Fiera Real Estate CORE Fund
Investment Approach
The Fiera Real Estate CORE Fund is an open-ended Canadian real-estate investment fund. It offers stable long-term, risk-protected income through a pooled real estate investment strategy, to pension funds, foundations, endowments, family offices and high-net-worth investors. To date, the fund has enjoyed above-average core strategy returns and a growing investor base.
Management Style
This fund focuses on income, capital protection and appreciation. It is designed, first and foremost, to provide investors with a stable and steadily-growing income stream secured by multi-year, fixed-term tenant rental contracts across the Fund’s real estate portfolio.
A portion of the investment allocation for this fund is dedicated to sourcing properties where value can be added through renovations, expansions, leasing, development or other forms of property enhancement to increase rental rates and underlying capital value. The objective is to create high-quality assets from a lower cost-base, to produce above-average yields that can be held in the fund for the long-term.
Key Principles
- Quarterly income distribution
- Underlying capital appreciation and low return volatility
- Strategically diversified portfolio of high-quality properties in urban centres across Canada
- Regional and product diversification mitigates risk and maximizes investor returns
The Fiera Real Estate CORE Fund is an open fund, offering a long-term investment vehicle with a liquidity option for investors on a quarterly basis. Each quarter, the fund is also opened for inflows of capital from existing or new investors. These inflows are invested in additional real estate assets to grow and diversify the existing investment portfolio.
Every year, Fiera Real Estate’ teams seek out and analyze billions of dollars worth of investment prospects, leveraging an extensive network of long-standing industry relationships across Canada. These privileged relationships, built on our carefully-guarded reputation as experienced, responsive and trustworthy real estate experts, enable us to uncover unique opportunities to source exceptional off-market properties. Thanks to our superior market intelligence, we are able to deploy investors’ capital in a timely manner with the objective of consistently delivering top-quartile returns.
In addition to owner-partner financial commitments, 100% of Fiera Real Estate’ employees are personally invested in the CORE Fund — the entire team’s interests are vested and aligned with those of our investors, in pursuit of top performance and returns.
Thorough research and analytics, together with a disciplined and auditable investment- management process, underpin our Fiera Real Estate CORE Fund platform.
The fund is governed by a written Investment Policy and compliance is certified to our investors on a quarterly basis. An Investor Advisory Committee acts as the fund’s governance body. Every property acquisition must be approved by an Investment Committee composed of real estate investment industry executives, who review the financial analysis and due diligence for each transaction. Fund unit valuations are based on quarterly, independent, external appraisals.
The formal due-diligence process commences once a property is under contract. The objective is to validate the underwriting and market assumptions upon which the investment strategy has been based. Among the many steps included in the process are:
- A thorough and detailed review of all property leases
- A physical property report and inspection
- Tenant interviews and credit checks
- A full review of historic operating statements
- Environmental and physical reviews by third parties
- An independent legal review of title, zoning and off-title issues
A transaction only proceeds to closing once the entire investment strategy has been tested, and passes, on every level of analysis.
Fiera Real Estate outsources day-to-day property management to specialized, third-party managers, and closely monitors their performance. We believe that in-house property management is a distraction from our focus on investment management. Moreover, not having an operating unit geared toward an array of service fees is consistent with our ethos of transparency and alignment with investors’ interests.
It is important to note that the fund operates with a low-debt (mortgage) policy, reducing investors’ risk exposure to fluctuations in interest rates and market pricing.
The Fiera Real Estate CORE Fund is another example of how our team’s 20-year track record of success provides institutions and private investors with innovative products that best serve their investment strategies.