According to the latest Westpac Banking Corp (ASX: WBC) weekly economic report, the banking giant is expecting rates to stay low for a long time to come.
In fact, Westpac's economic team are forecasting the cash rate to stay at the record low of 0.1% until at least December 2022.
That's two more years that income investors and savers are going to have to contend with these ultra low rates.
In light of this, the Australian share market looks likely to remain the place to be for a source of income for some time.
Fortunately, there are a number of shares on the market with generous yields. Two with yields above 4% are named below:
BWP Trust (ASX: BWP)
BWP is a real estate investment trust which owns a collection of commercial assets. The majority of which are warehouses that are leased to home improvement giant, Bunnings.
It has been a positive performer this year despite the pandemic and was able to pay a distribution as normal in FY 2020. It paid 18.29 cents per share to shareholders after reporting like-for-like rental growth of 2.4% and a 1% increase in profit (before gains on investment properties) to $117.1 million.
Management has guided to a similar distribution in FY 2021. Based on the current BWP share price, this represents a 4.2% yield.
Rural Funds Group (ASX: RFF)
Rural Funds is an agriculture-focused property group. It owns a total of 61 properties across five agricultural sectors. These quality properties are leased to some of the biggest operators in the industry such as almond producer Select Harvests Limited (ASX: SHV) and wine giant Treasury Wine Estates Ltd (ASX: TWE).
One of the main attractions to the company for income investors is its long term leases, which have rental increases built in. At the last count, Rural Funds' weighted average lease expiry (WALE) stood at 10.9 years.
This gives management great visibility on its future earnings and has allowed it to provide guidance even during the pandemic. In FY 2021, Rural Funds intends to increase its distribution by 4% to 11.28 cents per share. Based on the latest Rural Funds share price, this equates to a 4.6% yield.
