Commercial property fund closures – What’s going on and will it impact your returns?

It's rare that investment funds make the news headlines yet this week they managed to but for all the wrong reasons. At the time of writing 8 commercial property funds had either stopped investors withdrawing funds altogether (called a fund closure) or written down the value of the assets within their funds by such an extent to hopefully deter investors from withdrawing their money. So what is going on? Why is this happening and will it hit your returns? I answer these questions below as well as expand on my comments which the Sunday Times requested earlier this week.

At the start of June I highlighted in one of my weekly notes the risks facing investors in commercial property funds ahead of the impending EU referendum. So convinced were the industry that we would remain in the EU that any such concerns were dismissed by the investment houses running commercial property funds.