The Teachers' Mutual Aid Cooperative Society will invest as much as ¥6 billion in real estate investment trusts mainly abroad this fiscal year after REITs at home became expensive.

The pension fund, with about ¥600 billion in assets, invested ¥5 billion in Japanese REITs in the fiscal year that ended March 31 and doesn't plan to increase allocations for now after they surged in value, said Toru Higuchi, a general manager in the society's asset management department.

The 39-member Tokyo Stock Exchange REIT Index has surged 44 percent this year on the back of the government's plan to end decades of economic stagnation and deflation, even as a recovery in rents has trailed.