Washing the Truck With Chelsea
Chelsea and I were washing the truck Saturday.
It turned into something close to couples therapy. Soap, water, two people who've been married fourteen years, and a 2017 diesel with almost 200,000 miles on it.
Somewhere between the soap and the rinse, I caught myself thinking about why I never upgrade. Why I probably never will.
It always starts. It always pulls what I need. It always has room to haul away the trash at family gatherings and Saturday cleanup days.
That truck is like the asset class I've spent fourteen years operating in. Versatile. Long-lasting. Tough. Resilient in any climate, any cycle, any market. The one that just works, almost every time, when you give it fuel and don't try to drive it like a sports car.
For most of American history, the largest pool of retirement capital in the country has not been allowed to buy that truck.
That changed on March 30.
There is a comment period open right now that almost no operator I know is reading. It closes June 1, 2026. That gives you roughly two weeks.
The Department of Labor's proposed safe harbor rule, released March 30, 2026 (Federal Register, RIN 1210–AC38; Gibson Dunn client alert, April 1, 2026), is the door cracking open. The proposal implements Section 3(c) of Executive Order 14330, "Democratizing Access to Alternative Assets for 401(k) Investors," signed in August 2025. The DOL itself frames the goal as expanding retirement savers' access to alternative assets — private equity, real estate, infrastructure — alongside the mutual funds and index funds that dominate 401(k) menus today.
The headline-level dollar figures coming from industry analysts are very large — hundreds of billions over time, across millions of participants. But that is not a 2026 number. It is a 2027 and 2028 number, maybe later. The operators who will be eligible to receive it are being selected right now, by the structures they build, the reporting cadence they adopt, and the investor relations systems they put in place over the next 24 months.
Most operators won't be ready.
Not because they can't be. Because they aren't paying attention.
TL;DR
The DOL's proposed safe harbor rule opens a path for 401(k) plans to allocate to private real estate inside their qualified default investment alternatives. Comments close June 1, 2026; final rule possible by late 2026 (Gibson Dunn, April 1, 2026). The operators who receive that capital in 2027 and 2028 are the ones building product structure, valuation governance, and investor relations systems now. This is a near-term positioning event, not a 2030 conversation.
I. What The Rule Actually Does
The proposed rule — formally titled "Fiduciary Duties in Selecting Designated Investment Alternatives" (RIN 1210–AC38) — creates a process-based safe harbor under ERISA for plan fiduciaries who include alternative assets, including private real estate, inside designated investment alternatives for participant-directed defined contribution plans. In plain language: it gives plan sponsors a clearer path to add private real estate exposure to the target-date funds and managed accounts that hold most of the country's retirement savings.
Today, most defined contribution plans don't touch private real estate. The plan fiduciary's liability exposure under ERISA has been the wall, and most plan sponsors aren't willing to be the test case.
The DOL's proposal is, functionally, a permission structure. Not a mandate. Not a guarantee. A path.
The reason this matters for operators is on the other side of that path. Once the rule is finalized, the asset managers who design the target-date funds and managed accounts will start sourcing private real estate exposure to plug into those vehicles. The operators they source from will need to look very different than most operators look today.
The DOL's proposal is, functionally, a permission structure. Not a mandate. Not a guarantee. A path.
— Andrew LeBaron
II. The Comment Window Is The First Selection Filter
The proposed rule is in its public comment period until June 1, 2026 — the 60-day window the DOL set in the Federal Register notice.
Comments shape final rules. Legal teams at the largest asset managers are filing comments. ERISA fiduciary groups are filing comments. Major law firms covering this rule — Gibson Dunn's April 1, 2026 client alert is one of the cleaner reads — have already published detailed analyses of what they expect the final rule to look like.
The operators who file comments now are signaling something. They are signaling that they understand the rule, that they are positioning for the capital it will unlock, and that they intend to be on the eligibility side when defined contribution plan sponsors actually start allocating.
I am not telling you to file a comment because it will move the rule. The DOL is going to weigh comments from the largest plan fiduciaries and ERISA legal scholars far more heavily than yours or mine.
I am telling you that filing a comment puts you on the record as an operator who is paying attention. That record matters when the asset managers building defined-contribution-ready vehicles start scanning the market in 2027 for operators to allocate to. The selection is already happening. The filing is one of the first signals.
The portal is still open. Submissions reference RIN 1210–AC38 and go through regulations.gov or directly to the Office of Regulations and Interpretations at EBSA.
III. What DC-Ready Product Actually Looks Like
The single most important thing for an operator to understand about this rule is that the capital it unlocks will not flow into the structures most syndicators are running today.
This is where the truck stops being a metaphor and starts being literal.
A diesel truck works because every component was engineered for the job. The block. The transmission. The fuel system. The frame. You can't bolt a truck bed onto a sedan and tow with it. The vehicle has to be built for the load.
The legal coverage I've read — including Gibson Dunn's April 1, 2026 alert — lays out what plan fiduciaries will look for in any private real estate product they consider. The list is not surprising. It is rigorous. Four things show up over and over.
Enhanced liquidity. Plan participants need to be able to rebalance and redeem on a cadence most private real estate funds were not built for. Closed-end ten-year vehicles do not fit a target-date fund. Operators positioning for this capital are building or partnering on evergreen, semi-liquid, or interval-style structures.
Independent valuation. Quarterly is becoming the floor. Annual is no longer acceptable for vehicles plan participants are buying into through their retirement accounts. Third-party valuation governance is becoming a baseline requirement, not a premium feature.
Fee disclosure. The fee stack inside a defined-contribution-ready vehicle has to be transparent and benchmarked. The "two and twenty plus promote plus property management plus acquisition fee" stack that most syndicators have used for years is not going to pass plan fiduciary review.
Benchmarking. Returns need to be measurable against a defensible benchmark. Plan fiduciaries cannot allocate to a vehicle whose performance cannot be evaluated against the market.
If your current product does not have these four things, you are not in the consideration set for defined contribution capital. Period.
That is not a forecast. That is the structure the rule is building.
If your current product does not have enhanced liquidity, independent valuation, transparent fees, and a defensible benchmark, you are not in the consideration set for defined contribution capital. Period.
— Andrew LeBaron
IV. The Investor Relations System Is The Second Filter
The product structure is the first filter. The investor relations system is the second.
Plan fiduciaries cannot allocate to operators whose reporting is inconsistent, whose communication cadence is unreliable, or whose investor portal is a Dropbox folder. The investor relations systems that work for individual accredited investors and family offices are not the systems that will work for asset managers building defined-contribution-ready vehicles.
I've been doing investor relations system work as part of my advisory practice for a residential asset manager building toward this exact moment. The gap between where most operators are today and where they need to be to even be screened by a DC-ready vehicle allocator is wider than most operators realize.
Three pieces of the system come up in every conversation.
Reporting cadence. Monthly performance reporting. Quarterly capital account statements. Annual audited financials. Not "we send investors an update when there's news." Predictable, calendared, on-time reporting.
Investor portal. A real portal, not an email folder. Tax documents, performance, capital account, distribution history — all accessible to the investor and to anyone the asset manager designates.
Data room readiness. The asset managers screening operators will ask for institutional-grade diligence materials. Track record back to inception, attribution by deal, realized versus unrealized, manager bios with the kind of detail a sophisticated allocator expects to see.
This is not glamorous work. It is exactly the work the operators who are going to be eligible for defined contribution capital are doing this year.
V. The Liability Backdrop Nobody Is Talking About
Here is the piece almost no operator-facing coverage is connecting.
The safe harbor is process-based. It gives fiduciaries who follow the prescribed steps a legal presumption that they satisfied ERISA's duty of prudence. It does not eliminate the duty. Gibson Dunn's coverage makes this point explicitly: "Thoughtful fiduciary committee process, monitoring, and documentation remain essential."
I am not going to forecast how ERISA fiduciary litigation lands over the next 24 months. That is not my lane.
What I can tell you is that whatever happens in the courts, the plan fiduciaries allocating to private real estate in 2027 and 2028 will be more sensitive to operator selection than at any point in the last decade. The safe harbor is permission. ERISA is the reminder that permission still carries liability.
That sensitivity is going to compress the operator selection set hard. The operators who get selected will be the ones whose product structure, valuation governance, reporting, and investor relations systems have already crossed the institutional threshold by the time the screening starts.
VI. The Operator Action List
Here is what I would do in the next 24 months if I were positioning to be on the eligibility side when this capital starts flowing.
This month: File a comment on the proposed rule. Reference RIN 1210–AC38, submit through regulations.gov before June 1, 2026. It does not need to be long. It needs to put you on the record.
This quarter: Audit your current product structure against the four defined-contribution-ready requirements above. Be honest about the gaps. The gaps are where the work is.
This year: Begin building (or partnering on) a structure that fits defined contribution requirements. Evergreen, semi-liquid, third-party valuation, transparent fee stack, defensible benchmark.
Next 24 months: Upgrade your investor relations system to institutional cadence. Monthly reporting. Quarterly capital accounts. Real portal. Diligence-ready data room.
2027 and 2028: Be in the consideration set when the asset managers start screening.
The operators who do this work now will be eligible. The operators who wait until the rule is finalized will be two years late, watching the capital flow to the operators who positioned during the window most of the industry slept through.
The operators who do this work now will be eligible. The operators who wait until the rule is finalized will be two years late, watching the capital flow to the operators who positioned during the window most of the industry slept through.
— Andrew LeBaron
VII. The Read I Keep Coming Back To
Every cycle has a moment where the structure of capital changes faster than the structure of the operators chasing it.
The DOL safe harbor is that moment for private real estate this cycle.
The headline numbers are big. The real number is whatever portion of that eventually flows to your asset class, your strategy, your firm. The operators who get a piece of it will be the ones who treated the comment window as a positioning event, not a legal curiosity.
I'll be driving the 2017 for a long time. Nine years in, almost 200,000 miles, and it still does the job it was built for. It always starts. It always pulls what I need. It always has room for the trash run after a family gathering. That's the same reason this capital is finally getting routed toward the asset class most retirement participants have been locked out of for forty years. Real estate, run by real operators, with real reporting, is the truck. The DOL rule is the dealership finally agreeing to put it on the lot.
The door cracked open March 30.
It closes for comment on June 1.
The eligibility list is being written between now and 2027.
You can be on it. Or you can read about it in 2028.
Comment portal: regulations.gov — submit referencing RIN 1210–AC38 before June 1, 2026.
If you're an operator or asset manager trying to figure out what your product, your reporting, or your investor relations system needs to look like to be in the consideration set when this capital starts flowing, I keep 30 minutes a week open for conversations like that. No pitch. Just the read.
Book a 30-minute call at /meetwithandrew.
— Andrew
Washing the Truck With Chelsea
Chelsea and I were washing the truck Saturday.
It turned into something close to couples therapy. Soap, water, two people who've been married fourteen years, and a 2017 diesel with almost 200,000 miles on it.
Somewhere between the soap and the rinse, I caught myself thinking about why I never upgrade. Why I probably never will.
It always starts. It always pulls what I need. It always has room to haul away the trash at family gatherings and Saturday cleanup days.
That truck is like the asset class I've spent fourteen years operating in. Versatile. Long-lasting. Tough. Resilient in any climate, any cycle, any market. The one that just works, almost every time, when you give it fuel and don't try to drive it like a sports car.
For most of American history, the largest pool of retirement capital in the country has not been allowed to buy that truck.
That changed on March 30.
There is a comment period open right now that almost no operator I know is reading. It closes June 1, 2026. That gives you roughly two weeks.
The Department of Labor's proposed safe harbor rule, released March 30, 2026 (Federal Register, RIN 1210–AC38; Gibson Dunn client alert, April 1, 2026), is the door cracking open. The proposal implements Section 3(c) of Executive Order 14330, "Democratizing Access to Alternative Assets for 401(k) Investors," signed in August 2025. The DOL itself frames the goal as expanding retirement savers' access to alternative assets — private equity, real estate, infrastructure — alongside the mutual funds and index funds that dominate 401(k) menus today.
The headline-level dollar figures coming from industry analysts are very large — hundreds of billions over time, across millions of participants. But that is not a 2026 number. It is a 2027 and 2028 number, maybe later. The operators who will be eligible to receive it are being selected right now, by the structures they build, the reporting cadence they adopt, and the investor relations systems they put in place over the next 24 months.
Most operators won't be ready.
Not because they can't be. Because they aren't paying attention.
TL;DR
The DOL's proposed safe harbor rule opens a path for 401(k) plans to allocate to private real estate inside their qualified default investment alternatives. Comments close June 1, 2026; final rule possible by late 2026 (Gibson Dunn, April 1, 2026). The operators who receive that capital in 2027 and 2028 are the ones building product structure, valuation governance, and investor relations systems now. This is a near-term positioning event, not a 2030 conversation.
I. What The Rule Actually Does
The proposed rule — formally titled "Fiduciary Duties in Selecting Designated Investment Alternatives" (RIN 1210–AC38) — creates a process-based safe harbor under ERISA for plan fiduciaries who include alternative assets, including private real estate, inside designated investment alternatives for participant-directed defined contribution plans. In plain language: it gives plan sponsors a clearer path to add private real estate exposure to the target-date funds and managed accounts that hold most of the country's retirement savings.
Today, most defined contribution plans don't touch private real estate. The plan fiduciary's liability exposure under ERISA has been the wall, and most plan sponsors aren't willing to be the test case.
The DOL's proposal is, functionally, a permission structure. Not a mandate. Not a guarantee. A path.
The reason this matters for operators is on the other side of that path. Once the rule is finalized, the asset managers who design the target-date funds and managed accounts will start sourcing private real estate exposure to plug into those vehicles. The operators they source from will need to look very different than most operators look today.
The DOL's proposal is, functionally, a permission structure. Not a mandate. Not a guarantee. A path.
— Andrew LeBaron
II. The Comment Window Is The First Selection Filter
The proposed rule is in its public comment period until June 1, 2026 — the 60-day window the DOL set in the Federal Register notice.
Comments shape final rules. Legal teams at the largest asset managers are filing comments. ERISA fiduciary groups are filing comments. Major law firms covering this rule — Gibson Dunn's April 1, 2026 client alert is one of the cleaner reads — have already published detailed analyses of what they expect the final rule to look like.
The operators who file comments now are signaling something. They are signaling that they understand the rule, that they are positioning for the capital it will unlock, and that they intend to be on the eligibility side when defined contribution plan sponsors actually start allocating.
I am not telling you to file a comment because it will move the rule. The DOL is going to weigh comments from the largest plan fiduciaries and ERISA legal scholars far more heavily than yours or mine.
I am telling you that filing a comment puts you on the record as an operator who is paying attention. That record matters when the asset managers building defined-contribution-ready vehicles start scanning the market in 2027 for operators to allocate to. The selection is already happening. The filing is one of the first signals.
The portal is still open. Submissions reference RIN 1210–AC38 and go through regulations.gov or directly to the Office of Regulations and Interpretations at EBSA.
III. What DC-Ready Product Actually Looks Like
The single most important thing for an operator to understand about this rule is that the capital it unlocks will not flow into the structures most syndicators are running today.
This is where the truck stops being a metaphor and starts being literal.
A diesel truck works because every component was engineered for the job. The block. The transmission. The fuel system. The frame. You can't bolt a truck bed onto a sedan and tow with it. The vehicle has to be built for the load.
The legal coverage I've read — including Gibson Dunn's April 1, 2026 alert — lays out what plan fiduciaries will look for in any private real estate product they consider. The list is not surprising. It is rigorous. Four things show up over and over.
Enhanced liquidity. Plan participants need to be able to rebalance and redeem on a cadence most private real estate funds were not built for. Closed-end ten-year vehicles do not fit a target-date fund. Operators positioning for this capital are building or partnering on evergreen, semi-liquid, or interval-style structures.
Independent valuation. Quarterly is becoming the floor. Annual is no longer acceptable for vehicles plan participants are buying into through their retirement accounts. Third-party valuation governance is becoming a baseline requirement, not a premium feature.
Fee disclosure. The fee stack inside a defined-contribution-ready vehicle has to be transparent and benchmarked. The "two and twenty plus promote plus property management plus acquisition fee" stack that most syndicators have used for years is not going to pass plan fiduciary review.
Benchmarking. Returns need to be measurable against a defensible benchmark. Plan fiduciaries cannot allocate to a vehicle whose performance cannot be evaluated against the market.
If your current product does not have these four things, you are not in the consideration set for defined contribution capital. Period.
That is not a forecast. That is the structure the rule is building.
If your current product does not have enhanced liquidity, independent valuation, transparent fees, and a defensible benchmark, you are not in the consideration set for defined contribution capital. Period.
— Andrew LeBaron
IV. The Investor Relations System Is The Second Filter
The product structure is the first filter. The investor relations system is the second.
Plan fiduciaries cannot allocate to operators whose reporting is inconsistent, whose communication cadence is unreliable, or whose investor portal is a Dropbox folder. The investor relations systems that work for individual accredited investors and family offices are not the systems that will work for asset managers building defined-contribution-ready vehicles.
I've been doing investor relations system work as part of my advisory practice for a residential asset manager building toward this exact moment. The gap between where most operators are today and where they need to be to even be screened by a DC-ready vehicle allocator is wider than most operators realize.
Three pieces of the system come up in every conversation.
Reporting cadence. Monthly performance reporting. Quarterly capital account statements. Annual audited financials. Not "we send investors an update when there's news." Predictable, calendared, on-time reporting.
Investor portal. A real portal, not an email folder. Tax documents, performance, capital account, distribution history — all accessible to the investor and to anyone the asset manager designates.
Data room readiness. The asset managers screening operators will ask for institutional-grade diligence materials. Track record back to inception, attribution by deal, realized versus unrealized, manager bios with the kind of detail a sophisticated allocator expects to see.
This is not glamorous work. It is exactly the work the operators who are going to be eligible for defined contribution capital are doing this year.
V. The Liability Backdrop Nobody Is Talking About
Here is the piece almost no operator-facing coverage is connecting.
The safe harbor is process-based. It gives fiduciaries who follow the prescribed steps a legal presumption that they satisfied ERISA's duty of prudence. It does not eliminate the duty. Gibson Dunn's coverage makes this point explicitly: "Thoughtful fiduciary committee process, monitoring, and documentation remain essential."
I am not going to forecast how ERISA fiduciary litigation lands over the next 24 months. That is not my lane.
What I can tell you is that whatever happens in the courts, the plan fiduciaries allocating to private real estate in 2027 and 2028 will be more sensitive to operator selection than at any point in the last decade. The safe harbor is permission. ERISA is the reminder that permission still carries liability.
That sensitivity is going to compress the operator selection set hard. The operators who get selected will be the ones whose product structure, valuation governance, reporting, and investor relations systems have already crossed the institutional threshold by the time the screening starts.
VI. The Operator Action List
Here is what I would do in the next 24 months if I were positioning to be on the eligibility side when this capital starts flowing.
This month: File a comment on the proposed rule. Reference RIN 1210–AC38, submit through regulations.gov before June 1, 2026. It does not need to be long. It needs to put you on the record.
This quarter: Audit your current product structure against the four defined-contribution-ready requirements above. Be honest about the gaps. The gaps are where the work is.
This year: Begin building (or partnering on) a structure that fits defined contribution requirements. Evergreen, semi-liquid, third-party valuation, transparent fee stack, defensible benchmark.
Next 24 months: Upgrade your investor relations system to institutional cadence. Monthly reporting. Quarterly capital accounts. Real portal. Diligence-ready data room.
2027 and 2028: Be in the consideration set when the asset managers start screening.
The operators who do this work now will be eligible. The operators who wait until the rule is finalized will be two years late, watching the capital flow to the operators who positioned during the window most of the industry slept through.
The operators who do this work now will be eligible. The operators who wait until the rule is finalized will be two years late, watching the capital flow to the operators who positioned during the window most of the industry slept through.
— Andrew LeBaron
VII. The Read I Keep Coming Back To
Every cycle has a moment where the structure of capital changes faster than the structure of the operators chasing it.
The DOL safe harbor is that moment for private real estate this cycle.
The headline numbers are big. The real number is whatever portion of that eventually flows to your asset class, your strategy, your firm. The operators who get a piece of it will be the ones who treated the comment window as a positioning event, not a legal curiosity.
I'll be driving the 2017 for a long time. Nine years in, almost 200,000 miles, and it still does the job it was built for. It always starts. It always pulls what I need. It always has room for the trash run after a family gathering. That's the same reason this capital is finally getting routed toward the asset class most retirement participants have been locked out of for forty years. Real estate, run by real operators, with real reporting, is the truck. The DOL rule is the dealership finally agreeing to put it on the lot.
The door cracked open March 30.
It closes for comment on June 1.
The eligibility list is being written between now and 2027.
You can be on it. Or you can read about it in 2028.
Comment portal: regulations.gov — submit referencing RIN 1210–AC38 before June 1, 2026.
If you're an operator or asset manager trying to figure out what your product, your reporting, or your investor relations system needs to look like to be in the consideration set when this capital starts flowing, I keep 30 minutes a week open for conversations like that. No pitch. Just the read.
Book a 30-minute call at /meetwithandrew.
— Andrew
Andrew LeBaron
