Build your investments with bricks and mortar

FUND MANAGERS SAY the Asia-Pacific property market's star is rising and now is a good time to get on board.

Polly Kwan, investment manager of the Fidelity Funds - Asia-Pacific Property Fund, believes the market is at the beginning of a long-term growth cycle, in which prices of physical property and property-related securities will trend up as regional markets mature.

'In overseas markets, we have seen that as markets mature and become more transparent, asset prices will rise as there are fewer cases of mispricing,' Ms Kwan says.

Chris Reilly, head of property in Asia at Henderson Global Investors, says the fundamentals of the region's physical property markets are in good shape, with high occupier demand, high investor demand and low vacancy rates supporting asset values throughout the region.

'Property market cycles usually take about six or seven years to work out from trough to peak and now in Asia we are in the middle of an up-cycle, which started around the time of Sars in 2003,' Mr Reilly says.

'As a result of that, the Asian market is relatively cheap compared with other markets [which are later in the cycle].'

He believes Asian property markets will increasingly be beneficiaries of capital inflows into global property markets, a trend evident in the US and Europe.