The sector has enjoyed massive growth in size and popularity as an asset class since January 2000 when its total market capitalisation was a meagre R7,2bn.

By Thursday its total market capitalisation was about R100,5bn.

Real Estate Index closed 0,11% up at 893,09 points.

But Keillen Ndlovu, a listed property analyst at Stanlib, said on Thursday that despite the fact that the listed property market was "running hard and outperforming" the all share index year to date, it still hovered near 2% of the JSE by market capitalisation.

"With new listings fading away, the market continues to be driven by the strong local and offshore demand. The double-digit growth in distributions, vanishing interest rate hike fears and the strong bond yields continue to bode well for SA listed property," said Ndlovu.

The performance of listed property tends to track the performance of bonds in the long term because they are both income-generating investments.

"The (listed property) yields have compressed to historic levels and, given this, most listed property companies now prefer to issue equity rather than debt to fund acquisitions. This has assisted the growth of the market capitalisation and also helped deal with the cash flush fund managers? appetite for property stocks."

Andre Stadler, MD of Catalyst Fund Managers, said that the listed property sector's total market capitalisation only "crossed" to R10bn in 2001 and that its size was negligible at that stage.

"At that point in time listed property was completely out of favour with investors and to a large extent property was disregarded as a separate asset class," said Stadler.

Since then, listed property's profile has improved considerably because of solid returns.

"The listed property sector now offers a broader range of larger diversified liquid property stocks, which has meant an improvement in accessibility to investors and as a result broadened the investor base," said Stadler. He said the South African listed property sector had delivered a 25,9% total return for the year to date. This return includes income and capital growth.

Stadler said international investors were now "looking" at SA's commercial property sector, in both listed and fixed property.

He said this would "add to the current demand pressure on property as an asset class".

"Foreign investors would set minimum hurdles in terms of (listed property) fund size and liquidity and we now have six (listed property) funds with market capitalisations in excess of $1bn."

Norbert Sasse, CEO of Growthpoint Properties, the largest listed property company on the JSE with a market capitalisation of about R17bn, said the fact the listed property sector's market capitalisation had reached the R100bn mark was a "milestone".

Sasse said the listed property sector's total market capitalisation was about R35bn two years ago.

But he said that notwithstanding the "superlative growth of the listed property sector", the JSE as a whole had also been reaching new record highs almost daily. "We haven?t really shown any increase as an overall percentage of the JSE," he said.