Those of us with debt to pay off will be sleeping easier thanks to the cheaper money that Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni's interest-rate reductions have brought this past year.

Tempers are wearing thin in the JSE Security Exchange's real estate sector, where burgeoning investment funds compete for slim pickings of scrip in 20 property unit trusts (PUTs) and property loan stock companies (PLSs).

Cape Town - Hybrid property loan stock companies were finding more favour among investors despite the fact that they continued to be controversial in the industry, Coronation said yesterday.

Real estate has a bad name amongst most portfolio investors. Yet few realise that listed property trusts performed on a par with equity over the past ten years (14,5% p.a.) and outperformed financial & industrial shares by a wide margin over the past three years (27% p.a. vs 5%), says Erwin Rode of Rode & Associates, property economists and valuers.

CORONATION Property Equity Fund has chosen to limit new investment in its fund to R400m because of the limited choice offered by the listed property sector of the JSE Securities Exchange SA.