While most attention has been directed at the turmoil within Centro Property Group, more than half the stocks making up a Mercer Property Survey index produced negative returns over the past year.
The latest Mercer Property Sector survey covering 2007 said that while the last two months of 2007 will be the period that people remember for poor returns in the property sector, the market actually began its fall in February.
It said that in total, there had been negative returns in seven of the past 12 months.
“Not since 1999 has the listed property sector produced a negative return for the calendar year and 2007 was the worst return in at least 25 years,” it said.
And it appears there was little relief for those investors looking at global listed property, with the Mercer data suggesting those who made the move into global LPTs may have experienced an even greater fall than if they had remained in the Australian market.
It said the median hedged global property fund fell by 13.9 per cent for the year, while the unhedged median fell 20.3 per cent due to the rise in the Australian dollar.
