With house prices doubling over the past five years, many people are now choosing to rent rather than to buy '“ and this trend, says Bill Rawson, Chairman of Rawson Properties, is not necessarily a bad one.
'While it is true that most of us in residential property marketing have spent most of our lives trying to persuade people to become homeowners and have talked up the logic of investing here, with rents at the moment pitched at roughly half the level of home bond repayments, it can make sense to rent provided that you continue to save in some way or other '“ and if you want to stay with the property market without becoming a homeowner one of the best ways to do this now is to invest in property unit trusts'
Almost all of these, said Rawson, had grown by over 30% in the last two years and some, like Apex-Hi, have recently doubled in value.
Property unit trusts, said Rawson, have the big advantage of being spread across the property sector and are therefore likely to be more stable than other shares unable to ride out the downturns in the stock market.
'With property now more expensive, returns in this sector could be lower in the next few years but the mere fact that so many overseas pension funds are now investing in SA property unit trusts surely confirms that this is a good place to be,' he said.
