The favourable yields achieved by listed property funds with exposure to the city centre confirm this. The CBD Property Fund – 60% of its buildings are within the Johannesburg city centre and adjacent Braamfontein – was in fact the best performer on the JSE Securities Exchange last year.

In the year to end-September, the fund achieved a yield of 44%, compared with the unit trust sector’s average of 28%. Of course, this is considerably better than the JSE all-share index, which returned only 1% over the same period.

The CBD fund recently concluded new leases for more than 3 000sq m of office space for buildings in the Johannesburg CBD and apparently mostly leased to entrepreneurs and emerging business people. The fund is managed by Sage and consists of 26 office and retail buildings with a market value of around R250m.

Figures from the SA Property Owners’ Association (Sapoa) indicate that in the three months to end-September there was a slight increase in the amount of B grade office space rented in the Johannesburg city centre. However, the overall vacancy rate increased from 23,1% to 24%, because companies in six A-grade buildings left the CBD in the same period.

As far as the performance of the seven other SA property funds in the year to September is concerned, Grayprop came second (40% return), followed by Cenprop (32%), Sycom (32%), Capital (30%), Prima (17%), Pioneer (16%) and Martprop (15%).