The California State Teachers Retirement System is making $5B in new investments in commercial real estate. The pension fund's new investments will be spread across 15 commitments in real estate sectors including rental housing, industrial and REITs.

CalSTRS will put $682M, its largest new commitment, into an account that BlackRock will manage, IPE Real Assets reported. All of the capital will be invested in residential rentals, and CalSTRS would have control over the acquisitions and dispositions.

The pension fund also committed $500M each to capital to be invested into REITs and a new separate account targeting core industrial assets that CBRE Investment Management will manage.

An existing partnership with CBRE, CBCal, was also awarded $368M to be invested in offices on an opportunistic basis. CalSTRS also allotted $451M in new commitments to another existing account with CBRE that will similarly invest in offices.

Last year, pension funds were sellers in a number of high-profile office deals. CalSTRS notes in a midyear report that while vacancy has likely peaked, it expects premium office properties in the best submarkets to outperform.

The pension fund will also put $300M into an existing joint venture, FidCal, targeting retail investments. Another $350M will go into a partnership with Starwood CMA structured as a commingled fund, a joint venture and co-investment capital that can be spent on a variety of property types across risk spectrums.

These new commitments were announced alongside $584M in dispositions the pension fund made in the first half of the year. Those sales were of core and opportunistic assets, many of them industrial properties and land sales, across the country as well as in Canada and Japan.

Pension funds are often among the top buyers of real estate, and CalSTRS is no exception. In 2025, it spent $1.5B on assets, Bisnow previously reported.

The world's largest educator-only pension fund, CalSTRS' real estate portfolio has a net asset value of $49.3B as of the middle of this year.