Will the property market cause the next savings disaster?

‘How’s business?’ I asked the Mr Big of commercial property in a city somewhere north of Watford Gap last week. I won’t say which city, because this Mr Big is so big there – his logo is on office block after office block – that he would be instantly identifiable.

‘I’m a buyer for the first time in 18 months,’ he replied, rather to my surprise. ‘Prices have been at silly levels, but now they’re anywhere between 10 and 30 per cent off and we can see value. And before all this credit-crunch business the banks gave us a £400 million credit line at 20 basis points [that’s 0.2 per cent over the banks’ base lending rate or interbank borrowing cost] so frankly we might as well use it – if we were asking for it now it’d cost us at least 100 basis points.’

This was, I thought, a fascinating glimpse of the real-world real-estate market. ‘So who was buying at the silly prices?’ I asked. ‘Mostly property funds,’ was the answer. ‘And who’s selling at attractive prices now? ‘That would be property funds again. Their investors have got nervous and want cash out quick, so the funds have no choice but to sell – after all, no bank’s going to lend to them for liquidity at this stage in the game.’

‘And are you ever a seller, or do you just accumulate?’ ‘I suppose we’ll occasionally sell a property if it’s really bone-dry.’ ‘Dry?’ ‘If we’ve squeezed everything we possibly can out of it and there’s no hope of improving the rental yield.’ ‘So who’s prepared to buy from you in those circumstances. ‘Ah well, up to now it was usually property funds.’

Almost everything in that casual lunch-table conversation was confirmed by an excellent article by Jonathan Russell in this week’s Sunday Telegraph headlined ‘Property funds: the new liquidity crisis’.