Search

The pricing and length of time to sell single-family residential properties is a function of the interaction between buyer and seller behavior. This study estimates value effects in relation to the time on the market for residential properties within the Belfast (U.K).metropolitan area. Three distinctive characteristics of market are highlighted. First, the majority of sales are at a premium to the list price. Second, different factors influence time on the market for premium and discount sales. Third, the marketing period is examined for three events: listing to sales agreement, sales agreement to completion, and listing to completion.

This paper is the winner of the best paper on Real Estate Investment Trusts award (sponsored by the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (NAREIT)] presented at the 2005 American Real Estate Society Annual Meeting. This study evaluates the investment prospects of value stocks in the real estate investment trust (REIT) market. Value stocks are defined as those that carry low prices relative to their earnings, dividends, book assets, or other measures of fundamental value. The empirical results show that from 1990 onwards, value REITs provide superior returns without exposing investors to higher risks. The evidence is consistent with the extrapolation theory, which attributes the mispricing to investors over extrapolating past corporate results into the future. Interestingly, the findings reveal that such extrapolation is asymmetric in the REIT market. While value REITs are underpriced in accordance with the extrapolation theory, no evidence is found that growth REITs are overpriced. The value anomaly also exhibited several temporal traits. Firstly, the value premium varies over time. Secondly, the magnitude of the premium is inversely associated with the market performance. Finally, the value anomaly is not evident in the pricing of REITs in the 1980s.

This paper uses a hedonic pricing model and National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries data to estimate economic depreciation or multi-family real estate. The findings indicate that inv...

This study examines various determinants of idiosyncratic risk from the perspective of un-diversified REIT investors, managers holding options, other option holders, and arbitrageurs. Since real estate investment trusts (REITs) enjoy a unique organizational structure and tax status, the relevant determinants derived from the two-stage regression model are different from other industrial firms. Results suggest that efficiency, liquidity and earnings variability are the important determinants of idiosyncratic risk, whereas size and capital do not

This study uses data on 487 nursing homes in Florida for 1996 to examine several issues about the efficiency of nursing homes. Chain affiliation (national, regional or independent) is examined, as is profit status (for-profit or non-profit). For the first time quality of care is also included, due to the uniqueness of the data which contains quality scores assigned by State of Florida officials. Multiple regression analysis, as well as data envelopment analysis (DEA), is used. The results, in general, indicate that substantial inefficiencies do exist in the range of 20% to 30%, which is consistent with previous efficiency studies in this industry. Without controlling for quality, for-profit firms and chain affiliated firms are shown to be slightly more efficient than their independent and non-profit counterparts. However, chain affiliated firms scored lower on quality than independents and for-profit firms scored lower on quality than non-profit firms. When controlling for quality, the profit status of the firm and room utilization rates are positively and significantly related to efficiency. However, in the presence of the quality control variable, there is no evidence to suggest that chain affiliation impacts efficiency.

This study compares apartment submarkets within a major European city. The price behavior of the Dublin, Ireland apartment market is tested using hedonic models and aggregate and disaggregate data....

Many corporations own a significant amount of real assets and this includes real estate. However, the effect of real asset ownership on the risk and return for a firm’s stockholders is unknown. This study attempts to ascertain the effect, if any, of corporate real asset ownership on the risk and return to stockholders. Using data from 1985 through 1994, the results indicate a lack of diversification benefits associated with holding real assets.

How people believe others perceive them often, at least partially, determines their behavior. This study analyzes how real estate agents, salespeople as well as brokers, perceive the opinions that various external groups they serve have of them. In addition, how real estate agents view each other, how they view themselves and how they might improve their professional image, are also examined.

Using a hedonic pricing model, we analyze the capitalization of total seller paid discount points and closing costs into the price of a house. We hypothesize that sellers are concerned about the sales price net of total seller paid concessions (SPNC), rather than the exact terms of the transaction. Since the SPNC is easily ascertained in the negotiation process, we further hypothesize that total seller paid concessions (TSPC) are fully capitalized into the sales price. To test this hypothesis, sales price is regressed on a set of control variables including TSPC. In this framework, TSPC will be positive and not significantly different from one if concessions are fully capitalized. The empirical results provide support for the capitalization hypothesis. Negotiation strategies and study limitations follow from the empirical results.

In order to protect the public, most states require salespeople and brokers to meet specific licensing requirements, typically in the form of classroom instruction and/or successful completion of an examination. Frequently, however, many real estate brokers require their sales staff to undertake education that exceeds these minimum requirements. In this study, we derive a theoretical model that shows how optimally-timed, firm provided education that exceeds legal minimums can increase staff productivity, reduce litigation risks and perhaps raise and/or maximize the expected value of the firm.

Using a hedonic pricing model, we analyze the capitalization of total seller paid discount points and closing costs into the price of a house. We hypothesize that sellers are concerned about the sales price net of total seller paid concessions (SPNC), rather than the exact terms of the transaction. Since the SPNC is easily ascertained in the negotiation process, we further hypothesize that total seller paid concessions (TSPC) are fully capitalized into the sales price. To test this hypothesis, sales price is regressed on a set of control variables including TSPC. In this framework, TSPC will be positive and not significantly different from one if concessions are fully capitalized. The empirical results provide support for the capitalization hypothesis. Negotiation strategies and study limitations follow from the empirical results.

This study explores factors that affect service quality for a large residential real estate brokerage firm in a diverse midwestern city. It examines the extent to which overall service quality influences homebuyers to recommend the brokerage firm and to use the firm for future transactions. A Linear Structural Relations model is fit to data using the firm's service quality instrument. Results indicate statistically significant relationships between both agent characteristics and the tangible aspects of the firm and three measures of overall service quality. Implications for the real estate industry are discussed and suggestions for improvement and future research are provided.

This study examines the stochastic properties of the commercial real estate wealth indices for three countries (the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.) and for several property types (aggregate, office, retail, and industrial). Each of the indices is tested for a unit root and all series are found to be nonstationary. Furthermore, all indices also indicate the presence of both drift and trend. The results are strongest when the indices are tested in real estate and exchange rate-adjusted form. Application of Johansen's model indicates that the system for the three countries shows evidence of co-integration for the aggregate, retail, office, and industrial properties. Again, the evidence is the strongest when the indices are tested in real and exchange rate-adjusted form. Hence, it is conceivable that inflationary expectations may be the factor that provides the common linkage between commercial real estate across national boundaries.

This study analyzes commercial real estate returns in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States over the period 1985-95, from the perspective of a U.S. investor. Because national indices can consist of differing property mixes, this study separately analyzes the office, retail, and warehouse sectors. Moreover, these analyses also convert total returns into their fundamental components: initial yield, growth in income, and shifts in capitalization rates. The paths of currency-adjusted income and asset values and, therefore, capitalization rates are also presented. Generally speaking, the fundamental components of retail returns across the four countries exhibit greater divergence than the office and warehouse sectors. It is interesting that the U.S. property sectors showed the worst performance, while the Australian retail and the British office and warehouse sectors were the best performers (both before and after currency adjustments). Additionally, the currency-adjusted Australian returns were adversely effected by exchange rate movements, while the British returns were positively effected. Lastly, the correlation of the quarterly percentage change in income was generally lower and less statistically significant that the correlation patterns observed among the other components of return. This might suggest that more idiosyncratic risk can be found in the real estate space markets (as proxied by income changes) than in the real estate capital markets (as proxied by the pricing of the income--that is, capitalization rates), which appear to be more globally influenced.

Previous studies have found that bank stock returns are very sensitive to changes in real estate returns in general. But how the composition and quality of bank real estate portfolios affect the sensitivity of bank stocks to real estate returns has not been rigorously examined. The purpose of this study is to empirically examine this important question. The results indicate that commercial mortgages contribute the most to the sensitivity of bank stock returns. Farmland loans have a negative impact on bank real estate return sensitivity. Thus, farmland loans could play a diversification role in terms of reducing the sensitivity of banks to real estate returns, if used appropriately.

This study examines the wealth effect of international versus domestic real estate joint ventures on the U.S. participating firm’s shareholders. This is done using traditional event study methodology for real estate joint venture announcements. The results suggest that domestic real estate joint ventures generally result in a significant increase in the firm’s value, while international real estate joint ventures usually have a much less significant to nonsignificant wealth impact. This may be due to the immovability of real properties in foreign countries and the large amount of initial investment in real estate that increase both political and economic risks for international real estate joint ventures. This study also finds that hotel joint ventures generally have a weaker wealth effect than non-hotel real estate joint ventures.

Historical commercial real estate returns are attributed to three fundamental factors: initial current yield, growth in net operating income, and changes in going-in versus going-out capitalization rates (i.e., pricing movements). Separating returns into these three factors appears to provide more insightful information than the traditionally reported income and appreciation returns. Using this three-factor model, historical real returns and inflation pass-through rates are estimated for each major type of real estate (residential A/B/C, residential D/E, office, retail, industrial).

Overseas real estate investment has increased considerably in recent years. The assessment of risk for these investments, especially for real estate, has thus become very important. This study assesses the performance of real estate, stocks and bonds in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand over the period 1985-93. The results indicate that the degree of appraisal-smoothing and intertemporal correlation in each of the five international real estate series is significant, resulting in the need to increase the real estate risk estimates by 34% to 47%. To account for currency risk over this nine-year period, currency-adjusted returns and risk were also estimated for investors from each of these five countries. All risk profiles increased significantly for international investors when adjusting for currency risk. However, additional portfolio diversification was achieved using real estate for international investors.

This study presents a regression-based analysis of apartment rents for a cross-section of properties located in an "edge city" submarket. It attempts to provide a solution for owners and managers of apartments to the thorny problem of setting a property's rental rate. The approach used in this analysis differs from previous studies in at least three important respects: (1) vacancy is treated as part of the dependent variable, (2) the property-specific rental rate generated by the regression analysis is compared to the property's actual effective rent, and (3) each property in the submarket is ranked by the difference between its actual effective rent and its characteristic-adjusted effective rent. This is then followed by several observations concerning the advantages and disadvantages of such an analysis in a practical setting.

This article presents an overview of the numerous innovations of the American Real Estate Society during its first ten years. Many of its accomplishments are unique for an academically based organization. Because of this, the definition of an academic/professional organization has been changed forever due to the synergistic effects of mixing practicing professionals and applied academicians.

This study examines the real estate journals and discipline from the unique perspective of mainstream finance faculty. The entire academic membership of the Financial Management Association (FMA) i...

The ability of a financial or real asset to provide a rate of return above the rate of inflation is crucial to investors. The financial literature on the inflation-hedging effectiveness of various investments suggests that real estate acts as a hedge against inflation on a period-by-period basis, while financial assets do not. Given this, an investor who could accurately forecast changes in inflation, and therefore alter his/her investment portfolio between real estate and financial assets, should be able to significantly improve portfolio returns. Recently, a new method of measuring potential inflation has been developed by the Federal Reserve Board. Dubbed P*, it relates long-run spending in the economy to long- run output and gives an implied value for future inflation. In this study, the accuracy of P* in forecasting prices is compared to conventional forecasts of inflation. The P* variable is then used to generate a decision rule for investors in terms of holding financial assets (which performs well in periods of low or falling inflation) and real estate (which has been identified as an asset that behaves as an effective hedge against inflation). The results for this strategy are then contrasted with the performance of selected assets under a simple buy-and -hold strategy.

Most studies (including this one) have found a weak statistical relationship between total returns for securitized and unsecuritized real estate equities. Some studies argue that REIT shares behave...

This study investigates the variability in the risk components of REITs over the 1973-1989 period using the cusum test, the cusum of squares test, and the Quandt's log-likelihood ratio method. Four REIT portfolios were formed: an all-REIT portfolio, an equity REIT portfolio, a hybrid REIT portfolio, and a mortgage REIT portfolio. The two-index model was employed and the results indicated that both the market beta and the interest-rate beta of the portfolios were time-varying. In addition, significant shifts in return-generating regimes over time were detected for all four portfolios.

Most studies (including this one) have found a weak statistical relationship between total returns for securitized and unsecuritized real estate equities. Some studies argue that REIT shares behave more like the stock market, than real estate. In an attempt to focus this discussion, this study examines the fundamental underlying return-generating components: dividends, investment values, and dividend yields using NAREIT and NCREIF data from 1978 through 1994. While dividends have been part of the REIT pricing calculus for some time, relatively few studies have focused upon the "dividends" paid by NCREIF properties. The short-run relationships between these fundamental components are weak and many of their distributions display significant non-normal tendencies. Even when quarterly lags of up to two years are examined, these distributions also tend to be weakly correlated with one another. Of the three fundamental components, the long-run path of prices exhibited the strongest relationship. Interestingly, the volatility of the NCREIF dividend series is approximately 150% of the NAREIT volatility, while the volatility of the NCREIF asset values is roughly 25% of the NAREIT volatility. This is contradictory: in a simplified setting, greater dividend volatility should be accompanied by greater price volatility, not less, as observed here. Nevertheless, such comparisons suffer due to the incompatibility of the data sources and, accordingly, this study should be viewed as a preliminary examination of securitized and unsecuritized real estate returns.

Using tax-qualified mortgage REITs over three periods (1976-79, 1980-82, and 1983-90), this paper investigates the pricing of interest-rate risk for mortgage REITs at equilibrium. A system of nonlinear equations is estimated to determine the monthly interest-rate risk premium over each of the three time intervals. There is evidence to support the hypothesis that interest-rate risk is not diversifiable and hence commands a risk premium.

This study examines the portfolio performance for forty-seven commingled real estate funds using several different sets of real estate benchmarks and the multifactor Jensen alpha measure. The results indicate that the choice of a specific aggregate real estate market index makes very little difference in the performance results. Adding an inflation index, or disaggregating the market index into regional subindices, produces alphas that are less correlated with the single-index model alphas and produces a large reduction in the amount of abnormal performance detected. In addition, disaggregating the single-market index into property types produces alphas that are the least correlated with those from the other models and also produces a reduction in the amount of abnormal performance detected, similar to the results for the inflation and regional models.

This paper examines the rates of return for office buildings in four Texas cities to test for the presence of geographical patterns. The findings indicate that a geographical pattern does exist, both on an inter-city and intra-city basis. These results indicate a heightened emphasis on geographical diversification of real estate portfolios is warranted. Further research in the area of capital/real estate market segmentation in the structuring of real estate portfolios is strongly suggested.

Historical commercial real estate returns are attributed to three fundamental factors: initial current yield, growth in net operating income, and changes in going-in versus going-out capitalization...

Historical commercial real estate returns are attributed to three fundamental factors: initial current yield, growth in net operating income, and changes in going-in versus going-out capitalization rates (i.e., pricing movements). Separating returns into these three factors appears to provide more insightful information than the traditionally reported income and appreciation returns. Using this three-factor model, a two-dimensional matrix of projected ten-year real yields is estimated for each major type of commercial real estate.

The proportion of a city's local and regionally/nationally supported office employment changes as the city assumes more central place functions. Certain mixes of office employment should reflect the central place function of the city and promote office growth. Forty-five cities are studied using data from 1997, 1982, and 1985. The results indicate that the variance of office employment does not help predict a city's growth, but that certain cluster categories of office employment are associated with office employment growth. Finally, the results indicate that office employment profiles of cities have become more homogenized over time.

The purpose of this article is to outline the legal requirements and regulations that govern hazardous wastes and cleanup. In addition, an outline of the site assessment process is developed and the factors that must be considered in evaluating site-specific costs are reviewed.

Inflation and inflation cycles have been a major underlying reason for the financial successes and failures of real estate investors in recent history. These cycles have complex impacts on cash flow variables and thus on real estate returns and investment values. This study presents a decision framework and operational model to project investment returns for alternative inflation cycle scenarios and demonstrates their application for developing a dynamic real estate investment strategy. Such a strategy provides for portfolio revisions during different stages of the inflation cycle and assumes that investors seek to maximize expected "real" rates of return and hence owner's wealth. A probabilistic discounted cash flow model is designed and used to inflation-adjust each cash flow variable affected. Mathematical relationships are developed for specifying unique cash flow variable linkages and sensitivities, with lead and lag periods consistent with empirical evidence of timing of inflation impacts. Finally strategic implications for acquisition and disposition policy are discussed.

In performing an absorption analysis for a real estate investment, conventional appraisal approaches assume that space will be absorbed evenly across the market and evenly across the absorption period. These approaches fail to provide an accurate period-by-period absorption schedule for a specific property that reflects the supply and demand conditions of the market as well as specific characteristics of the subject property. The approach proposed in this study provides a simple and explainable model that permits the appraiser to estimate absorption with more accuracy through traditional market comparison techniques and to integrate the analysis of market supply and demand conditions on a period-by-period basis.

Investment and portfolio studies generally use ex post risk and return data, although expected risk and return data is what should be used. This is probably due to the dearth of such data or the di...

Investment and portfolio studies generally use ex post risk and return data, although expected risk and return data is what should be used. This is probably due to the dearth of such data or the difficulty and/or cost of obtaining it on a current basis. This study reports the results of a survey of major real estate investors and researchers, i.e., large life insurance companies, real estate advisors, large pension funds, and selected academics. The survey examined investment horizon, expectations about inflation, total returns on real estate, distribution between income and appreciation returns, the volatility of real estate returns, and the correlation of real estate returns with stocks returns, bond returns, and inflation. In addition, the study contains results for the above before and after the October 19, 1987, stock market crash.

This article seeks to answer why over a nineteen-year period the debt-coverage ratio for commercial noninsured properties averages 1.29. The article applies the corporate liabilities extension of the Black-Scholes option pricing model to the equity valuation of a real estate project. The regression results of the modified model robustly sustain its usefulness in explaining the derivation of the debt-coverage ratio. The results confirm that commercial mortgage loan underwriters operate with a five-year horizon in creating the equity cushion needed to protect themselves against interest-rate risk.

Inflation has become one of the predominant financial concerns of the late twentieth century. In the late 1970s, public opinion polls ranked inflation as the number one problem in the United States. While the rate of inflation has slowed since the late 1970s, inflation is still present and many investors expect a resurgence of inflation to higher levels in the near to immediate future. This continued concern about inflation has led to an increased search and evaluation of investments that will protect investors from inflation. Assets that have the ability to protect investors from the effects of inflation are generally labeled inflation hedges. Real estate has been regarded as one of the best inflation hedges of past years. While there has been research in the past evaluating this possibility and some recent research using only business real estate, no current research on residential real estate or farmland as inflation hedges exists. This study examines the inflation-hedging effectiveness of residential real estate, farmland, and business real estate (with a different data set) as individual assets and in a portfolio context for 1960-86.

The short-term health and, more importantly, the long-term survival of businesses depends on their adaptability to changing economic environments. Real estate brokerage firms are no exception to this evolutionary rule. Furthermore, recent years have seen an acceleration in the rate of economic change. Therefore, the willingness of real estate brokerage firms to assimilate new services has become even more important.The purpose of this research study is to ascertain the types of new services now perceived as available for real estate brokerage firms, those in current development, and perhaps a glimpse of those a few years away in their development. In addition, this study attempts to ascertain broker's attitudes towards these new services, the rate of adoption of these services by brokerage firms and to gather real estate broker's ideas on future services, their implementation, and perceived profitability. Currently such services would include property appraisal, small business brokerage, real estate syndi...