Australian pension funds have dry powder to deploy to real estate

TWO of Australia’s biggest pension funds that together count A$520 billion (S$436 billion) in assets under management (AUM) said they have money they can pump into real estate investments.

“Do we have additional allocation to real estate? Yes, we do... we do have dry powder,” said Mark Lee, senior portfolio manager and head of real estate at Australian Retirement Trust (ART), at the recently concluded Private Equity Real Estate Asia Summit 2025 in Singapore last week.

The company is Australia’s second-largest pension fund and manages A$330 billion in retirement savings, known locally as superannuation. Of that amount, around A$15 billion is invested in real estate.

Lee said that generally, ART’s “dry powder” consists of around A$2 billion on the equity side a year. As for geographical allocation, Australia accounts for about half of ART’s total investment in real estate, while another 35 per cent is in the US, with as much as 7.5 per cent directed to Europe and Asia. ART is close to reaching these targets, he added.

Aware Super, another Australian pension fund with a total AUM of A$190 billion, of which A$12 billion is deployed to property, also said it still has capital to allocate.

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