PROPERTY YIELD TRENDS IN A FLUCTUATING ECONOMY

In the 1970s, yields on UK commercial investment property appear to have been influenced principally by the cost of long term capital and the rate of rental growth. Consequently, yields tended to respond to the economic cycle, falling in times of economic recovery and rising when the economy moved into recession. However, in the 1980s so far, yield trends appear anomalous by comparison. Yields failed to rise on the advent of the recession in 1980–81, despite a sharp rise in the cost of capital, yet rose in 1982 just when the economy began to emerge from recession, and have since continued to rise as economic recovery and rental growth have gathered pace. This paper seeks to explain recent movements in investment property yields and to reconcile these with trends in the 1970s. It concludes that the behaviour of yields in the 1980s can be explained by the dominance of institutional investors in the property market, and by their perception of the changing risk attributes of property (compared with alternative investments) which have resulted from changes taking place in the investment markets and the UK economy.