Well, that was another intensely strange year for real estate investors. Most notably – and staggeringly – residential property values have continued their ascent. The average UK house price rose 8.2 per cent to £272,992 in the 12 months to November, according to Halifax. Track back to the first lockdown in March 2020 and average values have climbed £1,691 a month – just shy of the average worker’s take-home pay. To the homeowners, the spoils.
Listed commercial property has also performed strongly, tracking the broader risk-on sentiment across equity markets and confounding many of the doubts of a year ago.
In fact, aside from a few blow-ups in smaller sub-sectors, investors would have been hard pressed to lose money from any real estate investment trust (Reit) over the past 12 months. Even the housebuilders, whose exposure to inflation, consumer sentiment and politics make for their own jittery property weathervane, are in the green. And that’s before dividends are factored in.