Scott O'Neill

I like to sort of invest relatively counter-cyclical just to get a good buy day one.

And I feel like retail is a pretty good time to start looking at it again.

It's still got a bit of a stigma attached to it because of COVID.

There's some areas I still would avoid like the plague, but there's other types of like suburban retail shopping centers, things like that.

They're performing well.

And I think that trend is just going to continue because they're priced pretty decently at the moment compared to industrial, which is white hot at the moment.

Everyone wants industrial.

It became almost like the gold of commercial property once COVID hit because all businesses moved online.

There's obviously supply strain constraints so people are storing more, manufacturing more in Australia.

Everything under an industrial roof is doing pretty decently relative to the rest of the economy.

So that will continue to go strong.

But there is a premium you need to pay to get into that market now because it is priced almost like a safe haven asset.

Office space is the most countercyclical angle you could go with.

And I'm all for office space if it's unique or it's just not an oversupplied type of asset because you can buy better.

You can still get yields maybe 1% or 2% higher if you go into an asset class people are a little bit not as comfortable with right now.

In five years' time, comforts shift for people.

Industrial might be out of flavor in five years or office might be back in vogue.

You've got to invest for the long-term fundamentals of individual assets.

But yeah, I like to keep an open mind with commercial property.

There's never one direction you should go.