In Benjamin Roth's Depression Diary of "The Chronicles of Hard Times of the 1929 depression" he said that wise investor will disregard the day by day fluctuations of the stock market or the real estate market and base his buying and selling on these long periods of rise and fall. The conservative long term investor who follows the general rule of buying stocks when they are selling for below their intrinsic value and nobody wants them, and of selling his stock when people are biddy frantically for them at prices far above there intrinsic value ...such an investor will pretty nearly hit the bulls eye.

Although this was written some 75 years ago the words have similarity to our own time and we would do well to take cognisance of them.

The property fundamentals of the commercial property sector, while not at the unsustainable levels of recent years, have not seen the marked slowdown of the residential market. The economy remains under pressure but the Reserve Bank cutting of prime by 4.5 basis points since December could start to have an effect. Whilst this is not immediately apparent in the residential sector there are signs of an improvement in the commercial property sector where the cost of finance and its availability are very real issue.

Construction is going apace in Cape Town , a crane is seen on almost every street corner whilst in Sandton, the second largest office node in South Africa with a LSM of 10 plus, the first phase of the refurbishment and addition on new rental space at Sandton city has started. The costs are an estimative R1, 77 billion and it is scheduled for completion by late 2011. The vision for further phases included the construction of a new office tower of approximately 65 storeys. The Chinese steel giant Sinosteel has purchased The Inner Circle Office building on Rivonia road for R500million The building belonged to Edge Properties.
 
The R25billion Gauteng project linking Johannesburg Pretoria and OR Tambo airport has sparked a "massive commercial property development boom" around the stations according to the project spokesmen, while property prices have declined in other parts of the county. Jenny Alexander of the Lower Rosebank management district said the Rosebank Node was experiencing an unprecedented construction boom. Examples are the R250 million refurbishment of the Rosebank hotel, the Firs shopping centre, and Park Hyatt, at a cost of R500milion. The construction of two more hotels is under consideration. Andre Fourie of Kagiso Urban Management, said property owner are making investments of more than R1 billion.

Global investment in commercial property fell 59% in 2008 according to Cushman and Wakefield, down from 2007 record total of $1,05 billion. Emerging markets now account now account for 22% of global investment in commercial real estate when recently they only accounted for 9%.

Catalyst figure released early June confirmed that while South Africa property stocks were in the red for the year the JSE retail estate sector is holding up better than its UK. USA, Australia and European counterpart.

Whilst these are relatively bullish signs the biggest risk to all forecasts is the current state of the economy. The global finance crisis has become the major driver of our recession and our recovery is linked to its recovery. The World Bank’s President R Zoë lick said although growth is expected to revive during the course of 2010 the pace of the recovery is uncertain. In forming our own judgment we should bear in mind Benjamin’s Roth’s view given at the start of this article

The very latest news is that Shakeel Meer, divisional executive for industrial sectors at the IDC told Reuters "We are planning to provide about 11 billion rand in total funding in the current financial year, which is higher than the approximately 8 billion approved last year."
"Over the next five years, we are projecting 70 billion in new funding by the IDC," he said.

If used correctly this money could help in stimulating the economy