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How property investing can chip away at the wealth gap
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 reason that there is a saying, ‘he who owns the land is King'.”
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
inequality. One of the best ways to breach the wealth gap is through the use of technology – online investing platforms, including Wealth Migrate, allow the 99% access to assets and opportunities otherwise reserved for the 1%.
Connecting investors and property partners
“Wealth Migrate helps to break down many of these barriers to entry by connecting investors and property partners without the added cost of middlemen and allowing investors to invest directly in property in the UK, the US and Australia and then earn US dollars, Australian dollars and pounds,” Picken says.
The Fin Tech solution allows members to gain financial security, and this is “why we want to give at least 25% of the world’s population a way to drive wealth creation by 2030”, he adds.
Crowdfunding, which uses the momentum of a group investment, has been made possible by technology – allowing each member to punch above their individual weight.
As inequality grows and with-it widespread dissatisfaction, getting more people to invest in real estate and then reap the asset class’s incomegenerating returns can make a real difference by significantly reducing the wealth gap.
