Victoria is a Partner at Koda Capital. She delivers investment portfolio and strategic financial planning advice to a wide range of clients with an anti-jargon and no fuss approach. Focusing on a pragmatic approach to allow clients to make informed decisions about their future, she works hard to make complex financial decisions accessible for those that need it to be. Throughout almost 20 years in delivering personalised advice, Victoria always tries to bring joy and real life to all stages of the process. With an extensive knowledge in responsible and ethical investments, Victoria believes in the power of capital to do good.

“It’s an investment.” said the man in the caravan park.

“It’ll never go down in value.”

 He’s right. A perfect condition Torana is scarce, and demand has been driven by cashed-up boomers with a reminiscent streak. He will never sell, because you should never sell something that will never go down in value. Right? 

Firstly, unexpected things happen all the time. With all his life savings in one garage, what does he do then?

Secondly, an investment should always meet your objectives. Going back to the Torana owner, I bet he could have done with some income or being able to chip away at the capital growth. But this investment was giving him neither.

Thirdly, when an investor focuses solely on one asset in which they have expertise or interest, they are likely to miss many more.

Backing a winner more often

There are four key questions to ask when making an asset allocation decision:

• What is the capital return I need to meet my goals?

• What is the income I need?

• How liquid does it need to be?

• How far away can reality be before I am disappointed? That is, risk tolerance.

The most effective method of reducing risk is to maintain a portfolio that has the greatest probability of performing to your objectives, when combined with the benefit of time. A well-diversified portfolio will have a high probability of an acceptable return – the middle of the bell curve.[1] Diversification can be across asset classes, industries, geographies, capital structure, and managers (idea generators).

Importantly, the drivers of return and risk should be as uncorrelated as possible.

Whereas, a portfolio of concentrated bets will have equal probabilities of a fantastic return and of a terrible one – the tails of the normal distribution. [2] A recent CFA Institute study found that “peak diversification” was between 15 and 30 shares, depending on the style bias. [3] As few Australian property investors can boast that kind of portfolio – diversified across geographies and sectors – they are likely to be highly concentrated and inherently risky.  

To increase the chances of success in building and protecting wealth over the long term, property investors should carefully consider their level of risk and compare it with their return expectations, income objectives and liquidity needs.

Using the same philosophy for success

The property market rests on scarcity. Economic scarcity being the intersection of supply and demand (or desire). Psychological scarcity is used in sales promotion. That is, how easily an opportunity can be lost or became unobtainable the more attractive it becomes and the higher price it demands.

Of course, property also offers utility. You can live in a house and you can run your business from a factory, shop or office. However, individual investor utility diminishes as the portfolio grows in number.

Effectively, success in property relies heavily on finding a niche for which buyers (at some point in the future) will pay a premium. It is this uniqueness – along with property’s inherent illiquidity and high transaction costs that works to insulate good property in bad times. 

The scarcity premium model for selecting investments can also be utilised in small company investing and alternatives, and in these asset classes the drivers of both risk and return should be diversified from your property portfolio.

 

Meeting your objectives, objectively

“If you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail.”

Benjamin Franklin has it all wrong. Jennifer Aniston has it right.

“I always say don’t make plans, make options.”

Any good investment portfolio should deliver you with a set of options. Admittedly, when you have good debt serviceability from other sources, liquidity and yield don’t seem as important as capital growth. If you can take on higher risk, aggressive equity-building strategies like development make sense.

However, as you start to rely on your capital to meet your expenses or have less time to recover from bad timing, having options will be of greater importance. That is, the option to move capital quickly to meet market opportunities and risks, the option to create higher income or the option to sell parts of an investment (divisibility).

Many long-term investors in Australian property are at risk of retiring as asset rich and income poor, with maintenance costs, illiquidity, and indivisibility of their property holdings presenting a real risk to retirement plans. They always thought the property portfolio would meet all their needs in retirement, so never put anything else anywhere else.

Property developers are managing a business, reinvesting earnings into new projects and hanging their hats on the idea that the few projects before retirement will deliver the capital needed to seed a healthy superannuation fund. Yet, the danger is they have a handful of very similar assets to sell.

Objectives-based asset allocation will give investors a diversified set of options when they need it.

Valuing expertise

When you invest for greater liquidity, you are likely to experience greater price volatility. At least this is how you will perceive any investment that is priced more often than a property is valued. However, if you are a true long-term investor (and you should be if you are in property!), then the additional volatility should be outweighed by the benefits of being able to move in and out of positions over the medium term.

While expertise is important when considering asset allocation and investments, lack of expertise should not result in exclusion.  A good adviser will research, inspect and negotiate terms on new investment opportunities, thereby opening your investment universe to a wider set of options. They should balance your existing property portfolio and its risk/return drivers with that of new diversified options as well as guide you through market turbulence.

Every asset class – cash, bonds, credit, property, equity and alternatives – has a position in building wealth. How much comes down to the investor, what they want and (too often overlooked) what they actually need. And of course, this changes with time.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bell-curve.asp

[2] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bell-curve.asp

[3] https://blogs.cfainstitute.org/investor/2021/05/06/peak-diversification-how-many-stocks-best-diversify-an-equity-portfolio/