Property Investment

There is "light at the end of the tunnel" for the UK commercial property market, with the sector now offering better risk-adjusted returns than five year bonds, according to Seven Dials.

Hodge Equity Release, part of Julian Hodge Bank, has re-branded to Hodge Lifetime.

Now is a "once in a cycle" opportunity to get in to real estate, according to Simon Hedger, senior portfolio manager, property securities at Principal Global Investors.

David Holder, research analyst for Citi Quilter, explains why this downturn in the UK commercial property market is different from the last one in the early 1990s, but says property is still important in the long term for a diversified portfolio

More than half (57pc) of IFAs want the Government to intervene in the housing market in order to prop up investor confidence in property, according to a survey by Reita.

Reita has called for the FSA to extend its short-selling ban to the commercial property sector.

Reita has published the first publicly available discount to Net Asset Value (NAV) data for UK commercial property.

UK house prices continued to tumble in August, falling by 1.9pc on the month, according to the Nationwide house price index.

Despite the dip in house prices, homeowners in the 65+ age bracket still have £726.43bn of equity in their homes, according to Prudential, with 40pc of this concentrated in London and the south east.

Heightened recessionary fears and a growing incidence of shorting is causing "unprecedented" volatility in the commercial property market, according to the latest quarterly property investment perspective from Reita.