Tech boom shifts property landscape
Demand grows for logistics spaces like warehouses
Real estate is not just about buying a building in a random town and owning it for 15 years in the hope that your tenants will carry on paying rent and maybe pay a little bit more the following year. Co-working spaces, retail moving online and the demand for faster connectivity through cloud computing services are changing the retail landscape and investors should take note. This is according to Hugo Machin, co-head of global real estate securities at asset management firm Schroders, who believes technology is impacting real estate broadly while the discussion around this has remained narrow. Globally, the change is most profoundly expressed by the growing demand for logistics properties such as warehouses and distribution centres. The industrial warehouses of today were a far cry from the old shoddy buildings you might associate with the asset class, said Equites Property Fund CEO Andrea Taverna-Turisan. Though online retail makes up leass than 1% of the sector in South Africa now,...
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