Forbes continues with its posting on art as an investment. The current posts asks the question is art an asset or an investment. The post references a recent UBS art discussion where is was concluded art was definitely an asset, but the jury was still out in classifying art as an investment. One of the main concerns voice was obtaining fair value when purchasing art, and how to determine that.
Forbes reports
Source: ForbesSo trying to figure out what you should pay for art is fraught with complications. Another panelist on Wednesday, Michael Gearty, a portfolio specialist for Transparent Value Mutual Funds, said that his general approach to investing was to mathematically and unemotionally figure out what something is worth. “When you’re investing in anything, art, securities or real estate, you want to make sure that you do not over pay,” he said.
The trouble is that there’s no reliable way of doing that in the art market. Art indices are certainly helpful to a point and deserve a post of their own, but they only track art offered at auction, less than 50% of the overall market, and typically only successful sales at auction, which account for an even smaller slice.
Even within that category, buyers are subjective, faddish and emotional, which as Rabin pointed out, can massively inflate prices. “Let’s say the estimate is $3 million to $5 million for a work at auction and it sells for $12 million or $13 million, which we’ve seen often. Is it actually worth that? My argument is that it’s worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Will it sell for that price again? It’s hard to say. There could be someone in the room willing to pay three times what they think they actually should because it fills out their collection.”
No comments:
Post a Comment