In our last quarterly review in April, I had promised a ‘shake-up’ of our PIN Fund (a fictional Fund of 10 UK listed property-related shares) in this issue, with several companies leaving and new entrants joining.

However, since then a snap general election was announced and at the time of writing Labour had just won a landslide victory.

If there is one thing most of us have learned in recent years it is that all successful investments are beholden to government policies either boosting those returns, or not intervening enough to reduce/erase them.

For this reason, I think it is better to let the dust settle for another quarter to see exactly what policies the new Labour government intends to introduce in the housing market. ‘Haste makes waste’ is a very appropriate saying when it comes to buying and selling shares.

If the stock market’s immediate reaction to the election result is anything to go by, then the new government is widely viewed as being positive for most shares in this Fund, especially the housebuilders. We will have to wait and see.

Our Fund returned 1% in Q2, but as you can see in the table below, the 10-year return was 109%, which is far more than the 19% rise in the FTSE 100 during the same period, the 75% return achieved by investors that bought gold, or the -25% loss made if you used our sample £100,000 investment fund to buy 890 barrels of oil in Q3 2014 and store them in your (very large) garage.

While UK property (+41%) and London property (+31%) have both seen modest capital appreciation over the past 10 years, the overall return, including rents, would likely be around double those figures, assuming you were a cash buyer achieving a 4% net rental yield, after management fees, void periods and maintenance costs.