AP-fondernas investeringsstrategier i fastigheter

Sammanfattning: Since 2010 the first, second, third and fourth Swedish public pension funds (AP-funds)have drastically increased their exposure towards real estate. The AP-funds have done this through starting and acquiring private property companies. With these companies,the funds have gradually increased their real estate assets. This study aims to identify the four AP-funds investment strategies in real estate by answering a number of research questions. One question was to find the underlying driving forces behind the increase in real estate allocations. Also, the reason why all four funds implemented this strategy by primarily investing through privately owned real estate companies were sought. The study also aims to show how the funds´ investment strategies in real estate differ from one another and what similarities they have. The AP-funds were studied through interviews with real estate fund managers at every fund. The research questions were also answered on the basis of the four AP-funds’ annual reports from 2010 to 2020, market reports on the development of the Swedish real estate market and theoretic concepts regarding properties as an investment object. The results from the study were that the AP-funds’ increase in allocation towards real estate can be derived from the financial crisis in 2008. The market conditions during this period gave opportunities for institutional investors, that still had access to capital, to acquire properties that had experienced a fall in price. There were also indications that the funds had an ambition to expand the asset class prior to this, but that the financial crisis provided the opportunity to realize it. Since 2008, the Swedish real estate market has seen a significant growth in values. Combined with falling interest rates this has resulted in favorable conditions to continue the expansion of the funds’real estate portfolios. Finally, the regulations in Lagen om AP-fonderna have favored diversification through investing in real estate. The AP-funds have chosen to invest in real estate through privately owned companies since this has given them greater influence over the companies’ assets and the choice of co-investors. In many cases this has also been a more cost-effective form of investment than investing through funds, since there is a closer link between the APfunds and the cash flows from the underlying real estates. Finally owning companies directly matches the AP-funds’ long term investment horizons. The AP-funds real estate strategies are in many ways similar since they all have the same goal and abide under the same regulations. The most prominent similarities are that they all primarily invest in real estate via privately owned companies and that most of them are focused on the Swedish property market. AP2 differ from the rest since almost half of their real estate is located outside of Sweden. Further on, the spread in real estate sectors is another difference between the funds. AP3 and AP1 have a wide spread between sectors while AP2 is dominated by office properties. Except their office holdings via the mutually owned Vasakronan, AP4 is focused on public and residential real estate. Furthermore, the study also investigated how the diversification effects differ between directly held properties and indirect real estate assets. This was preformed through a quantitative analysis of the development of market indices of public Swedish property companies and the Swedish direct property market. These were compared with each other and with a market portfolio via an econometric method, to investigate if there was a possible covariation. The result was that listed real estate shares had a far higher return and volatility than the direct real estate index. This despite that the direct real estate index was converted to reflect return on equity. Real estate shares also had a strong correlation with the market portfolio which direct properties lacked. There was a weak correlation between direct and listed properties. However, the data over returns from the direct real estate market was clearly inadequate. This means that it is not possible to draw any definitive conclusions about the difference in diversification effect.