First van Eyk-MIA research report released

By Zoe Fielding

VAN Eyk and property research group Managed InvestmentAssessments (MIA) have released the first report completed under a strategic alliance formed by the companies in April this year.

The subject of the report, Centro Properties Group’s Direct Property Fund received a ‘superior’ rating from MIA, the highest rating in its two-tiered system that assesses product (60 per cent weighting) and manager performance (40 per cent weighting).

MIA director Anton Lawrence said he was pleased the first product to be rated under the strategic alliance was of such high quality.

“We found the level of disclosure of material information to be particularly comforting,” he said.

Lawrence said MIA’s assessment process involves four steps:

site visits and interviews with fund managers;

examination and testing of the financial models used;

inspection of documents including due diligence, product disclosure statements and reports on environmental factors such as potential contamination; and

site visits to the investment properties in the case of property trusts.

As many as 60 property products are expected to be researched by MIA and made available to van Eyk clients via the iRate research platform in the coming months.

“We’d be expecting them to come out once a week,” Lawrence said.

He added MIA is also working towards the release of comparative industry reports on the mortgage fund, property securities fund and hybrid fund sectors over the next six months.

Lawrence said the researcher’s second report will be released at the end of this week.

“The reports we’re working on at the moment are a mixture of property security funds from both very large institutional companies and boutiques and… open-ended unlisted and closed ended unlisted property trusts and syndicates, again from institutional companies worth billions right through to the boutiques,” he said.