Investment Articles & Insights

Australian investors are well versed in the long list of ways to invest in commercial property. This explains why the commercial property investment sector is so large. The value of unlisted property trusts is estimated at $227 billion, while the listed property trust sector is valued at $144 billion (Property Council of Australia). Despite the commercial property sector’s fund raising success, few investors are aware of the emerging options to invest in funds in the residential real estate sector.

Economic forecasts are rarely accurate. Any Federal Treasurer will tell you that. Just four years ago, then-Treasurer Josh Frydenberg forecast a surplus of $7.1 billion for 2019/20. After paying for the unexpected impacts of bushfires and the Covid crisis, that predicted surplus turned into an $85 billion deficit.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton was a clear favourite to become the 45th President of the United States. Most pundits were amazed that her Republican rival, Donald Trump, had progressed this far in the contest. He wasn’t considered a serious contender. We all know the outcome.

Nearly twenty years ago, 34-year-old Londoner Ashley Revell made a bet few of us would ever even consider. He sold everything he owned – his house, his car, even his clothes – and took a flight to the United States where he checked into a Las Vegas casino. The he headed for the Roulette wheel, where he gambled every cent he’d scraped together (a total of US$135,300 to be exact) on a single bet. Revell put his chips on red, his reasoning being he had a 50:50 chance of winning. To some people, that sort of punt is no different to investing in shares. But as we’ll see, it’s a totally different scenario.

ChatGPT, the AI bot that took the internet by storm, is getting better and smarter. From a standing start in November, it has grown to more than 153 million users.* The fastest-growing consumer application is also the most intelligent yet, with Microsoft claiming its latest update is "strikingly close to human-level performance."

Among the attractions of an investment in an unlisted private credit fund is avoiding the volatility associated with the public markets. There is a downside to not marking-to-market, as it risks a fund holding assets at a Book Value well in excess of Fair Value.

If you’re reading this and you’ve already reached the age of 50, then you know a bit about inflation. You’ll remember the 1980s, when inflation peaked at 11.35 per cent, way ahead of wages growth. It took years to bring those spiralling price increases under control.

The current economic environment remains uncertain. Has enough (or too much) been done by the RBA to curb inflation? How long will it take to find out? Will the unemploy- ment rate rises before inflation is controlled? Could global events swamp the best inten- tions of Australia’s central bank once again? And, are there opportunities for investors in the property sector right now?