Angelique de Rauville, MD of Provest, says there are already funds with specific areas of operation .

For instance, property loan stock company Spearhead has chosen to focus solely on the Cape Town property market, while fellow property loan stock Metboard is an industrial property fund.

De Rauville says she thinks it would be natural for property unit trust Capital to become an industrial-focused fund because it employs expertise in the industrial property sector and has a substantial industrial property portfolio.

"It would be obvious for (property loan stock) Resilient to become a retailfocused fund and (property loan stock) Acucap to become a Western Cape fund," says De Rauville

In its September overview of the listed property sector, Provest says the sector has experienced more corporate activity than any other of the JSE Securities Exchange SA over the past five years.

Provest says that over this period there have been 14 new listings, and 20 companies and funds no longer exist, as a result of mergers, acquisitions and consolidations.

The group says that there is a lot of "cross-pollination" between various property listings.

"This trend involves cross-shareholdings, commonality on boards, management companies managing property listings that are chasing the same properties, and in some instances, joint investing in properties," says Provest.

Further consolidation of the listed property sector would "ultimately benefit current unitholders as further growth in total assets and market capitalisation will improve tradability of units and may attract interest from other investors, both locally and internationally ".