Industrial property the first-half leader
According to MSCI’s IPD SA bi-annual property index, overall vacancies in the industrial sector also fell.
Direct and indirect industrial property, combined, achieved a 7% total return in the first half of this year, while combined, direct and indirect retail, managed a 6.7% return.
The index also showed that in 2016, industrial property had recorded a total return of 13.6%, while retail managed only 12.6%.
MSCI executive director Phil Barttram said the industrial sector’s outperformance in the first half of 2017 was driven by an encouraging decline in its total vacancy rate from 4.9% to 3.5%.
“Active management also played a positive role in the industrial sector’s fortunes, as the ratio of operating cost to gross income declined by more than 2%, to 32.6%, which resulted in the sector’s net income growth improving from -0.1% to 3.3% as at June 2017.”
Greg Nafte, co-director of Nexus Property Group, said that the top performing segments for the first half of this year were warehousing and light manufacturing.
Source: Business Day