Farouki Majeed is CIO of the School Employees Retirement System of Ohio. Recently, he answered a few questions from Loretta Clodfelter, senior editor of Institutional Real Estate Americas, about the role real estate plays in the retirement system’s portfolio.

As a CIO, with an entire portfolio to consider, how are you currently looking at the real estate allocation? What role does real estate play in your portfolio, and how has this changed since the financial crisis?

Real estate — aka real assets — is 15 percent of our total fund and, therefore, plays an important role. The primary role of real estate is to provide a steady, consistent income return. Prior to the financial crisis, real estate was viewed more as an asset class that should produce higher returns than most asset classes and, therefore, capital appreciation was more important. With a major restructuring of the real estate portfolio, the income ret