It seems that the underrated property sector is set for big things. In the past three years, you would have had a better return from property than equities just from the capital growth, which was 8,9% a year compared with 7,3% from equities.

ALL pointers suggest that the property loan stock sector of the JSE Securities Exchange SA will see an unprecedented scale of growth in the next few years.

Real estate has a bad name amongst most portfolio investors. Yet few realise that listed property trusts performed on a par with equity over the past ten years (14,5% p.a.) and outperformed financial & industrial shares by a wide margin over the past three years (27% p.a. vs 5%), says Erwin Rode of Rode & Associates, property economists and valuers.

The market capitalisation of the listed property stocks sector has more than doubled in the past six months.

Advocates of the Johannesburg CBD revival insist there is something wrong with the SA Property Owners' Association (Sapoa)'s latest quarterly survey.

Cape Town's commercial landlord game has changed radically in the last five years. CBDs, once the only position in town, has become the place not to be. The priority busy corner, on a trunk transport route, has shifted to building in the veldt and away from the main trunks. In the process CBDs have died and main roads have been abandoned for emergent nodes like Durbanville Hills, Century City et al.