Author: Chris Kirkwood
Recently, ESV Partners Chris Kirkwood, Geoff Tierney and Tim Valtwies attended Annual Australian Property Funds Industry Forum which was held by Core Property Research in Noosa. This forum is one of the longest running annual events in the Australian property industry, providing expert speakers and great insights into many of the ever-changing trends in property and funds management. As such, ESV is proud to be a sponsor of the conference for the past 5 years and share some of our key takeaways from the event.
This year’s theme was “Surviving the asset bubble contagion”. For the last few years there has been considerable debate about the growing ‘asset bubble’ in the Australian property sector with much of that discussion centred around its causes, what the impact will be and how we as investors, business owners and fund managers can effectively respond to these changes.
As such, it was great to hear from many experts in the economic, political and the property industry including: Jonathan Pain, Brendan Ivers, Nick Thomson, Paul Mirams, Nicholas Capp, Tim Slattery, Nicholas Smedley, Gavin Duane, Ian Knox, Patrick McGrath and others.
Some of the areas of interest discussed at this year’s event were:
- Whether we are truly in an asset bubble and what history can teach us about how we should prepare and respond to changes in the Australian and global economy (low Australian interest rates, high inflation and increasing global and political uncertainty)
- What the impact of Australia’s current reform landscape will have on the property and funds management industries given the ongoing Banking Royal Commission and ASIC’s Design and Distribution Obligations.
- How property businesses can respond to the changing bank appetites for risk as demand for development loans and investments loans by the Big 4 is reducing. However, demand for lowly geared, high quality security remains high and with more non-bank lenders entering the traditional bank loan space this could provide capital opportunities in the industry.
- Retail spaces are evolving, now focused on providing more complimentary non-retail services such as Schools, Childcare, Medical facilities to provide CBD-type experience in the suburbs.
Our property industry expertise
At ESV, we have experience assisting our clients in the property and funds management industry with:
- Structuring property acquisition and development transactions;
- Syndicate accounting and reporting to members;
- Funding assistance and debt structuring;
- AMIT compliance, distribution statement preparation and review;
- Taxation optimisation. GST advice and lease incentive advice;
- Financial statement audit of property funds (listed and unlisted);
- Compliance plan audit, turnover audit, outgoings audit and AFS licence compliance; and
- PDS financial information verification.
To find out more about the work we do with property and funds management clients, please do not hesitate to contact ESV on 02 9283 1666.
