We know already that the COVID-19 virus will cause significant economic disruption. While a serious illness, fortunately its mortality rate is far lower than resulted from the SARS outbreak in 2002. Given the uncertainties about what is still a poorly understood illness, it is difficult to make any reliable forecasts about the pandemic’s growth and duration. However, we believe the most likely scenario based on what we know to date is that most countries will be affected to some degree and governments will initiate both public health and financial policies to deal with containing its spread and smoothing out the impact on their respective economies.
From the property market’s perspective, some industry sectors are clearly already suffering a negative impact. For other sectors, activity may well slow in the short term but most activity will be deferred to drive a strong recovery later. We also see the rationale for investment in some sectors to be strengthened from the experience of the outbreak of COVID-19.
