Harrison Street signs on for interval-fund auction liquidity

Harrison Street Asset Management has joined Nasdaq Fund Secondaries and LODAS Markets to build an auction environment that would let interval-fund investors sell interests between scheduled repurchase windows. If the mechanism prices the way its architects expect, the semi-liquid real asset fund becomes a different kind of product for wealth advisers, one whose exit moves beyond the manager's timetable.

IREI first reported the collaboration, under which auctions would run through Nasdaq Fund Secondaries and the alternative trading system operated by its affiliate NFSTX LLC, subject to regulatory requirements. Harrison Street, through an affiliated investment adviser, would be the first investment manager to authorize transfers of interval-fund interests in the auction process, which the firms describe as a managed transaction environment intended to address liquidity challenges across the semi-liquid fund ecosystem.

Interval funds are a regulated structure that give investors access to private markets and other alternative strategies, with repurchases offered only at periodic windows—a trade the name semi-liquid describes precisely, since the fund is not open-ended and the investor cannot redeem whenever the mood strikes. Outside the repurchase calendar, the practical options for an adviser are limited: selling another asset changes the portfolio, borrowing against a private-markets position is operationally heavy, and waiting can mean selling into a drawdown. An auction gives the adviser a path tied to the value of the private assets themselves rather than to whatever else the client owns.

The collaboration creates a second path: a periodic auction process, operated through Nasdaq's private-market technology, would give holders a way to transact independently of the fund's own repurchase schedule, and the firms are careful to say the auction would complement the interval-fund structure rather than replace it.

Nasdaq Fund Secondaries brings the institutional workflow layer, and the firms say the auctions would leverage its experience operating technology for private funds and supporting institutional transaction workflows—experience that matters because interval-fund interests are not listed securities but positions in a regulated pool whose transfer mechanics have to satisfy both the manager and the platform. LODAS Markets and Harrison Street complete the trio.

For Harrison Street, the move adds a liquidity mechanism to a platform built on institutional real assets, and the firm has shown a willingness to rotate real asset holdings across borders—most recently selling a Dublin student-housing asset to Commerz Real in a market where, as PWD wrote, student housing has become a priced, cross-border institutional market. The interval-fund work attacks a different bottleneck: the ability to exit between tender windows.

The design is deliberately modest: a periodic auction is not a live secondary market, and the whole project is conditioned on regulatory requirements—caution that is appropriate, since semi-liquid structures exist because managers want long-dated capital and a true continuous market would unwind the strategy of holding real assets through cycles. The trick is to create an exit that does not turn into a run, and a periodic auction is a plausible answer.

The test is pricing: if an auction clears at a discount to the fund's net asset value, it will function as a distress mechanism, and advisers should read it as one; if it clears near published NAV, the mechanism effectively stretches the holding period a wealth client can commit to. Nothing in the announcement settles which outcome is likelier—the structure creates the venue, investors will decide the price.

The timing tracks a broader push into the wealth channel: the firms cite growing demand for liquidity within interval-fund structures, and the desire for private-market exposure among financial advisers is not the issue—the exit is. Harrison Street's willingness to be the first manager through the auction door gives the category a live test of whether a second market can work.

Should the first auction clear, the number to watch is the gap between its price and the fund's latest published NAV. A narrow spread tells advisers the mechanism has legs; a wide spread tells them the auction is a feature for the offering document—and that spread will decide whether the collaboration becomes infrastructure or a footnote.