INSTITUTIONAL AND RETAIL money continued to flow into unlisted real estate funds in the third quarter, albeit more slowly than in previous quarters this year, according to the data compiled by the Investment Property Databank (IPD). More than £750 million ($1.17 billion) of new money flowed into the 68 unlisted real estate funds in the UK in the third quarter, some £600 million less than in the previous quarter, bringing the net asset value of the investor base in the UK to £31.5 billion for the same period.
It is no great surprise that the funds that have performed relatively well through the past two years of crises are those that went into the downturn with low levels of leverage and an active approach to debt management. The IPD’s European Pooled Property Fund Indices reveal that low-geared balanced funds posted the best returns over the past 12 months (13.7%), beating the aggregate pooled property funds index by 7.1%.
As has been extensively reported, many funds that exploited high loan-to-value (LTV) and low interest-coverage ratio (ICR) finance in the run-up to global financial meltdown continue to languish in a no-man’s land of attempted restructuring or recapitalization.