The conference, which will take place between November 14 and 16 at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, has the theme “Globalisation for Growth”.

This year’s conference will showcase global views from participants such as Hans Timmer of the World Bank and JPMorgan UK’s Nick Tyrrell .

The conference will also include a line-up of local property heavyweights.

One of these is Colin Young, head of institutional property investments at Old Mutual Investment Group Property Investments. Young will focus on how SA can best attract more foreign investors.

“It’s all about scale and size. And though SA has been one of the top performers in the global context, according to the IPD over the past three years, foreign investors still own less than 3% of the listed property sector, which is very low.

“SA needs to move to a globally recognisable R eit (real estate investment trust) structure, and build up the scale of our listed and unlisted investment offerings by investing both locally and offshore, while keeping property investments as liquid as possible,” he says.

The leading R eit market is the US with a $478bn market capitalisation and 159 listed Reits.

Reits combine the best of property unit trusts and property loan stock companies, both of which are available in SA.