Following the Money

An influential group of international asset managers, representing around US$ 2 trillion in assets under management, are arguing that integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations into investment decisions is no longer a luxury, but a legal responsibility.

The case is set forth in a new report compiled with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The report stresses the central role held by the world's largest institutional investors - pension funds, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, mutual funds - in helping the global economy effectively make the transition to a low-carbon and resource-efficient Green Economy.

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What Next for Property?

Listened to an interesting podcast recently by "renegade economist" Fred Harrison on the need to tax land not income as the basis for public finance and long term market stability.

His ideas, if implemented, would challenge the need for a blog such as this one (hardly a great loss in the overall scheme of things.) This was the man who in April 2005 predicted a property price down turn in the UK at the end of 2007 and into 2008.

Worth a listen as lots of people in developed countries are now starting to ask fundamental, structural questions about the nature of the economies they are a part of - questions which go way beyond the short term issue of whether the value of my house will rise or fall next month.

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John Templeton on Investment

The death this week of global investor and philanthropist John Templeton provides an opportunity to quote one of his maxims and apply it to the world of property investment.

Although he was not talking about real estate as such, there remains wisdom in his perspective when applied to the issue of when to buy and when to sell property:

If you want to have a better performance than the crowd, you must do things differently from the crowd.... I have put these philosophies into a simple statement: help people. When people are desperately trying to sell, help them and buy. When people are enthusiastically trying to buy, help them and sell.

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