The advice from people that know about the property markets has been to hold onto property investments. While not all analysts have agreed on this, the overwhelming majority have advised individual property investors that sticking out the rough times in the property market is a much better option than selling the property now and regretting it later when the property market picks up.
While this advice has been loud and consistent, it appears as if by and large the individual investor has not followed it.
What started out as a small trickle has now turned into a full blown exodus as private investors in cooling property markets have started to run for the hills. This has not only resulted in a general compounded cooling effect on property markets such as the ones in the United States and United Kingdom, but it has also resulted in very difficult decisions for many of the property funds that operate in those countries.
Even as managers from the larger property funds try to calm their customers down, managers from smaller funds have been forced to either sell property off in order to stay afloat and pay off their customers, or they have been forced to clamp down on withdrawals and prohibit their customers from withdrawing money from the fund at the current moment in time.
Either way, many private investors have reached their critical point of tolerance of market volatility and the cost those feelings of anxiety have are large to the property funds. In the United Kingdom alone, the cost to property funds over the last year has reached GBP 2 billion.
Despite the fleeing of many private investors from their commercial property investments, the advice being given by most that understand the markets is still overwhelmingly to stay put. Selling and running for the hills is not the way to make money in the property markets, according to most analysts and naturally property fund managers are adding their voice to the chorus calling for calm deliberation rather than panicky withdrawal.
