• Pension funds and endowments struggle to match liabilities and obligations.  Institutional investors, in particular, do not care about the highest return per se, but want assurance that they can meet their financial obligations.  This is particularly true for retirees as well as many institutional investors such as pension funds and endowments. This functional need is dominating internal conversations at investors that are working to meet long term obligations. Bond funds, a traditional source of cash flows for asset & liability matching, clearly struggle to offer critical returns in low or near-zero interest rate environments. Alternatively, commercial and multi-family real estate funds, which provide a blend of annual dividend-like payments and opportunity for appreciation at exit, have also become a popular investment for liability matching.