This quarterly review provides market insights, strategy activity, market outlook and portfolio positioning for the Global Property Securities strategy. Learn more.

Key Highlights 

  • Global property securities performed well in the December quarter. REITs remained popular with investors against a background of very low returns from other income-producing investments such as bonds and term deposits.
  • The US Federal Reserve increased interest rates by 0.25%, as anticipated. The decision was supported by further improvement in labour markets. Rising employment, combined with improving economic activity levels, augurs well for commercial property markets. US REITs advanced during the quarter against this background.
  • The outlook for global property securities remains divided along macroeconomic lines, with robust economic growth in the US and UK likely to buoy property securities in those markets. However the impact of lower commodity prices are expected to overshadow property securities in Australia and Canada, while European property securities are expected to remain hampered by anaemic economies, despite government stimulus measures.
  • In Asia, we remain positive on Hong Kong landlords with Central office exposure for their improving fundamentals, healthy balance sheets, investment grade portfolios and favourable medium-term earnings growth outlooks while maintaining our extremely selective approach to J-REITs is unchanged.
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