Listed property crawls through the fog of miserable growth

Since late 2017, the listed property market has suffered major setbacks due to the anaemic domestic growth environment. This poor growth has contributed to an increase in vacancy rates, tenant failures, negative rental reversions, rising costs of occupancy and a deceleration in income distribution growth rates.

Property is an economic-sensitive asset class whose fundamental drivers closely track the country’s GDP. In 2018, the SA listed property index (Sapy) recorded a negative 25% total return, undoubtedly the worst listed-property index return since 1995...