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Marcus Langlands Pearse, manager of the £683m Henderson New Star Property unit trust, said he was eager to spread the word about the benefits of commercial property. And while he conceded things were not "definitely in turnaround", he said now was a good time to invest.

"What I've been seeing over the last few months is the more seasoned players in property, who have been out of the market for three or four years, are slowly coming back into the market," he said.

"Also, many of the opportunity funds that were set up to take advantage of property in the crisis have raised their cash and are coming into the market."

While he refused to call the bottom of the market, expecting continued volatility, Mr Pearse advocated investors start to drip-feed investment into this asset class in preperation for the recovery phase.

Mr Pearse said there was a good income story in the market at the moment, particularly at the prime end where yields were stabilising.

Regarding his own fund, Mr Pearse said his main concerns were maintaining liquidity, replacing some of the properties that no longer had a long-term position within the portfolio and finding new opportunities.

He said: "The main concern people have had for our fund over the last 20 months is liquidity and whether they could get their money out if need be. The fact is, we haven’t closed the fund at any time over the period.

"There are one or two properties within the portfolio that we bought earlier on that we worked very hard. They are multi lets properties in London, and we now think it would be a good time to release those to the market and then build up a bit more cash and reinvest it in other sectors."

While the fund's weighting in the retail sector has been "light", Mr Pearse said yields had begun to get "very hot" and that it was an area into which the company would further diversify.