2019 forecast: Andrew Jones (LondonMetric)

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This time last year, I expressed my hope and expectation that the liquidity window would remain open to allow us to sell down our retail assets further and continue our investment into urban logistics.

Andrew Jones

We are pleased that events played out largely as hoped and that while this window has closed for large parts of the retail market, the liquidity window remains open for well-let, long-leased assets that generate reliable, predictable and certain income.

Our main hope is for greater clarity and that this will provide increased stability and confidence. We expect 2019 to be a year of cautious progression. With most of the easy money already made, we are not so optimistic that we expect investors to be aggressively acquiring, but nor are we so pessimistic that we expect investors to be defensively selling their best assets.

Polarisation across property will continue as further disruption hits legacy real estate and investors rebalance their portfolios ever more towards structurally supported sectors such as beds, meds and sheds.

“Polarisation across property will continue as further disruption hits legacy real estate”

We remain convinced that, in a low-growth and low-interest-rate environment, income and income growth will be the defining characteristics.

Resolution: The first rule of compounding is not to interrupt it unnecessarily. Therefore my resolution is to trade less, reduce frictional costs and pay the chancellor even less stamp duty!