At times like this, it is little short of tragic that asset managers continue to promote open-ended property funds that mostly claim to offer daily liquidity to their investors – except during times of crisis when liquidity disappears.

During the 2008 credit crisis, New Star Asset Management was hit for six after it had to suspend trading in its international property fund in the face of a jump in redemption requests from investors. There is no shortage of other open-ended funds that have gated over the years, when managers saw they could not sell enough property to satisfy redemptions.