This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
THE Australian real estate investment trusts sector bounced back in December with industrial continuing to outperform.
According to Atchison Consultants, the AREITs sector returned +0.4% in December but underperformed the S&P/ASX 200 index which returned +1.2%.
Despite the small gain, AREITS returned -4.6% for 2020, again underperforming the broader share market, which returned +1.4%. At the end of December, the index was trading on a dividend yield of 4.0% with a P/BV 1.2x and a P/E Ratio 19.0x.
Industrial AREITs performed strongly, returning +1.9% in December whilst retail A-REITS returned 0.3%.
Office A-REITs returned 0.0% and Diversified AREITs returned -0.5%.
The top performing trusts were Charter Hall Group (CHC) returning +8.5% and BWP Trust (BWP) with +4.6%.
The underperformers were Abacus Property Group (ABP) with -7.3% and Stockland (SGP) at -4.7%.
Meanwhile direct property outperformed AREITs, returning +1.7% over the November 2020 quarter. Capitalisation rates across property sectors continued to trend downwards. Cap rates across office, industrial and retail properties range are 5.6%, 5.9% and 6.4% respectively.
Despite the modest gain, A-REITs outperformed international listed property. Globally, REITs were down -2.5% of December and -13.6% over the year.
The UK was the top-performing region (+6.3%). The worst-performing region over the month was Hong Kong (-0.8%). At the end of December, the index was trading on a dividend yield of 4.0% with a P/B 1.5x and a P/E Ratio 22.8x.
