In recent years, the United States has offered “a relatively benevolent domicile and regulatory environment for private real estate funds,” according to a new report from PERE. A call for transparency around compliance, however, has escalated in recent months amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and investors are leading the charge.
“Managers’ investor relations teams have been having to do monthly calls, or in some cases weekly,” Troy Merkel, RSM partner and senior real estate analyst, tells PERE.
Merkel sat down with John Caruso, managing director and global head of fund finance at Nuveen and Stuart Wood, managing director at Alter Domus, for a roundtable discussion tied to the new report, Fund Domiciles and Regulation. In addition to the regulatory environment, they discuss changes in data security, growing pains around ESG and sustainability tracking, and tax optimization in a post-pandemic world.
Two resounding themes emerge – flexibility and resiliency. Investors and managers cannot be complacent about regulatory compliance in the new normal.