Nuveen Real Estate raises $660m for US Cities Industrial Fund
Premier global investment manager Nuveen Real Estate has announced that it has raised $660 million to launch its US Cities Industrial Fund.
With over 80 years of real estate investing experience, the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (TIAA)-owned Nuveen Real Estate has $130 billion of assets under management.
The company’s US Cities Industrial Fund is an open-end core real estate investment vehicle that buys and manages institutional-grade industrial properties in select cities across the United States.
The first close mirrors funds generated from a group of institutional backers in Asia-Pacific, Europe as well as North America. This includes a $150 million commitment from TIAA.
Brian Tilton, managing director, portfolio manager of the fund, said, “The U.S. Cities Industrial Fund provides investors with broad-based logistics exposure while strategically concentrating investments in buildings that are closest to consumers and in markets with strong fundamental growth opportunities, together capitalizing on secular demand trends driven by e-commerce and urbanization.”
At the same time as with its first close and consistent with its income-oriented strategy, the fund acquired a $1.3 billion leading edge seed portfolio made up of of 45 well-leased, Class A buildings, which total about 11.4 million square feet and are situated in 12 strategic US logistics markets.
The fund is part of the firm’s Global Resilient Series of core investment, open-end funds that, says the company, seek to make the most of long-term, structural real estate themes and demographic megatrends by making investments in resilient and dynamic cities to realize income, diversification and long-term capital development.
Providing funders with the opportunity to adeptly tailor their center allocations to the four chief US property sectors, namely office, retail, multifamily as well as industrial, the series targets about 35 “tomorrow’s world cities” in the US. The company says that the US cities “have been identified through Nuveen’s proprietary cities to best determine the most ‘future-proofed’ locations that are best positioned to benefit from long-term structural megatrends, including demographic change, urbanization and technology.”
Wendy Pryce, managing director, real estate distribution specialist for Nuveen, stated, “We are experiencing strong interest in our Global Resilient Series of funds, which give investors exposure to global diversified core real estate with flexibility to customize allocations to regions or sectors, such as industrial and multifamily.”
Investing in the industrial sector since 1953, Nuveen Real Estate presently manages about $16.9 billion of logistics investments globally. Its US industrial holdings are now at about $13.2 billion across both equity and debt investments with exposure to 247.2 million square feet in the US.
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