Baby boomers were expected to remain wary of investment in Australian real estate investment trusts (AREIT) and property despite a levelling in the market, MyAdviser said yesterday.
“I think baby boomers are going to think very differently to generation X as far as putting their toe in the water in areas such as AREITs,” MyAdviser managing director Philippa Sheehan told InvestorDaily.
“Baby boomers, generally, are a little bit more sceptical because they have ridden through some really big ups and downs leading into pre-retirement.”
In contrast, generation Xers were more savvy, prepared to do a bit more research and understood that what happened in the past was not necessarily going to happen in the future, Sheehan said.
“I’m not too sure if baby boomers will put their toe back in the water too extensively in a particular sector, particularly leading into pre-retirement,” she said.
Following subdued investment demand last year, there had been some recovery in the property and AREIT markets, she said.
“We obviously saw some significant peak-to-trough rates over the last three months or so. Even though we’ve seen some recovery, we’ve never really seen it recover fully. But I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing,” she said.
“I think there has been a bit of levelling out, which there had to be, so at the moment we’re seeing 7.8 per cent returns on AREITs and we think that’s fairly reasonable.”
She said MyAdviser encouraged portfolio diversification to include AREIT, REIT or property investments.
