Sector report: UK commercial property - treading a very fine line

Investors' thirst for liquidity is nothing new. In John Maynard Keynes' The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, he bemoans the consequences of markets organised with a view to 'so-called liquidity'. The particular nature of open-ended property fund investment warrants consideration through this lens. The daily revaluation of liquid markets, Keynes writes, inevitably affects the behaviour of investors: "For there is no sense in building up a new enterprise at a cost greater than that at which a similar existing enterprise can be purchased; whilst there is an inducement to...