This is not Bentall Kennedy's first rodeo when it comes to fund ownership. CalPERS purchased its stake from Ivanhoe Cambridge, the real estate subsidiary of another big pension fund, Canada's Caisse de dépot et Placement du Québec. Caisse sold its interest as part of a new initiative to bring its real estate advisory services in house. The remaining two-thirds of the company is now split evenly by yet another major pension fund, British Columbia Investment Management, and the Bentall Kennedy senior management team.

What's also interesting is that Bentall Kennedy earned the top spot on the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark Foundation's ranking of fund managers in the Americas. The Foundation's report measures the social and environmental performance of listed and private property funds and is based on a survey of 340 of the world's largest.

That kind of pedigree means something to a socially minded entity like CalPERS. The deal for Bentall Kennedy was initially touted by CalPERS as evidence that it aligns with like-minded firms when it comes to sustainability and corporate governance. "This relationship will allow our real estate team to further expand on trends and opportunities in real estate investment and management," noted Rob Feckner, president of the CalPERS Board of Administration.

All of this is a good thing for the entire commercial real estate industry, and here's why. The deal gives the largest public institutional player in the US a deeper investment in understanding real estate as an asset class and a unique insider view of the industry's dynamics. And now, other pension funds, and the entire institutional investment spectrum, have been given the green light to partner up with outside investment advisors.

While it's true that only a handful of funds have the same capital firepower, you can be sure that every institution must now consider, at the very least, creating strategic alliances with advisors. After all, advisors were hammered during the last economic recession right along with their institutional clients. Today, their fees—and results—are under enormous pressure, and more institutions are finding new ways to bring their real estate investment expertise back in house where they can better control efficiencies, timing and costs.

Pension funds themselves must make some radical moves to remain solvent, considering the pressure to maintain their stilllofty investment-return targets. For example, the CalPERS investment in Bentall Kennedy came only one month after its Sacramento-based cross-town rival, the California State Teachers' Retirement System, purchased multifamily property developer LCOR for $820 million in May 2012.

A new study by researcher Preqin also noted that some 80% of the 472 institutional investors it surveyed are either handling their own real estate investing or considering the move. These include some of the largest investors around, like the $32-billion Harvard University endowment, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and the Canada Pension Plan. In other words, green light means go.