Partners Europe IV and up to £60m (€72m) for the European Property Investors Special Opportunities 3.
The Blackstone Real Estate Advisors, an opportunistic commingled fund investing in distressed real estate, is looking at a total capital raise of $5bn for Europe IV.
The fund will be looking to buy into a variety of deals in the UK and Central Europe, including public to private transactions and corporate and government sale of assets.
Property types under consideration will include hotels, healthcare-related real estate assets and student housing.
EPISO 3 is a commingled fund managed by Tristan Capital Partners.
The projected total capital raise is in the range of $750m.
The limited partners in the fund are projected to achieve a 15% net and 18% gross IRR.
The targeted markets are Germany and Poland, although the fund will consider the UK on a limited basis.
Most assets in the fund will be held for 3-5 years.
Tristan will be buying existing assets it can improve and turn them into institutional-quality properties.
The deals will involve a combination of office, logistics, shopping centres, high street retail and apartments.
In other news, the Ohio Police & Fire Pension fund has approved a commitment of up to $50m into the Exeter Value Fund III.
The pension fund said the projected returns for the fund were a 10% gross unlevered and a 13-14% levered IRR.
Exeter Property Group is aiming for a total equity raise of $675m for Fund III.
The real estate manager raised $350m for Exeter Value Fund II in 2011.
The fund has a two-pronged strategy for investing in industrial properties – it can buy existing large and multi-tenant logistic properties in the US, or develop new properties.
Fund III only invests in properties in the US.
It targets assets located in the main distribution centres throughout the country.
Ohio Police & Fire still has more room in its real estate portfolio for additional commitments.
Its real estate portfolio was valued at more than $1.2bn, as of the end of October, representing nearly 9% of total plan assets.
It has a 12% targeted allocation for the asset class.
