INVESTMENT
How property investing
can chip away at the wealth gap The wealth gap is growing and shows little sign of abating, and what’s more, the Covid-19 pandemic has fuelled this inequality further.
According to Oxfam, from 18 March 2020 to 31 December 2020, global billionaire wealth increased by US$3.9 trillion, while millions of average people – those not part of the extremely wealthy 1% – faced job losses, salary freezes and other financial challenges. The Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report found that the world’s richest 1% (those with more than US$1-million) own an extremely unequal 43.4% of the world’s wealth. One of the ways the very rich have built and maintained their wealth is through property ownership. Wealth Migrate CEO, Scott Picken, sums this up succinctly: “This is what the wealthiest people have done for centuries and there is a
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reason that there is a saying, ‘he who owns the land is King'.”
Real estate more valuable than all equities and debt securities together New research released by Savills as part of its Impacts 2021 programme found that during 2020 the value of the world’s property assets rose 5% to US$326.5 trillion. This makes real estate more valuable than all equities and debt securities together, and almost four times global gross domestic product. Institutional property investments offer investors a steady stream of income, but for most investors, these opportunities are inaccessible due to wealth
