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Saturday, 23 October 2021
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Many property trust results are better than expected, with the A-REIT sector on a dividend yield of 4.8%. But there's a wide variation by sector and the ability of tenants to pay the rent.
The listed property market, or A-REITs, is far from homogeneous, with low rates and industry trends producing winners and losers. There's more to investing here than chasing property yields.
There is more to listed property than the top eight in the A-REIT Index with many strong performing smaller trusts outside the top 80% of the index, and other A-REITs not even included in the index.
The RBA Governor says rising house prices are due to "the design of our taxation and social security systems". The OECD says "the prolonged boom in house prices has inflated the wealth of many pensioners without impacting their pension eligibility." What's your view?
We tend to forget that house prices often fall. Direct lending controls are more effective than rate rises because macroprudential limits affect the volume of money for housing leaving business rates untouched.
The survey drew a fantastic 2,000 responses with over 1,000 comments and polar opposite views on what is good policy. Do most people believe the home should be in the age pension asset test, and what do they say?
Any policy decision needs to recognise who is affected by a change. It pays to check the data on who pays taxes, who owns assets and who earns the income to ensure an equitable and efficient outcome.
With articles on the pensions assets test read about 40,000 times, 3,500 survey responses and thousands of comments, there was a lot of great reader participation. A few comments added extra insights.
It is hard to think of any area of widespread public concern where the same policies have been pursued for so long, in the face of such incontrovertible evidence that they have failed to achieve their objectives.