| Keywords | Abstract | |
|---|---|---|
| "A BENCHMARK ON THE PROPERTY LENDING MARKET." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | For the actors of the property lending market, we design a dedicated service with analyses on each loan authorised and on their global activity, as well as settle the position of each bank in comparison with the other banks. We have then launched a benchmark including the major players in France. With these partners, during half-yearly Committees, we discuss about property market evolutions, and IPD updates the analyses proposed according to what came out of the discussions. Which indicators are analysed? Which issues do banks face? What are the market features? Since 2004, we have developed numerous analyses in France, and we are now thinking about implementing the product on an international level. What adaptations of the product are expected in foreign markets? We will try to present you our approach and discuss about the key factors of the property lending market. | |
| "A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE DIFFERENT SYSTEMS USED TO SELL RESIDENTIAL HOUSES IN SCOTLAND." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | This study analyses the efficiency of the two systems used to sell residential properties in the Scotland: first price sealed bid auctions and the fixed price system (where the seller accepts the first bid at a specified level). Sellers can choose which method they want to adopt when selling their property. Many previous studies of real estate auctions specify that market conditions are the main determinant of real estate auction performances. This is consistent with auction theory which indicates that the level of a winning bid in a sealed bid auction is determined by the number of bidders and risk aversion among the bidders. An increase in number of bidders is likely to result a high winning bid; also if the potential bidders are risk averse in the sense that they dislike the risk of not getting the auctioned object, the winning bid is also likely to be higher than if the bidders are risk neutral. When the market is strong, solicitors and estate agents therefore tend to advise sellers to adopt the sealed bid system despite the fact that this may increase the time on market. This study uses statistical methods to explore changes in the preference of sellers to the two systems over time and the extent to which the sealed bid system systematically generates higher sale price while controlling for different housing characteristics and different market conditions. Analysis is based on house sales data for the last two decades from Aberdeen city and Aberdeenshire area of Scotland. | |
| "A FRAMEWORK FOR IDENTIFYING INVESTMENT-GRADE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The global real estate sector has experienced exceptional growth over the last decade, reflected in rapid growth in cross-border real estate investment activity. A surrounding issue with the internationalisation of real estate investment is the identification of investment-grade real estate markets. This paper proposes a framework for identifying investment-grade international real estate markets. It presents a formal process for assisting with the strategic and tactical selection of investable international markets. In particular, the framework involves segmenting the investment universe into geographical regions and establishing a feasible set of markets based on various criteria: economic prospects; space market fundamentals, capital market conditions and risk. The paper presents an application of the framework with reference to countries in Europe and Asia. Of countries identified as investment grade, eighteen are regarded as core markets, namely fifteen in Europe and three in Asia. These core countries tend to have better growth prospects and lower risk profile. The proposed framework provides a robust and useful tool for investment managers and other market players in formulating strategic geographical asset allocation investment decisions. Furthermore, the framework is flexible, being portable across other asset classes such as infrastructure. | |
| "A HETERODOX ECONOMICS APPROACH OF PROPERTY MARKET EFFICIENCY." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Most of the literature on property markets is written as though it were the very paradigm of a neoclassical perfect market. Land speculation is an intrinsic characteristic of land markets, but it is often omitted in economic approaches of market efficiency and is rarely placed in its geographical context. In this paper, we explore the spatial, economic and financial dimensions of land speculation effects on market efficiency within an institutional and social economics economic perspective, by considering planning regulations, land tenure system, and land transactions, within the geographical context of a tourist agglomeration development in Greece. Within the context of increasing demand for means of accommodation, bank financing practices and state subsidy systems favoured the creation of new enterprises, the accommodation supply and consequently the increase in land demand. Land property structures, urban planning regulations and state policies have d etermined land supply. All the above factors have produced synergies that encouraged land speculation with ambivalent effects on local real estate markets, tourist activities and space, thus creating conditions of market inefficiency. | |
| "A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON GERMAN DIRECT REAL ESTATE PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The German market for office real estate has gained strong attention of international investors over the last three years. In 2006 the commercial real estate investment volume reached an all-time peak of EUR 49.4 bill., an increase of 109% after EUR 20.6 bill. in 2005 and EUR 16.8 bill. in 2004. As a consequence, the average prime office yields in the major markets Berlin, D¸sseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich fell from 5.31% at the end of Q3 2005 to 4.65% at the end of 2006. The letting take-up in the five major cities exceeded the previous year by 16%, accompanied by a fall in vacancy rates. The increased demand for office space has resulted in rising prime- and average rents in all five cities except Berlin. The three indicators mentioned above (investment activity, yield compression and rent increase) suggest that the capital value of German residential properties has risen in 2006. However, the IPD Germany office index shows for 2006 a negative growth of -0.9%. In the presented paper, I argue that appraisalbased indices are in contradiction to German office market performance evidence. The aim is to present a transaction-inferred office property performance index that overcomes the shortcomings of appraisal-based indices and aligns performance reporting with market evidence. | |
| "A NEW REAL ESTATE VALUATION PROCESS IN THE FIELD OF RESIDENTIAL FINANCING." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The traditional valuation process with high costs and a long processing time has become increasingly difficult to maintain due to the competitive market and new approaches being utilized for valuation for financial purposes. The paper suggests a new appraisal process for the financing of residential properties. The suggested process places the valuer in a supervisor-like role over a partly automated process. The valuer then controls the process, valuing unusual properties and constantly improving the valuation process. | |
| "A REPEAT SALES INDEX ROBUST TO SMALL TRANSACTIONS VOLUME." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | As suggested by D. Geltner, commercial properties indices have to be built using repeat sales instead of hedonic indices. The repeat sales method is a means of constructing real estate price indices based on a repeated observation of property transactions. These indices may be used as benchmarks for real estate portfolio managers. But the investors in general are also interested in introducing real estate performance in their portfolio to enhance the efficient frontier. Thus, expected return and volatility are the two key parameters. To create and to improve contracts on real estate indices, trend and volatility of these indices must be robust regarding to the periodicity of the index and the volume of transactions. This paper aims to test the robustness of the trend and volatility estimations for two indices: the classical Weighted Repeat Sales (Case & Shiller 1987) and a PCA factorial index (Baroni, BarthÈlÈmy and Mokrane 2007). The estimations are computed from a dataset of Paris commercial properties. The main findings are the trend and volatility estimates are biased for the WRS index and not for the PCA factorial index when the periodicity increases. Consequently, the level of the index at the end of the computing period is significantly different for various periodicities in the case of the WRS index. Globally, the PCA factorial seems to be more robust to the number of transactions. Firstly, we present the two methodologies and the dataset. Then we test the impact of the number of transactions per period on the trend and volatility estimates for each index and we give an interpretation of the results. | |
| "A STUDY INTO THE EFFECT OF SUSTAINABILITY ON COMMERCIAL PROPERTY INVESTMENT DRIVERS IN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Over the last few years the notion of sustainability has gained momentum within investment markets, particularly for property assets. A number of key drivers have been identified as affecting property investment decisions within the context of sustainability. This paper reports on the outcome of a study comprising in depth interviews with key players in the property investment market in Australia and New Zealand. The study seeks to understand the impact of these drivers and their effect on the investment product landscape including decisions relating to future investment strategies, property development and the management of existing property investment portfolios. | |
| "A STUDY OF CAUSAL MODEL FOR LAND USE CHANGE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Land resource is restricted and scarce, in order to avoid developing in inadequate manner, the evolutionary process of the land use change and the natural and artificial reasons should be considered to plan for the land use plan. The theoretical system and analytic frameworks will complete at first through documents studies, theories analysis and related references comparison. The analytic frameworks including three components, the first one is to master the key factors of land use change, the second one is to approach the casual relationships between the factors among land use change, and consequently is to establish the structural equation model of land use change. | |
| "ALLOCATION OF VALUE AND PARTIAL INTEREST VALUATION." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. |
Probably majority of appraisal assignments involve the valuation of less than the whole property and many approaches in valuation offer the value for the entire property. Partial Interest is an Interest (in property) that is less complete than a fee sample interest. An important part of the concepts used by the valuers are related with Partial Interest and Allocation Matter: Bundle of rights, Cash Generating Unit, Component Value, Control, Control premium, Easement, Financial Interest The allocation is a professional service for which the valuers have the background to perform. There are many cases when a valuer has to allocate the value into components: -For accounting purpose (real property, personal property, working capital, intangible value, impairment concept etc.); -For taxation (building and land); -Purchasing price allocation; -Dissenting action ñ squeeze out/ sell out -For investment decisions etc. // In this paper we discuss about division of real property using different criteria (between public and private interest) considering legal point of view, economic point of view and physical division of the property. The paper examines the general principles and methods used in allocation matter and valuation of partial interest |
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| "AN ALTERNATIVE METHOD TO ESTIMATE THE HOUSING PRICE EXPECTATIONS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Price expectation is one of the factors promoting speculation in housing markets. However, in the literature proxies are often used due to a lack of observations, with interest rates or lagged prices commonly used variables. Expectation is recognized as the determinant factor in explaining the increase of the non-fundamental component of housing prices compared to the more traditional drivers such as population, stock, income, wealth, interest rates and inflation. This paper proposes an alternative method to measure the house price expectations and one that more accurately reflects the market. The analysis utilises a valuation database of about 900,000 records for the Spanish housing market, each record contains information about the price that owners expect to obtain on selling their property. The methodology uses a hedonic model approach to separate that part of the price arising from housing heterogeneity and the general housing prices trend and isolat ing this from the expectations of the housing prices. | |
| "AN ASSESSMENT OF URBAN PARK FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF RESIDENTSí EXPERIENCES BASED ON STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | One of the most important issues of UN is the development and conversation of urban parks policy. This issue is not only the components of regional resources and spatial plans, but also the outcomes of cultural orders and social ethics. Moreover, an urban park plays key role to environmental maintaining, leisure recreation, and urban precaution and so on. It is no doubt that an urban park is the extremely element of a city in aspects of living, production and ecology. However, the spatial pattern and function of an urban park either consist with its characters or meet with usersí needs are the motives of this study. Exploring the behavior intention of an urban park user and its influencing factors is important for enhancing urban park policy and finding out the main demand of an urban park. This study is undertaken to establish a conceptual framework to describe the behavior intention of an urban park. Then GIS is approach to assist investigate and analyze the usersí behavior to different urban parks. And a structural equation model is then employed to formulate the relationship between individualís behavior intention of an urban park and its influencing factors. A set of questionnaires will be designed and citizens in Tainan will be interviewed in order to collect the required data for empirical study purpose. The main purposes of this study are as follows: 1. to understand the way and property of citizens, 2. to formulate the relationship between individualís behaviors of urban parks, 3. to establish the structural equation model of citizensí behavior to an urban park, 4. to bring up suggestions to improve an urban park. | |
| "AN ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF SHANGHAI OFFICE RENTS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Modern commercial office market in Shanghai emerged with Chinaís economic reform and open door policy in the 1980s and grew fast at the beginning of 1990s, with increasing demand for office space from foreign and domestic occupiers. Though total real estate investment is skewed towards residential property, office investment has grown by 23% per annual in terms of value and by 24% per annum in terms of completed floor space from 1995 to 2006. The Shanghai office market is of importance for a number of reasons. First, it is one of the largest office markets in China in terms of square footage and in investment terms. Second, the office market is one of most established ones in China and attracts most attention from the policy makers, investors, practitioners and academia. However, so far there is little empirical research on Shanghai office market. This paper will use econometric modelling techniques to investigate office rent determination of the CBD in central Puxi area, Shanghai, over the period 1992 ñ 2006. Using a reduced form mdoelling specification based on demand and supply interactions, changes in office stock and interest rates are found to be the most important determinants of short run dynamics of office rental change in the Shanghai market. | |
| "AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF THE IMPACT OF UNIVERSITY TRAINING ON UK GRADUATE SURVEYORS' DECISION MAKING." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Studies regarding rational decision issues have been conducted over centuries, and one of the common understandings of rationality in financial terms is that investors are assumed to be risk averse. However, a previous paper, Xu & Dent (2007), identifies that property professionals in both the UK and China do not behave in a rational manner as assumed in traditional finance models. This is because the sample in the study is risk seeking when the probabilities of receiving capital gains are low. This current paper explores whether university training would influence the respondentsí risk preferences. A study of first year, final year undergraduate and postgraduate Real Estate students at Oxford Brookes University was used to investigate the potential of university training to improve peopleís decision making, so as to enhance the rationality of their behaviour. | |
| "AN INVESTIGATION OF THE INCIDENCE OF NATIONAL NON DOMESTIC RATES IN THE UK COMMERCIAL PROPERTY MARKET." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | This paper relates to the study of National Non Domestic Rates (NNDR), a property tax related to the rateable value of buildings not used for domestic purposes. Rateable values are reviewed every five years while the NNDR multiplier is adjusted annually in line with the RPI. The research specifically relates to analysis of the incidence of the NNDR tax, ie who ultimately pays the tax - the landlord or the tenant. The work undertaken set out to answer the following questions: 1 Is there evidence that rents move in response to a change in NNDR? 2 What is the time period of adjustment for rents following changes to NNDR? 3 Are there regional/sectoral effects in the relationship between rents and NNDR? // Enterprise Zones are at the core of the empirical analysis because they were subject to full NNDR relief, along with other benefits. This means that they can act as a useful control group against which to assess properties with similar characteristics in nearby areas receiving no relief. Due to a lack of rental data for Enterprise Zones during their designation period, the main focus is on the period of adjustment once an area ceased to have Enterprise Zone status. | |
| "ANALYSING THE NEED FOR SHOPPING CENTRES. EVIDENCE FROM FINLAND." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Shopping centres have remarkable effects on their surroundings. They affect and move consumer masses, traffic networks and even housing. On the other hand, characteristics of stores, i.e., size, sales per square metres and rent per square metre, as they relate to location are vital for the success of a shopping centre. Size, shape and general layout of shopping centres also place constraints on store location and therefore are relevant to overall store location (Carter & Vandell 2005) and attraction. Although, at least since the eighties, recognition of the distinct nature of the shopping participation, departing from the narrow function of buying behaviour to the broader function of consumer behaviour, has been included in the scientific debate within the discipline of marketing (e.g. Lovelock 1996). Location planning and market analysis research can be done using several location planning theories and through various techniques within the shopping centre context. This paper discusses about the methods and empirical findings within the theme of forecasting the shopping centre demand from the Finnish perspective. When comparing to the amount of population and the population density, the number of shopping centres is large in Finland. The aim is to mirror the market analysis characteristics from the point of view of consumers, retailers, urban planners and investors. The study highlights operational and strategic implications of location planning discussing them from a real estate market analysis perspective. | |
| "ANALYSIS AND BENEFITS OF MARKET SEGMENTATION ON PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Real Estate investors rely on the diversification of their portfolios as a tool to reduce the volatility of their portfolioís performance. Diversification is the principal tool of Harry Markowitzís Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT). Diversification achieves reductions in the total portfolio risk by means of small reductions in the returns when combining risky assets together. However, property assets are ërara avisí, their behaviour is idiosyncratic unlike other financial assets. Market Segmentation is a technique to achieve diversification by means of gathering together those assets sharing a similar performance. This gathering of similar assets maximises the variance present across the different segments of the market while minimising the variance of the individual assetís returns within the segments. | |
| "ANOTHER LOOK AT THE LONDON OFFICE MARKET." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The London office market is one of the most researched market in the world owing both to size and data availability. Prior work modelling office market rental adjustment was based on only two decades of data that were dominated by less than an incomplete real estate cycle (Hendershott et al, 1999; 2002; Wheaton et al., 1997),with vacancy peaking in 1991 but not reaching its trough by 1996. Adding another decade completes the earlier cycle in 2000 and adds another full cycle (peak in 2003, trough in 2006). We use these expanded data to test whether earlier estimates of market adjustment are consistent with the most recent decade of London data. We then test for two possible asymmetric responses in market adjustment. First, positive and negative shocks to employment and supply may have different impacts on the adjustment process, given non-negativity constraints (Grenadier, 1995, 1996). Second, adjustment could vary depending on whether the vacancy rate is high or low when the shock occurs (Englund, et al., 2006). The paper sets out a model of the rental adjustment process, details the dataset employed then models rents using an error correction mechanism approach, with long run demand for office space being a function of real rent and employment and with an equilibrium vacancy rate. New lease rents adjust to changes in the market drivers and to the gaps between actual and natural vacancy rate and actual and equilibrium real rent. We then use this framework to seek for asymmetries in the adjustment process. | |
| "ARE SECURITIZED REAL ESTATE RETURNS MORE PREDICTABLE THAN STOCK RETURNS?" In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | This paper examines whether the predictability of securitized real estate returns differs from that of stock returns. It also provides a crosscountry comparison of securitized real estate return redictability. In contrast to most of the literature on this issue, the analysis is not based on a multifactor asset pricing framework as we deem that a univariate time series approach is more appropriate to compare the predictability of returns between two or more asset classes. Forecasts are performed with ARMA and ARMA-GARCH models. Such forecasts are evaluated by comparing the entire empirical distributions of prediction errors, as well as with a trading strategy. The results show that the predictability of securitized real estate and stock returns differs in some countries, even though these differences are not economically significant. Similar conclusions are reached when comparing the predictability of securitized real estate returns across countries. | |
| "ARM OR FRM: WHICH MORTGAGE CONTRACT IS BETTER FOR CZECH HOUSEHOLDS?" In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Household housing decisions are usually taken early in life and therefore have significant welfare consequences. There are two types of loans available for households: Fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) contracts and adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) contracts. We investigate the welfare effects of fixed-rate and adjustable-rate mortgage contracts on Czech households by calibrating and solving a life-cycle model used for this purpose by Campbell and Cocco (2003). We compare the distribution of utility in simulations under FRM and ARM and find that FRM is preferred to ARM. This result is in conflict with findings that Campbell and Cocco (2003) report for U.S. households, probably due to higher inflation and real interest rate uncertainty in the Czech Republic. | |
| "ASSESSING OFFICE PROPERTIES BY USING WEB 2.0 - A THEORETICAL BASIS AND DEVELOPMENT PROSPECTS FOR THE WEB PLATFORM OFFICE SCORE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Besides the price, functionality and quality of office properties play a major role in the decision-making process of renting or purchasing real estate. A number of real estate based criteria have to be judged for appraising these characteristics properly. Assessment and selection of criteria differs depending on the perspective ñ is it an investor¥s or occupier¥s point of view? This paper analyses existing literature to establish a set of criteria that are relevant to the process of renting or purchasing real estate. This way, the scientific foundation for the development of an online software tool, which is designed for assessing commercial real estate, is provided. The internet based program ñ OFFICE SCORE ñ offers a standardized assessment of office properties for investors as well as for occupiers by analyzing price, quality and functionality, thus productivity issues. Due to the use of Web 2.0 features, office properties can be com pared with the overall market for office real estate while considering specific interests either of investors or of occupiers. The IRE_BS International Real Estate Business School has been working in collaboration with Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO and German Society for Real Estate Researchers on the development of OFFICE SCORE for two years. In October 2007 the first phase of the project could be finialized. | |
| "ASSESSING URBAN SUSTAINABILITY IN CHINA: DEVELOPMENT OF THE EVALUATIVE FRAMEWORK." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The property-led urban development model, conceptualised by Cao and Keivani (2007), has been a paramount impetus for Chinaís robust prosperity over the past 30 years. Nevertheless, the defects of such model are inclined to swell. Problems in environmental, social and economic arenas have continuously emerged, threatening the sustainable development of Chinese cities. This paper aims to investigate impacts of such property-led growth model on urban sustainability through establishing an assessing framework for urban sustainability in the context of property and obtaining views on indicators from an international expert survey. Conforming to core theories of property market, sustainable development and urban governance, a pack of 26 indicators are chosen from 4 indicating sectors as economic, environmental, social and institutional. Opinions on indicators in terms of their importance to urban sustainability are aggregated from an online survey, inviting a pool of over 100 experts at the forefront of the research fields worldwide. They reside in 8 countries including UK, US, China (40%), and 90% of them hold doctoral or professional degrees. Most of them hold senior positions in academic, industry, professional organisations and government bodies with titles such as President, Chairman, Director and Professor. This paper provides a comparative analysis of the survey result by grouping experts into either China-based or Overseas-based. It concludes that such property-focused indicating framework is a virtuous approach to evaluate property-related urban performance and explain unsustainable problems for cities in China and other developing countries with startling tempo of urban transformation and development of the property market. | |
| "ASSESSMENT OF FUNCTIONAL QUALITY AS AN EARLY WARNING INDICATOR FOR PROPERTY MARKET RISKS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Nowadays in many European regions the property market has already been changing from a supplier to a demander market. Shrinking and aging of the population on one hand and fast changes of working processes in the service sector on the other will lead to changing requirements on buildings in residential and commercial real estate sectors. The result of the description and assessment of the technical and functional quality can work as an early warning indicator to early recognize letting and marketing risks. The meaning of the description, assessment and representation of selected features and qualities of objects also in the sense of signalization of quality were already discussed in earlier works. These criteria and qualities include both the quality of the functional and technical solution as well as the contribution to a sustainable development. The paper shows, that the present discussion features two existing approaches: one being the building performance approach based on an assessment of functionality and serviceability, the other we call the approach of sustainability assessment, judging the ecological, economical and social quality. More and more sustainability aspects find recognition in the performance approach, whereas the sustainability assessment is extended by judgments of the functional and technical quality. This change elevates the assessment of the technical and functional quality of buildings to a common base and connecting element. In a further development based on the actual standardization, the authors show the possibilities, to describe on one hand the major features and qualities of buildings (supply side) and on the other hand the needs and requirements of the consumer (demand side), followed by an assessment on the degree of agreement on supply and demand. With this comparison the paper shows, that current letting and marketing risks can be analyzed and future risks predicted as well as actions can be recommended. | |
| "AUSTRALIAN LISTED PROPERTY TRUSTS IN LIGHT OF THE SUB-PRIME CRISIS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Listed property trusts (LPTs), the Australian version of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) make up a large proportion of the Australian investment market. Currently $6Bn are invested in Australian LPTs. Since their emergence in the 1970s growth in this type of investment has been exponential and in recent years the business models employed by the LPTs have included much higher levels of gearing. This paper examines this market against the background of the sub-prime crisis emerging from the US financial markets and seeks to identify future developments in the Australian LPT market, and the repercussions, if any, of this crisis. Since December 2007 many of the leading Australian LPTs have shown negative returns in excess of 20% - with a number who appear to have significant overseas exposure well in excess of this percentage. The market capitalisation of many of the LPTs have declined well below the stated net asset backing of the funds. Since December 2007 the market capitalisation of many of the LPTs has fallen dramatically as the markets react to the sub prime crisis. The paper will review that changing market capitalisation of LPTs compared with the broader changes in the Australian Stock Exchange and compare those changes with change in the underlying value of commercial property in Australia through the use of secondary data. It is expected that the impact on consumer / investor confidence due to issues such as the sub prime crisis, the higher level of gearing adopted by many LPTs, the shorter term loans adopted, the apparent lack of disclosure of short and longer term finance and the valuation basis adopted has meant that there has been a market sell off of these securities. | |
| "BAYESIAN METHODS APPLIED TO REIT VOLATILITY VIA GARCH MODELS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Volatility estimation is an integral component of risk management, option pricing, and portfolio allocation. REIT volatility is examined using a Bayesian GARCH model. This paper discusses shortfalls of maximum likelihood estimation, which are commonly used for estimating GARCH models, and elucidates the advantages of the Bayesian alternative. A portfolio allocation problem highlights the differences in decision making from these methods. Conditional variance estimation uncertainty is found to increase with volatility. | |
| "BIDDING BEHAVIOUR IN THE RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE SECTOR." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. |
The paper explores time on the market for single family residential units in Northern Ireland with specific reference to the bidding behaviour of purchasers between 2002 and 2008. It is a period of dramatic change in the Northern Ireland housing market combining unprecedented growth of house prices in 2006 and the early part of 2007 with the beginning of a period of slowdown and market equalisation in 2007 and the early part of 2008. This paper will present analysis on time on the market for the properties but the main focus will be bidding trends. Using a dataset of individual transaction histories of residential sales from 2002 to 2008 the peculiarities of bidding behaviour are investigated. The detailed analysis of two case study areas (one inner city and one outer city) allows a comparison of how bidding patterns change according to location, the stage of property cycle, seasonality and by property type. The bidding process is further examined by focussing on the winning bidder. The time at which the winning bidder becomes involved and particular bidding behaviours are highlighted. The paper concludes with a summary of conclusions and findings regarding bidding behaviour in the single family residential market. |
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| "BLENDED LEARNING COURSE IN REAL ESTATE. CONNECTING INITIAL EDUCATION WITH PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND TRAINING." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | We will examine the ways in which university and industry are reacting on demands for professional development and training. The focus will be on a key issues and problems encountered in Europe and Slovenia. Blended learning course for lifelong learning in the context of university education which has been developed at the University of Ljubljana, will be presented. The aim of the blended learning course is to fulfil the needs of professional development. The model is based on the computer supported collaborative learning, supporting the new organization of teaching and learning with the ICT. | |
| "BUILT ENVIRONMENT PROFESSIONAL BODIES; PERSPECTIVES ON THEIR ROLE IN AUSTRALIA." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | As professional institutions increasingly seek to be global organisations with local significance there is a need for them to maintain and grow their membership base. In order to survive and thrive a new generation of members are needed for professional bodies in the built environment. Wilkinson and Zillante (2007) identified the issues of under recruitment and an ageing membership in the Building Surveying profession in Australia and Elliot & Warren (2005) similarly identified a declining valuation profession. Professional bodies not only need to recruit more student members into the profession during their studies, but they also need to convert these student members to fully qualified members. Warren and Wilkinsonís (2008) survey of 661 Australian student perceptions of built environment professional bodies showed that students value professional qualifications but that there is a lack of understanding of the role of professional bodies. The employerís perceptions of Australian graduate employeesí membership of surveying, property and construction professional bodies was examined in a survey of major national and international firms (Wilkinson and Warren 2008). This research sought to identify the importance placed on professional institutions by employers and the measures adopted in terms of encouraging professional body membership in the workplace. This paper presents an analysis of the two surveys of students and employers and seeks to reveal the differing perspectives of the two parties. It identifies the critical issue for professional institutions globally in recruiting new members and expanding the institutions both locally and international. The paper suggests ways in which employers and professional institutions can work together to increase student and graduate understanding of the importance of professional institution membership and grow the property and construction professions internationally. | |
| "BUSINESS STRATEGY AND PROPERTY STRATEGY- HOW STRONG IS THE LINKAGE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Most organizations develop strategic business plans as a foundation and focus for decision-making. These business plans ideally take account of the existing and potential operating environment, potential competitors and the strengths and weaknesses of the individual organization. An organizationís management of its property assets can be either a strength, or a weakness, but this aspect does not figure prominently in many organizationsí strategic business plans. Property strategy should ideally be consistent with business strategy, adding value by the efficient provision of effective real estate solutions that accommodate the workforce and machinery of that business. This research investigated the strength of the link between overall business strategy and supporting property strategies in New Zealand organizations. A survey of 313 organisations found nearly all had a clearly defined overall business strategy but many did not put corresponding effort into real estate strategies. Even amongst those organizations with a property strategy, significant weaknesses were found in the linkage between this strategy and overall business strategy. Further work is underway to measure the performance of companies that do have a strong connection compared to those that do not, to ascertain whether the connection does in fact correlate with business performance. | |
| "CAN LAND VALUE BE EXTRACTED FROM THE TOTAL PROPERTY PRICE- SOME EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Land value sometimes needs to be extracted from the price of a developed property for a number of purposes. For instance, land value tax has long gained recognition of being an efficient and equitable tax. Despite the theoretical significance, daunting difficulties in valuing land often cause land value tax practically impossible. The extraction of land value is however required by legislation in countries such as Taiwan, Japan, and Australia, among others. A number of recent studies have explored the feasibility of constructing empirical models that particularly tackle this issue. This article, using a data set of residential property sales over the period of 1994 to 2003 in Taipei City, Taiwan, provides another attempt. In order to alleviate the difficulties of estimating the value effects of spatially-associated property features through a series of independent variables (distances to service facilities, neighborhood amenity, etc.), a trend surface app roach is employed to establish a locational or spatial variable. This locational or spatial variable aims to capture the overall effects of spatially associated variables on property value. The percentage of land value in the total property price is derived from both linear and non-linear regression models. Results are compared to the rule-of-thumb figures currently adopted by the appraisal profession. The differences, if found, in the percentage of land value as the property price between research findings and the rule-of-thumb are expected to have policy significance. | |
| "Capital's Quest for Space: The Globalisation of Metropolitan Real Estate Markets - An Institutional Perspective." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. |
The thesis focuses on the spatial implications of the globalisation of real estate investments and the integration of financial and real estate markets. As cities have always been places of large public and private investment in the built environment, urban development can be viewed as the interplay of capital investment of different actors and processes of political regulation. The globalisation of the real estate business has led to a partial ëdetachmentí of relevant actors from local and regional contexts. Aside from globalisation, the integration of real estate and financial markets as well as the concentration of real estate investors in metropolitan regions are two further trends (CLARK/LUND 2000; HEEG 2004, 2003). The globalisation process is accompanied by an expansion as well as a de- and reterritorialisation of social and economic relationships and practices (BRENNER 1997). Investing in real estate markets outside one's own national borders has become much easier to accomplish. Real estate markets, especially in metropolitan areas, have evolved from a mainly local to a strongly international orientation. One positive effect of this is that market transparency and the number of economic players have increased, resulting in changes of the institutional settings of real estate markets. The globalisation of real estate markets, the de- and reterritorialisation of social, economic relationships, practices reveals an underlying general feature of capitalist markets; the problem of coordinating market players (BECKERT 2007). In spite of increasing professionalisation of real estate business, uncertainties, frictions, contingencies persist in real estate markets. Market activities, exchange of property only take place if market players can cope with reduce uncertainties contingencies to an acceptable manner. A precondition for a stabilized mode of reducing uncertainty consists in the institutional embedding of market action (FLIGSTEIN 2001; 1996). Within real estate markets; coordination is hampered by the problem of value. Defining values for heterogeneous real estate products within the same local regional markets depends on reducing uncertainty on establishing more or less objective, standardized criteria. But this is not easy to achieve due to certain factors. Firstly; the globalisation integration of capital real estate markets extends the number of potential market players in formerly locally fixed real estate markets; e.g. institutional investors such as pension funds which invest directly ; indirectly in real estate (CLARK 2003; 2001). The different players "engage in distinct 'readings' of the markets" (BEAUREGARD 2005: 2433); as the different submarkets ; sectors of the real estate market differ in the life cycles expected return on investment, building types, demands of the tenants, users etc. Thus, the price mechanism as a means of providing the best available information about the real estate market is limited (also KEOGH/D’ARCY 1999). Secondly, the problem of finding a value is aggravated by the characteristics of real estate as "spatialized capital that unlike derivates or corporate equities, has the unique (dis)advantage of having its value held hostage by the vagaries of proximity ; its relationship to other properties" (WEBER 2002: 521). Thus, it would appear essential to ascertain how locally fixed real estate markets become international markets ; how the coordination of heterogeneous market players is achieved. The focus of this paper is on the construction of real estate markets especially on the mechanisms, institutions of the internationalisation, globalisation of real estate markets. The empirical part of this work mainly involves investigations of investments in commercial property; especially offices. Two different metropolitan areas will be compared, contrasted. The empirical work will be conducted this summer. It will mainly consist of semi-structured expert interviews. |
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| "CAUSALITY, IDENTIFICATION AND RENTAL GROWTH FORECASTS IN THE UK'S REGIONAL OFFICE MARKETS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | This paper provides a discussion of the developments in econometric modelling in rental growth forecasts. We use data from the UK's regional office markets. Our aims are first to provide an overall review of office property forecasting literature. We outline the distortion effects and potential causality problems that popular forecasting models are facing. That is, the current rent level may drive, rather than be driven by, supply force. To check out this hypothesis, Granger causality test will be applied. As our results will show, it is important to identify the rent-supply causal direction. To solve out the problem of endogeneity of supply, instrumental variable method will be used, which is followed by statistical tests for the validity and relevance of the instrument. | |
| "COMPARING NEW MODELS OF SOCIAL HOUSING: A NATURAL EXPERIMENT." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Since the late 1980s, the UK has been a testing bed for new models of socal housing. Policies to reshape and reduce the council housing sector have followed objectives to do with refinancing but also quasi-market goals, including stronger tenant responsiveness and performance efficiency incentives. Two particular models are analysed here: the stock transfer of council housing en masse with tenants in situ to housing associations (i.e. stock transfer) and the development of arms length management organisations (ALMOs). This paper reports a natural experiment format comparing 4 such organisations (two ALMOs and two stock transfers) who transferred engagements from their respective councils at a similar point in time and all in the same region of England. Why did they decide to change and in the form adopted? How well have they performed aganst their business plans and promises to their tenants? What lessons can we draw about organisational models, policy e ffectiveness, tenant participation and future options for the non-maket sector? | |
| "CONCENTRATION OF OWNERSHIP - ITS EFFECT ON PROPERTY FIRM PERFORMANCE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Studies and literature documenting ownership structure in Asian economies are scarce, especially in examining its relation with firm performance. The limited literature and empirical work on Asian companies showed that the pattern of ownership in these companies differs dramatically from that of Western countries where Asian companies exhibit a very high concentration of ownership. Whilst the impact of ownership concentration on firm performance varies with the level of economic and institutional development of a country and also with the variation across industries and differing securities laws across countries, this study, which focuses on the property industry in Malaysia gives an insight into the ownership structure and its effect on performance. Furthermore, previous studies on East Asian economies concentrated on periods before the crisis and since ownership concentration in Malaysia is reported in the hands of a few well connected families, this study on the post-crisi s sheds some light on the situation after the crisis where major amendments on securities laws have been introduced. Examining 81 Malaysian property firms during 1999-2005 period, results from ordinary least squares and two stage least squares regression within a simultaneous equation system suggests firms with high block ownership has a negative impact on firm performance. The results indicate that the market does not reward firms with block owners as the market fears large shareholders would impose their wills in order to improve their own positions at the expense of other shareholders, thus favoring a dispersed ownership structure. | |
| "Corporate Governance and Valuation of Publicly Real Estate Companies. An Empirical Study." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | In a setting of intense competition for international capital companies diligently have to respond to an increasing demand by investors for higher transparency and more effective mechanisms of corporate control. In this context the term ìcorporate governanceî has attracted major attention in the professional sphere and across different areas of academic research. The discussion on agency conflicts resulting from the separation of ownership and control as well as on governance mechanisms to reduce related agency costs have been subject to scientific literature for a long time. Since Berle/Means (1932) addressed potential conflicts of interest between management and shareholders of companies the understanding on key issues of corporate governance has improved. Nevertheless, a well-developed theory about the complex nature of corporate governance is still lacking. From a theoretical as well as from a professional perspective one of the most important issues with respect to corporate governance is whether it is rewarded by the capital market. While general finance literature includes numerous research studies on the impact of corporate governance on firm performance across different capital markets around the world the topic has been rather neglected in real estate literature. Using a set of corporate governance variables, our study empirically investigates the impact of corporate governance on the market value of publicly traded real estate companies for the major European real estate capital markets. For the purpose of the analysis a structural model will be specified and subsequently estimated with an appropriate estimation method. Some of the research questions that are of particular interest in this context include the following: - Is there a relationship between corporate governance mechanisms and the market valuation of publicly traded real estate companies? - Is a greater use of particular corporate governance mechanisms positively related to the valuation of publicly traded real estate companies by the capital market? - If there is a relationship is it economically relevant for decision makers of respective companies or for investors? - Do country-specific differences exist with respect to the importance of particular mechanisms for the governance of publicly traded real estate companies? - Which consequences can be derived for a corporate governance-guided management strategy in the real estate sector as well as for the investment strategy of real estate investors? //The study is supposed to contribute to the existing real estate corporate governance research in two basic ways. First, it provides an insight on the relationship of corporate governance mechanisms on the market valuation of publicly traded real estate companies across different European capital markets. To our knowledge prior research of this kind does only exist for US samples. Furthermore, instead of focusing on single control mechanisms and relying on self-constructed or professionally prepared corporate governance indices, which are likely to be inadequate proxies for a multi-dimensional and dynamic corporate governance construct, we apply a set of widely accepted corporate governance mechanisms. | |
| "COST OF CAPITAL AND THE VALUATION OF REAL ESTATE COMPANIES: THE CASE OF THE GERMAN REIT (GREIT)." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | ERES:conference | |
| "CRACOW RESIDENTIAL MARKET RESEARCH." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The present research concerned the following elements of the residential market in the city of Cracow: the supply, the demand and the prices. In Cracow the need for flats is regarded as very large because it is a basic necessity; however, as a result of many factors this need is not transformed into demand. According to the authors of the present report, the housing market is a very important market, requiring research and analyses as well as a search for optimal solutions for its functioning. Research of the residential market is most often carried out on request of companies and it provides information exclusively for internal use so it is not published. The present study has an exclusively scientific character and as such it is an objective source of information. The research consisted of two parts: a survey amongst potential customers and one amongst the representatives of property companies. The purpose of the research was a comparison of the supply represented by developers with the demand and expectations of customers. The work can also be of help for entrepreneurs conducting property activity since it contains the information concerning the preferences of customers, thus indicating which direction housing investment should take so as to answer the needs of customers. Research methods: in examining the demand, the method of the direct and online questionnaire form was applied. In examining the supply, the method of the direct questionnaire form and the e-mail questionnaire form were applied. | |
| "CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT (CRM) - PROFIT-ORIENTED TENANT RETENTION FOR RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE COMPANIES." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Facing increased vacancy rates, a high tenant fluctuation and increased competition, customer relationship management (CRM) has attracted the expanded attention of practitioners and scholars in the residential real estate business. The preservation of existing tenants has become more important in comparison to the acquisition of new customers. In that the success of a residential real estate company depends significantly on satisfied tenants and the retention of these. Therefore more and more companies are adopting customer-centric strategies, programs, tools and technology for efficient and effective customer management. Nevertheless a lot of these measures taken fail to really attract and retain the tenant. Hence it is essential to gain in-depth and integrated customer knowledge in order to develop a strategically founded tenant retention program. The aim of this study is to define such a retention strategy. This is done by analyzing tenants and marketing measures of tenant retention in order to define effective retention instruments for profitable tenant segments and thereby guaranteeing the efficient employment of the companyís resources. | |
| "CYCLE AND PERTINENCE OF THE PRICES TO THE SQUARE METER: THE CASE OF THE CITY OF BORDEAUX." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | In spite of some limits, the approach of the valorisation of the real estate market by the price to the square meter conserves the advantage of a short period of publication in comparison with the alternative methods (repeat sales method and hedonic method). Nevertheless, the hedonic studies show that the importance of the surface in the price is modified during the cycle. Our question is based on this report. Indeed, if the explanatory part of the surface in the determination of the price grows during the phase of expansion of the cycle, then the relevance of the price to the square meter could be rising with the increase of the prices. We propose in this article, a method of the appreciation of the relevance of the price to the square meter which allows the valuation of the real estate transactions. On the other hand, we observe the variations of this relevance during the cycle. We use a notarial database (120 000 transactions) on the residential real estate in Bordeaux between 1985 and 2005. We also use variables of localization intra urban and of surface of the exchanged real estate. These variables allow to test the relevance of the price to the square meter according to districts and types of property by surface. The results of the study show that according to the assumption retained (elasticity surface of price or elasticity surface of price to the square meter), the results are different. This conclusion remains valid for any type of surface and localization. | |
| "DESIGNING AN INDEX TO MEASURE COUNTRIES' CAPACITIES TO REDUCE BUILT ENVIRONMENT CARBON EMISSIONS: METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The built environment is a major direct contributor to carbon dioxide emissions and therefore to global warming. Half the worldís population now lives in urban areas, which account for 75% of all energy use. There is thus great theoretical potential to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by improving the performance of the built environment specifically. In this context, this paper reports on ongoing work to create a global index that gauges the capacity of countriesí built environments to move towards the zero-carbon ideal. Commissioned by the RICS, the index aims to bring together key emission reduction factors that fall within the direct competence of the built environment sphere at a range of scales (urban area down to individual building) and across a range of activity sectors (domestic, business, industrial, transport). It is envisaged that the index will be relevant to those with an interest in promoting, complying with or investing in carbon emission reduction measures. Specifically, it is targetted at the property and development sectors as well as spatial planning bodies. The paper focuses on conceptual and methodological issues encountered in the index framework design and data identification stages of the project, ahead of its completion at the end of 2008. | |
| "DETERMINATION OF PRICE AND RENTAL IN CITY OFFICE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The present value model states that the price of an asset is equal to the properly discounted future cash flows generated by this piece of asset. This view needs to be modified in real estate markets. Agents in a real estate market can be broadly divided into those who buy to use and those who buy to lend. If rents are too high, occupants may consider buying instead of renting, and vise versa. This implies that there are dynamic interactions between the rental and the price of a real estate. In particular, if there is a speculative bubble in the price, that bubble will also be transmitted into the rental. Our empirical analyses using data from city office show that our dynamic structural simultaneous equation model improves significantly over the single equation present value model. The result is further improved by allowing model parameters to shift value according to a latent variable which follows a first-order Markov chain. | |
| "DETERMINING THE INCOME VALUE OF INDUSTRIAL PROPERTIES (REAL ESTATE)." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The paper concerns the theoretical and practical aspects of applying income methods to value industrial properties in a developing, Polish real estate market. The paper is an attempt to identify the principles, methods and procedures which will allow to determine in an objective manner the income value of operational properties, which are a part of a business enterprise. The presented solutions are set in the context of theoretical costs to utilize the assets of an enterprise. The theory of transaction costs has also been addressed, as well as the needs of economic practice and possibilities of practical application. Utilizing the classification of properties which are a part of a business enterprise, that is based on their use/purpose, a group of specialized, operational properties has been identified, namely properties used for production, also called industrial properties. This classification was the starting point of identifying: the most suitable methods of valuation and the existent theoretical and methodological constraints, particularly with relation to income methods, but also the DRC method. A comparison of the application of income methods to value a business and real estate is presented, with an emphasis placed on important conceptual differences. For the profits method it is stipulated, that one must clearly distinguish between valuing a property and valuing a business. The methods of income valuations have been classified into new categories and the direct and indirect capitalization methods have been identified. Since the Polish property market is a developing one, there are difficulties in the traditional application of the profits method to the valuation of industrial properties. Conducted research shows, that in the case of industrial properties, the fact that an income generating business is being carried out on the property, does not determine the possibility of identifying an income value. If it is not plausible to employ the profits method, the valuation of specialized operational properties of an enterprise is based on the cost approach. The example given concerns a valuation of an industrial property on which an income generating business is being carried out, however the possibility to apply the profits method and to determine an income value has been ruled out due to the fact that it is not possible to ensure an objective valuation process. | |
| "DEVELOPMENT OF A PROPERTY RISK ASSESSMENT TOOL." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The importance of real estate risk management has increased recently since formerly public-owned housing companies try to act more professionally and Basel II has imposed new requirements on the credit grantors who pass them on. Therefore many companies already have established a risk management system. Most of the risk management systems suffer from two problems: On the one hand, there is usually a lack of the systematic reconnaissance of the risks. A risk catalog takes remedial action here. On the other hand the assessment of the recognized risks is often still carried out by ìgut feelingî instead of a standardized and structured procedure. The paper presents such an assessment tool developed at the Chair for Sustainable Management of Housing and Real Estate. At first the paper discusses several methods for evaluation and aggregation of risks. As mathematical-statistical methods are due to the lack of data usually not applicable in the real estate area a scoring model is chosen. In the following the paper comments on the basic problem of scoring models to choose weights for the single indicators and risk, which often leads to errors. To avoid problems the model uses a kind of dynamic weighting which emphasizes extreme more than average values. As already stated in previous papers (e.g. Urschel/L¸tzkendorf 2007: The Risk Net: A New Approach to Risk Analysis and Portfolio Management in Housing Companies) risks cannot be assessed separately, the influences among them have to be taken into consideration additionally. For this purpose the ërisk netí method has been developed, which is also included in the risk assessment procedure. The paper ends with an outlook on the use of the risk assessment tool in a portfolio context as well as in scenario analysis. | |
| "Discrete Choice Analysis of Housing Market Demand in Poland." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The housing choice literature is a vast area of real estate research which has resulted in giant leaps forward in recent years in terms of econometric modelling. discrete choice theory has played an important role as the basis of empirical studies of housing demand in United States, and western Europe, at least from seminal work of McFadden (1978), where method was discussed as an alternative method of housing demand analysis. Later, influential empirical studies were conducted by Longley (1984), Quigley (1985), Earnhart (1998), Tu (2001), to name just a few major studies in housing demand area. The growing popularity of the approach rises, at least to some extent, from the fact that sophisticated econometric methods were integrated into various statistical programs, which made these tools available for a larger group of researchers. Discrete choice theory was used for simulating purposes, when modelling policy changes, as well as shedding new light on housing market dynamics. For example Anas and Arnott, developed a dynamic discrete choice equilibrium model, that integrated demand and supply side (1991), ran the model to examine housing market behaviour in Chicago (1993), and used it to simulate an impact of several housing policies (1994) in US cities. European simulation studies based on discrete choice models include several studies initiated in late 1990s - to enumerate just the most influential, conducted by Meen (1999), and Gibb, Meen and MacKay (2000). Recently Yates and Mackay (2006) have written a critical review of the housing choice literature, in addition to the examination of techniques that have been used to model the household's housing choice decision. | |
| "ECONOMICS TRANSITION AND COMMERCIAL PROPERTY MARKETS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | This paper focuses on the theory of economic transformation, applied to property market emergence and comparing different transitional economies. Past experience of the Chinese and East European markets has major differences. This paper reviews the Chinese economic transition with emphasis putting on property markets especially their formation and behaviour. Property marketsí structural characteristics are examined and compared. Basic supply and demand for commercial space are also compared and evaluated. Horizontally, comparing and extending the study of Chinese citiesí property markets will enhance the knowledge about emerging property markets. Vertically, comparing emerging markets, although rarely observed, can be a very useful way to extend our understanding of market behaviour and maturity. The emergence of commercial property markets depends on the formation process of market structure, as well as the business cycle in each country. The Chinese and the Polish markets differ in these regards. Yet the transition has provided some common ground which has resulted in similarity between the two. State intervention in market formation and emergence is necessary and essential which should not be mixed up with the much criticised ìagency problemî. This is essentially the problem of human individuality existing in every economic system. Transitional economies do share some common features in their property markets. | |
| "EMERGING REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES IN AFRICA: THE CASE OF TANZANIA." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Over the last two decades a number of African countries have been implementing large structural adjustments which have significantly improved the investment environment in the continent. Nevertheless, very limited literature about African investment market exists and, this has substantially contributed to a poor inflow of international capital. Using the case of Tanzania, this paper looks into real estate investment opportunities available for European institutional investors. Tanzania being one of the African countries has similarly over the last 20 years been engaged in major structural reforms. Among the outcomes of the reforms is a noticeable evolution in real estate investment market. Institutional investors have substantially rebalanced their portfolios in favour of real estate assets. Currently, pension and insurance institutions` allocation to real estate is more than 30%. There have also been major changes to real estate related legislation to accommodate more forms of investment. Many other laws have been enacted and some amended to attract and protect foreign investors. This paper dwells on major initiatives that have enhanced investment opportunities in the real estate sector. Various economic trends incidental to the evolution of real estate market over the past 20 years are also considered in this paper. Results show that, despite the existence of clear investment prospects in real estate, this sector still accounts for less than 10% of the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into Tanzania. Among others, it is thus recommended that European real estate investors start considering Africa as an option for international diversification. | |
| "ETHICAL ASPECTS OF DISCOUNTING - WHAT CAN REAL ESTATE VALUATION AND INVESTMENT EXPERTS LEARN FROM ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS?" In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Because of the changes in global climate, our civilization stands before some profound transformations which will affect all areas of our lives. In scientific circles it is now generally accepted that a significant portion of the climatic changes is due to human activity. However, up until now two spheres that have not yet been analyzed scientifically in detail are the influence of climatic conditions on the value of land and especially the effects of climate changes on future real estate values. Within this field of research a lot of very specific aspects like the role of discounting and cost-benefit analysis are of particular interest. This paper critically focuses on the role discount rates play in traditional cost-benefit analysis and real estate valuation. The results will be reflected against the ethical aspect of discounting the future social welfare. Pure time preference as accepted when analyzing marginal problems doesnít seem to be appropr iate when it comes to non-marginal impacts, intertemporal assessment and other aspects involved when dealing with the impact of climate change and the curse of action our civilization should take to avoid irreversible negative changes. We also try to answer what the real estate industry can contribute to the internalization of negative externalities and the role of discount rates in this respect. | |
| "EXAMINING INVESTOR PERCEPTIONS OF OBSOLESCENCE AND VALUE THROUGH A BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS LENS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The higher the vacancy rate of a commercial building, the lower its revenue and therefore, the lower its value. Vacancy rates typically vary several percentage points through an economic cycle and, as most buildings age and leases expire, vacancy is addressed by downgrading and reducing lease rates resulting in gradually diminishing value over a period of years. Yet, for many office buildings, vacancy rates have risen rapidly causing their value to plummet. Nevertheless, many owner/investors seem to behave as though these buildings will regain tenants and recover value. In The Netherlands, the office space supply is currently around five million square meters, approximately 10 percent of the stock. Contrary to normal expectations, new office space is being briskly developed and absorbed thereby increasing the likelihood of more vacancies in older buildings. This paper examines patterns and causes of structural vacancy in Dutch office buildings focusing o n investors perceptions and decisions regarding the causes, the nature of the market and choices or alternative approaches in addressing vacancy. Following a review of location and typological characteristics of structurally vacant office buildings, it presents the results of a survey of those investors responsible for decisions about structurally vacant office buildingsin their portfolio. These results show that irrational optimism about the office market combined with overconfidence and the disposition effect play an important role in investor decisions about structurally vacant office buildings. The paper concludes with discussion of how building obsolescence can be appropriately be addressed given the presence of behavioral economic factors. | |
| "FACILITATING INTERNATIONALISATION IN REAL ESTATE and SURVEYING EDUCATION, THROUGH INSTITUTIONAL COOPERATION." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. |
Development of institutional cooperation with international partners is not only in response to demand but in part due to necessity to increase revenue and status of academic institutions. This is particularly true in the new university sector, where teaching subjects relevant to the needs of the professions such as Property Studies, is the priority of the academic staff and the main source of income. Thus the traditional method of raising income,research, is more difficult, whereas offering educational consultancy and teaching services is somewhat easier. This paper examines the emergent approach of cooperation to compete in education and programme delivery. An approach that is still not well understood but fast developing, where the new universities are realising synergies in instruction and programming provision through deliberate cooperation with other institutions, nationally as well as abroad. It is argued that multiple drivers are responsible for international institutional cooperation in a cumulative way, so as to forge inter-institutional collaboration, whereby the different partners may pursue different priorities and motives to their mutual advantage. These drivers are examined together with EU initiatives. Three case studies are part of the analysis. Two have been successfully running for some years and another was recently created. All are very different in type, but are linked to the professional areas of real estate, urban planning, construction and management. It is established that the leitmotif for success, is a high level of cooperation between individuals, between the institutions, plus institutional support. The programmes realise synergies and innovation in instruction and programme provision both within the international programmes and institutional programmes. (eg.International Property Studies) Internationalisation of programmes is extremely attractive to students. It offers them an education in both national and global competencies, making them unique and enabling them to compete for the most lucrative positions in the world market place. |
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| "FACING THE FUTURE: ADAPTIVE REUSE IN AUSTRALIAN BUILDINGS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Population modelling has shown Australian buildings face a future where adaptation of the stock will become increasingly necessary to secure a sustainable future (CSIRO, 2002). Changes in population pose threats to sustainability in terms of the trend for increasing affluence and because there will be higher numbers of consumers using resources. Somehow Australia needs to buck the trend for larger buildings and avoid Jevsonís Paradox, whereby increases in energy efficiency lead to higher rates of consumption overall (CSIRO, 2002:27). Approximately 17% of all building activity in the Australian housing sector is refurbishment and alterations (ABS, 2008). Housing accounts for 59% of all work undertaken with 41% undertaken on non residential buildings. Though it not known in Australia what proportion of non residential work is adaptation, in the UK 46% of all building work is refurbishment and it was worth forty five billions pounds in 2003 (Douglas, 2006). Thus adaptation represents a significant proportion of construction expenditure annually with large amounts of resources expended in the improvement of building performance and utility. Questions arise, such as how are decisions made in terms of which buildings are adapted? Could this decision making be improved? What are the critical factors determining adaptation and reuse? What is re-use and how does it fit with other practices such as refurbishment, maintenance and renovation, and repairs for example? This paper identifies the rationale and need for adaptation and addresses some of the questions above. | |
| "FAIR VALUE ACCOUNTING IN THE EUROPEAN REAL ESTATE INDUSTRY." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Since January 1, 2005 all European companies are required to apply International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in their consolidated accounts. One major decision of real estate companies adopting IFRS is whether to apply the cost model or the revaluation model for measuring their investment property. For a sample of European real estate companies, we investigate (1) the determinants of applying the cost model versus the fair value model and (2) the impact of applying these models on the stock market value and performance. The preliminary results of the first analysis indicate that in particular company characteristics like ownership structure, market-to-book ratio, size, profitability and the relative value of investment property influence the propensity to apply the fair value model. In the second analysis we use a value relevance approach to examine whether the decision to apply one of these models for measuring the value of investment property i nfluences the market valuation of companies and what factors have an impact on this influences. Our study contributes to the literature by exploring the revaluation of fixed assets by real estate companies across different countries applying the same accounting regime. Moreover, we provide evidence on the interaction between the determinants and consequences of applying fair value accounting. | |
| "FLUCTUATIONS OF FLAT PRICES ON LOCAL MARKETS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The main aim of the paper was identification of price fluctuations on the secondary flat market during 1996-2006 in selected Polish cities. The subject scope resulted from the aim of the paper and included price fluctuations on the secondary flat market, involving both property rights and cooperative property rights for private accommodation. The time scope involved the period of 1996-2006, which was connected with the scope of empirical research which concerned shaping the price level of 1 m≤ of flat. Spatial scope of the research involved two cities: Pozna_ and Wroc_aw. The choice was affected by the fact that the indicators specific for flat market in Pozna_ and Wroc_aw are characterized by similar levels. Therefore, there was an attempt to check whether the tendencies in price formation, occurring on the local flat markets are similar. The paper is divided into three parts. In the first part author analyzed business cycles components. Then he has presented method of analysis of business cycles applied to flats' prices fluctuations on the local markets. The third part of the paper contains cooperative analysis of fluctuation of flat prices on local markets in Pozna_ and Wroclaw for the period 1996-2006. | |
| "FORECASTING THE INDICE DU CO€T DE LA CONSTRUCTION (ICC)." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The ICC, a quarterly indicator to which rents in France are annually indexed, led to significant rental growth in 2006; Q3 saw the index increase by 8.1% y-o-y. Since its inception (1954), the quarterly index has on average, grown by 5.4% y-o-y, reflecting a standard deviation of 4.3%. Given the impact on investment returns, we set out to forecast the index up to 2011. However, the French national statistics office (INSEE), was unable to provide us with a breakdown of its constituents; the method of calculation is partly subjective, consisting in comparing the construction cost of a residential building under construction with a notional building in the preceding reference period. Consequently, we set out to identify appropriate independent variables. A simple correlations exercise concluded that movements in the ICC were not explained by macroeconomic growth indicators (e.g. French GDP). As the name suggests (Construction Cost Index), variations in the index are likely to be influenced by movements in raw materials. Based on oil prices, our preferred model suggests that the ICC will on average experience a 2.5% y-o-y growth rate over the forecasting period. This model passed all the diagnostic tests and was used to derive the forecasts presented in our study. Ironically, the ICC was replaced by the 'ILC' index (Indice Locatif des Commerces) for retail property in 2008. The index is composed of 50% CPI + 25% ICC + 25% Retail Sales Index. In February, the ILC recorded a 2.41% increase, well below the ICC long term average. | |
| "FUND MANAGER PERFORMANCE: HOW PERSISTENT IS THE PERFORMANCE OF UK REAL ESTATE FUND MANAGERS?" In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | This paper examines whether or not there is persistence in the performance of UK property funds. Such analysis of persistent performance is undertaken on returns relative to a benchmark and also on a risk-adjusted basis (i.e. ìalphaî). The aim is to establish whether or not property is characterised by fund managers who can systematically add to (or detract from) performance on account of ìskillî. The performance horizons looked at are sets of successive three, five and ten year periods from 1982 onwards, drawing on the Investment Property Databankís (IPD) full set of UK fund data. Such medium and long term horizons are most relevant for property, given they correspond to the periods by which property performance is typically judged and also because of propertyís illiquidity and high cost of transacting. Overall, the statistical evidence on the existence of systematic outperformance and alpha is not compelling. Before adjusting for risk, the strongest evidence of general persistence is over three year horizons, less so over five and ten years. There is, however, a suggestion of performance persistence amongst the very best (i.e. top decile) funds. On a risk-adjusted basis, there is evidence of general performance persistence over ten year horizons, including amongst top decile funds. The evidence is more tentative over five year horizons (analysis of 3 year horizons was not possible on a risk-adjusted basis). The overall conclusion is that the generation of systematic out-performance and alpha in UK property is limited to a small elite of top performers. | |
| "FUNDAMENTALS OF SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE PROPERTY INVESTMENTS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The interests in sustainable building in terms of energy and ressource saving, healthy and cost efficient planning, construction and management, have been gaining meaning in recent past. Increasing energy prices and changing societies characterize the requirements on planning and building in the future. This development manifests itself in the growing demand for sustainable rated investment options, which in turn open up the possibility for activating a potential for sustainable property investment products.This paper examines the demanders and the suppliers of socially responsible property investments (SRPI). On the suppliersí side, the structure of the actual available socially responsible property investment products was examined. The question that must be put: How far do existing products satisfy the demands into a comprehensively sustainable concept and how is it possible to measure and document sustainability. On demanders side requirements on SRPI were examined. Relating to this examination, the results of an interview of institutional investors from Germany shall be described. The investors were questioned regarding the meaning of property investment in their portfolios, the meaning of socially responsible investment and the meaning of social responsible property investments. The last section shows suggestions to possible strategies for the development and establishment of sustainable property investment products. An important part of it is the regular preparation of a social responsible report. Suggestions on possible criteria had been worked out, too. | |
| "GENERAL PUBLIC AND RETAIL/SHOPPING CENTRES." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | In recent years, shopping centres in Germany have largely been developed at inner-city locations. This return from detached greenfield sites to town centres is to be welcomed in terms of urban development and sustainability. However, positive interaction can only result for all the actors and the complex urban structure if the shopping centres can be integrated such that the cityís attractiveness is maintained or even enhanced and synergies are produced. The theoretical examination and subsequent case study in the interdisciplinary paper mainly tackle issues regarding the attractiveness of cities and how it can be influenced from the angle of different actors along with factors determining the development of shopping centres within existing structures. Findings were obtained from primary surveys. A representative survey among local authorities clearly reveals that local authority representatives have a surprisingly positive opinion of the benefits of town-centre shopping centres. Project developers, operators and investors are three groups of actors who all report that integrative aspects (functional, architectural and urban space) are increasingly being given priority in development and construction. These basic findings are both confirmed and refuted by the case study. Furthermore, a transferable method of assessment is derived to examine the impact of town-centre shopping centres. The modules used (quality criteria/set of indicators, a public and expert survey, analysis of aerial photographs, and the evaluation of press reports) and their application are explained. | |
| "GEOADDITIVE HEDONIC REGRESSION MODEL FOR RENTS IN VIENNA." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Based on more than 10.000 observations of rental flats in Vienna, collected from 2004 to 2006, we apply Bayesian structured additive regression models to estimate hedonic price equations. For this purpose we use explanatory variables such as the buildingís year of construction, its total floor space, the number of rooms, the floor the domicile is located on, the existence of a garage or parking area, the existence of an elevator, balcony or terrace as well as its current condition. Non-linear effects of continuous covariates as well as a smooth time trend are modeled nonparametrically through Bayesian versions of penalized splines. Unobserved district-specific heterogeneity is modeled in two ways: First, discrete correlated spatial effects follow a Markov random field prior with the postal code serving as a location variable. Second, in order to permit spatial variation in the nonlinear price gradients, we introduce multiplicative random effects ( random scaling factors) for nonlinear covariates. This allows highly nonlinear implicit price functions to vary within a regularized framework. Therefore, we account for spatial heterogeneity as well as spatial correlation. Using this model extension, we find substantial spatial variation in house price gradients, leading to a significant improvement of model quality and predictive power. | |
| "GOLF COURSES DEVELOPMENT AND THE IMPACT ON THE LOCAL ECONOMY." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | From last decade, there has been an increase on golf courses construction along Spain and other European countries. Most of those more recent built include housing development and became the highest quality level residential areas in some of the Spanish territories. For the domestic population, this is a very new style of life and only a few is known about their impact on urban areas, the type of housing demand they exhibit or their effect on the neighbourhood. A project trying to analyse the environmental effects of golf courses and the forces driving this phenomena has been conducted including a survey checking for the housing demand features and their profile and mobility patterns. This paper shows some of the findings of this project. | |
| "HEDGING EFFECTIVENESS OF TOTAL RETURNS SWAPS: APPLICATION TO THE JAPANESE MARKET." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The purpose of this paper is to explore the hedging effectiveness of total returns swaps (TRS) in real estate investment. We assume that investors own a real estate portfolio and wish to reduce their exposure to future movements in the property market. They therefore will swap the real estate index for LIBOR plus spread. We first model the cash flow of the resultant portfolio and then analyze the hedging effectiveness both in ex ante terms and with actual returns using a sample, provided by the Association for Real Estate Securitization in Japan, of 74 office properties in the Tokyo metropolitan area over a four year period. The samples of real estate portfolios are constructed randomly and the portfolios range in size from single properties to portfolios of up to 10 properties. The investment horizon varies from 6 months to 24 months. On the basis of this study we conclude that, with a small or zero spread in the total return swap market, investors can s tabilize the return of their portfolios. The ex ante hedging effectiveness, that is, the ratio of the standard deviation of the portfolio returns with and without the hedge in place, ranges from 0.71 to 0.14 and is usually greater than the actual hedging effectiveness which varies from 0.68 to 0.36. However if the spread is non-zero (based on the expected returns), the hedging effectiveness is substantially reduced, because the effect of the spread increases the uncertainty of the hedge portfolio. | |
| "HOME TRUTHS: TOP THREE REASONS FOR WHY PEOPLE BUY RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Traditionally, research into behavioural real estate has taken a quantitative, deductive approach. This is primarily because real estate has had a financial and economic heritage while consumer research has had its roots in economics and psychology. The insights from this type of research are limited in nature, as they only provide a snapshot description of consumer behaviour. Additionally, the focus on quantitative methodologies has limited research on housing choices in that it has tended to consider only the utilitarian aspects of consumption. The growing anthropological and sociological based qualitative and interpretive methodologies have facilitated consumer research to include such areas as that of behavioural real estate. This interpretive study sought to identify and understand the motives that underlie actual home choices rather than to impose those from the literature. Thus, a humanistic perspective is taken and a naturalistic inquiry is adopted in this research. Through a method known as ZMET (Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique), an understanding of the factors that are important in determining home choice is gained directly from home buyers. This paper focuses on Step Eight of the ZMET interview process where respondents have created mental maps using constructs that have been elicited throughout the interview. It identifies twenty key motives underlying home choices, presents three of these motives in detail and discusses their implications for academics and practitioners. It then concludes with a contribution to existing housing choice literature ñ that consumersí choice for a home can be driven by non-economic, non-calculative and non-tangible factors. | |
| "HOUSING AFFORDABILITY AND TENURE CHOICES: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Several empirical studies have established that tenure choice and households mobility decisions are highly correlated (Ozyilirim et al., 2005). In the literature, there have been two methods that have used to estimate tenure choice models. The first uses a sample of recent movers while the second employs a sample of all households. Other approaches are mixed (Painter, 2000). This work refers on the results of an empirical analysis, developed to the urban level, by a sample of movers (renters and homeowners). The main goal is to test if homeownership is systematically preferred to leasing and if the housing affordability effect can be estimated by a tenure choice model. An econometric model (Logit) is used to this purpose; it is normally employed in the study of binary choices but here it is also estimated to the policy aim. The analytical results confirm, as expected, the strong trend to the homeownership for the families of renters. But, in current econo mic situation, the high value of the rent is systematically associated with a reduced chance of changing for the medium-income families and this do not concern the low-income households. That situation has important effects on the social policies as the households mobility choices in the housing market produce effects that influence the urban traffic conditions, the patterns of poverty concentration and ethnic segregation, the quality of public schools, the access to economic opportunities, and, in other hands, the decline or revitalization of the neighborhoods ó all of which are important, long-term, and related policy concerns. | |
| "HOUSING AFFORDABILITY: THE USE AND MISUSE OF REVERSE MORTGAGES." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The largest single asset for many older Australian households is their primary place of residence, usually in the form of a detached house or a medium to high density unit. This cohort consists primarily of retirees aged 55 years and over who have permanently left the full-time workforce with limited means of earning additional household income, but who also have a lack of prior financial planning assistance and often no access to superannuation funds. At the same time there has been an increase in essential living expenses such as medical, food, transport and the introduction of a Goods and Services Tax (GST). These changes were generally unforeseen and have severely challenged the ability of Australians or seniors to retain a reasonable level of housing in retirement, as the combination of restricted household income and increased living costs has placed substantial pressure on the household budget (Weiner, 2003). This paper investigates the use of reverse mortgages in Australia as a means of providing a viable long-term solution for older households to meet unforeseen expenses during retirement. The emphasis is placed on the potential for reverse mortgages to be misunderstood by retirees over the long-term, as accessing home equity in this manner is an irreversible decision when there is no financial capacity to repay the loan. It examines the long-term implications for older households, especially those who are unfamiliar with banking practices, complex mortgage documents and all costs associated with this type of loan. | |
| "Housing and macro economy: Evidence from Beijing." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | This paper explores the important linkages which may exist between the housing sector and the macroeconomy in Beijing from 1998 to 2007. By estimating the VAR model and impulse responsive model, we find that: (1) Economic conditions including the growth of population, GDP and construction costs are important in housing price appreciation determination. Monetary shocks and regulation degree also play an important role in driving house price fluctuations over the short run. (2) Compared with other countries the price elasticity of new residential investment is lower and the responsiveness of housing supply to demand shocks is weaker especially after the government monopolized land supply in 2003. (3) Housing price appreciations have a significant positive impact on investment, but no evidence of a wealth effect on consumption is obtained. This is consistent the present mortgage market situation in Beijing. (4) There exists a two-way interaction between housing price changes and credit supply. Overall, it shows that housing price changes are playing a more significant role in monetary policy transmission. | |
| "HOUSING PRICE DYNAMICS: A CASE IN BEIJING." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | This article explores the dynamics of real housing price changes in Beijing from 1998 to 2007. The study confirms the importance of economic conditions including the growth of population, change of real income, construction costs and credit on housing price appreciation. A positive relationship between regulation degree such as controlling of construction permits and availability of land supply and housing price growth is also found, especially after the government monopolized land supply in 2003. By estimating the price elasticity of new residential construction and simulating the impulse responsive model we find that the responsiveness of housing supply is weaker compared with other countries. The study also finds that the lags of change of housing price can be used to explain housing price appreciation, which confirms the inefficiency of housing market in Beijing. At last an error correction model is estimated to see the dynamic adjustment process of housing price appreciation. | |
| "HOUSING SUPPLY AND PLANNING DELAY IN THE SOUTH OF ENGLAND." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | There is widespread concern about the need to deliver increased housing supply in the UK in order to address problems of affordability. One problem in achieving this is the nature of the planning system. UK housebuilding proposals need to be approved by Local Planning Authorities. The system in the UK differs from that in other areas of Europe in the extent to which decisions on planning permission are largely discretionary. Concern exists over delays in the evaluation of proposals and the negotiation of required changes. In practice, several factors may account for the time a new housing proposal takes to secure planning permission. Some delay may be due to planning whilst other factors relate to the ways in which proposals are formulated and/or specific site characteristics. Currently, there is little firm detailed empirical evidence on the causes of delay. The paper presents the findings from an ESRC funded research project that collected data on the time taken to gain planning permission for selected recent major housing projects from a sample of local authorities in southern England. Key characteristics of those developments such as number of units, location, etc were included. The whole chain of events in securing planning permission was also covered, including re-submissions and appeals. Hedonic analysis of the data highlights the factors determining the time development proposals take in the planning process. These results have been triangulated with interviews with key actors in the planning and development process in order to explore possible ways forward. The paper concludes with a range of recommendations. | |
| "How do errors in the construction process of real estate indices bias returns of these published indices ?" In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | At present numerous academic papers including Fisher, Geltner and Webb (1994) and Bond and Hwang (2005) leave little doubt that by institutions published real estate indices are biased. This concerns especially the calculated return volatilities of real estate indices, that seem to be downward biased. Also significant autocorrelation may be introduced by biases in returns. We reproduce the single steps of an index construction process. Therefore we simulate ìtrueî return time series for individual properties which are latent in reality. Thereon we induce particular smoothing causes in the return series. Our contribution to the unsmoothing literature is to show the influence of these particular smoothing causes on the volatilities and the autocorrelation structure of individual property return series and index return series. Our key finding is that simulated biased index return series show similar autocorrelation structures as the NCREIF property index. Further our results show that the ìstale appraisalî-effect, which is an anomaly of the NCREIF property index, is a crucial factor in smoothing. We discuss the four smoothing effects that presumably bias real estate returns: Appraisal-smoothing, non-synchronous appraisal of single properties, cross-sectional aggregation of property return series, and the stale-appraisal-effect. Our model of smoothing effects is adjusted to the US-American NCREIF Appreciation Property Index. Since it is thinkable to construct indices in different ways and in fact there exist different index construction methodologies, the impacts of biases on real estate return values depend on the index construction methodology. So our empirical results of the chain-linked smoothing effects can not directly carried forward on other real estate indices. For example, the stale-appraisal-effect is a particular characteristic of the quarterly NPI Index: Every quarter only a fraction of the properties in the NCREIF-index portfolio is re-valued. The values of the other properties are taken over from the respective past quarter. For this reason we do not only report our empirical findings for the chain-linked smoothing effects, but also for the individual smoothing effects. In our paper we review the analytical and empirical results of the real estate literature concerning the magnitudes of different smoothing parameters. This concerns for example the appraiser-alpha, a parameter which describes the fraction of the current property transaction values an appraiser will account for in his appraisal process. Further we offer a description of the technical details of the modelling of smoothing effects in real estate returns. Thereby we refer only partly on considerations which can be already found in the real estate literature. This concerns for example the just called appraisal-model of Quan and Quigley (1989, 1991) which we use to model the appraiser-behaviour. Also we employ new considerations, for example for the modelling of the non-synchronous appraisal process. We find that not only the volatilities of returns are downward biased but also the mean returns in a time series with only few quarterly observations. We suggest to account for this downward biased mean returns in the application of unsmoothing procedures and report our results for the modified Zero-Autocorrelation unsmoothing procedure, originally proposed by Fisher, Geltner and Webb (1994). | |
| "HOW OPEN CAN A REAL ESTATE FUNDS BE?" In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The implications of regulations on real estate funds are crucial, not only for the investment opportunities but also for the stability of the investment vehicle. We observe internationally several attempts to establish (or re-establish) open-end funds, as well for real estate as for other illiquid assets, e.g. hedge funds or private equity funds. Nevertheless, after the crisis of the German open-end funds, one of the largest institutions for private investors, we observe now difficulties of the PUTs, the well-established British counterpart for institutional investors. In our paper, we try to analyze the reasons and their implications for the open-end fund's evolution. | |
| "HOW TO INTEGRATE RESEARCH IN A REAL ESTATE COURSE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | In the last two years the Real Estate Course of V&M Groningen has developed a program to execute applied research for different real estate companies in the third year of the real Estate Course. Starting with a group of 6 students in 2005, we now carry out applied research with 75 students in the third year of the program. It is a short but intensive preparation for their final thesis in the fourth year and is followed by their first internship. In this paper some examples will be presented, and the succes factors will be discussed. It is a follow up from the presentation in Paris (december 2007, ESSEC), which was about the conditions and possibilities. In Paris, 1 or 2 from the 60 people present were familiar with this type of education, so it seems not very common to integrate applied research for companies in the program (except internship and thesis). Students like working in practice, which does not mean they have a professional attitude. This part o f the course forces them to develop such an attitude. Students are very enthousiastic, although insecure, and think it's the prefect preparation for their internship and thesis. Examples are applied research for an new office concept, needed competences for Property and Assetmanagement (with results), monitoring the social-economic effects in a weak region after building a new village (in preparation), and a research of recreational village concepts. | |
| "HOW TO RATE ITALIAN REAL ESTATE FUNDS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The rating offered by independent credit assessment institution represents an easy way to summarize the risk return profile of an investment and, especially in the United States, this tool is used also to evaluate the risk return profile of Real Estate investment products. The more relevant rating agencies published rating criteria for the evaluation of real estate indirect investments and defined some guidelines to evaluate fund manager choices and capabilities. In Italy, the law and the characteristics of the markets are quite different from other U.S. or E.U. experience and rating criteria defined for real estate investments in other countries could not be applied directly to Italian real estate funds. The aim of the paper is to study which are the main difference of Italian market respect to other markets that could impact on rating evaluation and how international best practices on real estate rating could be applied to this new scenario. The analysis proposed will consider all real estate funds listed in Italy looking at investment and financing solutions adopted. The last section of the paper tries to make a detailed analysis of the portfolio of real estate investments made by one relevant real estate Italian fund manager. The aim of the analysis is to test which are the limits of standards procedures for evaluating Italian real estate funds and how real estate fund managers can improve the rating assigned by the external credit rating agency according to the real estate investment selection process. | |
| "HOW USEFUL IS YOUR DEGREE? - AN INDUSTRY ANALYSIS OF THE PROPERTY AND VALUATION DEGREES AT RMIT UNIVERSITY, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | University education today is often intrinsically connected to industry needs. If graduates do not have industry-ready skills then they and their employers may see this as a university failing. RMIT University prides itself on its industry links. The Property and Valuation programs at the School of Property, Construction and Project Management have strong and continuing ties with industry and in particular with the major accrediting body, the Australian Property Institute. It is important to all stakeholders; (students, industry and the University), that this focus be maintained. This paper uses research from literature, focus groups and interviews to examine current Property and Valuation programs at RMIT University from an industry perspective. Industry participants are drawn from the pool of employers who support our Work Experience Program. The paper identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the programs and suggests strategies to improve both curricula and student involvement. It also discusses industry beliefs concerning professional accreditation and the role of the University in this process. This ongoing investigation will form the initial stage of a thorough analysis of all programs offered at the School and will form part of the continuing strive towards excellence. | |
| "IMPACT OF BOARD COMPOSITION ON AUSTRALIAN REIT PERFORMANCE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Already well established in Australia and the USA, REITs are now growing significantly in Asia and Europe. Previous research focusing on US REITs has investigated the impact of Board composition on REIT performance, with a particular focus on agency issues arising from the level of separation of ownership and management. Following a brief literature review, a survey of Australian REITs is undertaken to determine the composition of REIT Boards and the level of separation of ownership and management. The findings on Board composition are then compared to REIT performance and conclusions drawn, with areas for further research suggested. | |
| "IMPACT OF LAND AND HOUSING MARKET REFORM ON LOW INCOME HOUSING PROVISION IN CHINA: THE CASE OF BEIJING AND SHANGHAI." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Successive reforms on land use rights, mortgage finance and privatisation of the social housing stock to sitting tenants coupled with large scale housing shortage particularly in urban areas due to in-migration and rapidly rising incomes has led to the massive growth of the private housing market in China. As a result between 1999 and 2006 national housing prices have risen by over 50% and about 2.5 billion square metres of housing developments sold in the open market. Available evidence suggests however that this growth is largely concentrated on higher income groups with a large degree of speculative investment due to the rapidly rising prices. Given the rapid decline of social housing provision an important issue for consideration is the impact on the housing position of lower income groups, particularly new migrants to Chinese cities and their adopted housing strategies. The overall conceptual framework for this work draws on the institutional approach to urban analysis. The institutional approach has gained importance for analysing the diversity of economic formations and urban dynamics in different localities in recent years. Utilising this approach, scholars have researched the development of property and housing markets and policy in both developed and transition and developing economies (Keivani, et al, 2001). This approach is particularly suited for examining low income housing provision in developing countries. From the institutional perspective the key to such an analysis lies in the relationships between the interests, strategies and actions of agents involved and the social, economic and regulatory structures governing their decisions. Thus the research will focus on: ∑ the impact of institutional reforms, particularly land rights, on the operation and interaction of the main actors involved in the housing market and low income housing provision. >From a policy perspective the publication of World Bank housing policy paper in 1993 provided a sharp focus on enabling private housing markets and the housing sector. This is based on a series of major institutional reforms and withdrawal of public sector from direct provision to one of eradicating market barriers and facilitating efficient market activity. The Chinese context provides an important case of rapid and wide scale reforms for development of housing markets in a major transition economy. This paper draws on the market enabling paradigm to examine a) the degree to which the Chinese experience has followed enabling market policy strategies, and b) what is the potential of such a paradigm for actually addressing low income housing provision. | |
| "IMPACT OF REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT ON FORMATION OF ELEMENTS OF SPATIAL - FUNCTIONAL STRUCTURE (NEIGHBOURHOODS) OF RIGA CITY." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The paper contributes to the literature that aims at identifying and measuring the criteria of formation of a polycentric city. Polycentric city is closely related to the changes and development of spatial ñ functional structure of city. City planning is one side of this process, the other being closely related to choice of residential location of individuals (households) and choice of commercial location of businesses and industries. The paper aims to identify the impact of real estate investment on formation of neighbourhoods within Riga City. Like in many post ñ social economies, huge amount of new mostly residential, office and commercial development projects have been realised over past years in Riga City in land areas previously undeveloped or partly developed. This has led to a change of number of inhabitants and employees in many of neighbourhoods of Riga as a result changing social context and even ìfaceî of some of the neighbourhoods. The paper is based on real investment survey, with data on amount of real estate investment in 59 historic neighbourhoods of Riga City in past 5 years from which conclusions and some theoretical generalisations are made. | |
| "IMPACT OF URBAN FORM ON ENERGY USE IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES - A CASE STUDY APPROACH." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Growing global consciousness for sustainable development necessitates the requirement for location specific responses to environmental problems in terms of planning and design of urban built form. A quantitative study was undertaken to compare the energy use of two residential neighbourhoods of distinct urban form. The study considered planned (i.e. structured) and unplanned (i.e. organic; unstructured) in Sonipat, India. The study considered key attributes of built form namely: orientation, height, faÁade opening, street width and aspect ratio of building. This paper compares the energy use in both of the neighbourhoods and investigates the influence of the attributes on energy use in buildings. The output of the study suggests that planning policies contribute significantly in achieving sustainable urban development by way reduction of energy use in built form. | |
| "IMPLEMENTATION OF A MAINTENANCE STRATEGY FOCUSSING OWNER-OCCUPIED PROPRIETARY." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Real estate portfolios of private and public corporation are increasingly optimized concerning their using phase. By contrast private used properties such as detached houses or multifamily residences are often neglected already at the beginning of the useful life. One reason could be the absence of professional management. Furthermore there are the private building owners who do not realize the importance of a value conserving maintenance strategy providing a basis to secure their investment. Considering owner-occupied proprietary the life cycle costs are as well important as the construction costs. Thus the ownerís awareness for the life cycle has to be raised. In consequence of this and based on the fact that many owners are short of cash thereís often a reconstruction backlog after completion of the building. It is therefore the aim of the paper to present the need of maintenance focussing detached houses and to bundle the elements of maintenance in a predictable cycle. Result of the research is a catalogue with a chronological order of the single components of maintenance referring to this context. Existing strategies and models will be adopted and modified to achieve this target. Another question is how to include elementary home automation in the cycle of maintenance such as alternative heating systems with their multifaceted techniques. As a conclusion the paper will give an outlook how to realize a professional management of these services considering the determining conditions of the market for owner-occupied proprietary in Germany. However it will be necessary to get over the interface between building industry and handcraft. | |
| "IMPLEMENTATION OF SUSTAINABLE COMMERICAL PROPERTY PRACTICES BY EUROPEAN PROPERTY COMPANIES." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Sustainable commercial property has taken on increased significance in recent years, with ìgreen buildingsî becoming increasingly important to both tenants and owners. The purpose of this paper is to assess the implementation of sustainable commercial property practices by European property companies. This will be done by assessing the annual reports and associated sustainability documents on the websites of various European property companies to determine the significance of sustainability practices in their commercial property portfolios. Examples of European property companies leading the sustainable commercial property agenda will also be highlighted. | |
| "IMPROVING THE REAL ESTATE MARKET DATA OF BROKERS AND VALUERS FOR POWER OF EXPRESSION AND TRANSPARANCY." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | A limited survey among professors of real estate related chairs of Dutch universities was held in order to reveal the various research areas. This showed a clear focus on the macro level of portfolio and strategy and an underexposure for the micro level of transaction, object and operational involvement. An undesirable mismatch. After all, research is mainly based on databases which find their origin at that lower level. This paper is about the importance of those data and their suppliers, the brokers and valuers. The key position of these market parties has been proved beyond any doubt. Nevertheless, it should be mentioned that their is a lot to improve on data quality. The current market circumstances could ask for a solution that has been neglected for about ten years now. This suggestion could improve the system of data processing. An explanation of the intended upset is given. | |
| "Improving the real estate valuation process for financial purposes through the use of process related theories." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The paper evaluates the traditional real estate valuation process and its' major faults. By utilizing process related theories such as Lean Management, Outsourcing, Make-or-Buy, Just-in-Time, Benchmarking and Supplier Integration the valuation process can be significantly improved. | |
| "INNOVATIVE SOCIAL SALES PROGRAMMES: A COMPARATIVE RISK ANALYSIS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | In recent years, Dutch housing corporations have introduced a number of innovative types of sale. These innovative types of sale have in common that a house is sold to the tenant at a discount. In this way, buying a house becomes affordable for lower-income households. And the housing corporation obtains cash, which can be used for (social) housing investment. The different innovative types of sales differ in the conditions under which the house is sold. These conditions range from sharing the profit (or loss) at turnover, repaying the (indexed) discount at turnover or only buying the dwelling and leasing the land. Therefore, even if the discount is the same, the risk ñ return profile of the different types of social sale can differ. In this paper, we analyse and compare the risk ñ return characteristics of three different innovative types of sale. We use Monte Carlo simulation to establish the expected cash flows and Net Present Values, and t he uncertainties herein measured as Value at Risk. | |
| "INNOVATIVE STRATEGIES IN DUTCH HOUSING MARKET." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | There are many bottlenecks in the Dutch housing market. Several developments indicate the misery in the housing market: the price of owneroccupied property is high, waiting lists for dwelling seekers are long and the chance of being successful in finding a suitable and affordable dwelling is low. The increased purchase prices resulted in high financial barriers for entering the buyers market. Starters can hardly enter this market and the entryoptions for tenants that want to buy are diminishing. The declining outflow out of the rental sector in combination with a meager quantity of building in this sector, results in decreasing influx- and transfer opportunities in this sector. As a consequence a lot of young dwelling seekers are becoming outsiders on the housing market. This paper analyses the dynamics of the housing market in the region of Eindhoven. First it investigates the entrybarriers in the owner-occupied market. Second it will go into the entry- and exit barriers in the social rental sector and the rate of success for urgent dwelling seeker. Than it will explore two innovative interventions, that can enlarge freedom of choice in the housing market. The first one is the individual or collective commissioning of building, in which the traditional developers donít play a part anymore. The second on is ësocial home ownershipí, a ëhybridí form of tenure. In this form ëbetween buying and rentingí the best of both worlds is combined. At the end the paper discuss the success- and fail factors of both strategies. | |
| "INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF CORPORATE REAL ESTATE MANAGEMENT." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The increasing stress of competition force companies to transform their structures and processes in order to increase market shares, maintain their competitive positions, and increase shareholder value. Within this context, many companies already have recognized that corporate real estate (CRE) is an important competitive factor. Therefore, identifying a suitable form of organization and institutionalization of CREM has been one of the major challenges in many companies over the last years. Although, many companies follow similar aims with regard to their real estate assets, and CRE managers are faced with nearly the same challenges within and outside their companies, many different organizational configurations of CREM can be identified in practice. The current state of organizational structure of real estate management is not adequately understood, and it has not been well researched yet which configurations meet the targets best. The aim of this paper therefore is to identify typical organizational forms in practice, and which management philosophy stands behind them. The findings show that two main groups of CREM philosophies exist: the ones where CRE is predominantly strategic-oriented and the others where CREM plays a more supportive role for the core business. | |
| "INTEGRATION AND CONVERGENCE IN EUROPEAN OFFICE MARKETS: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | This paper examines the effects of the process of European monetary integration on the investment performance of the commercial real estate sector. Specifically, it measures whether there has been convergence in the investment performance of private real estate markets. A number of criteria are used to examine the different aspects of convergence. Investment performance is separated into rental growth and yield changes. A number of conventional convergence tests are performed on historic time series of office rents and yields for a number of cities. The convergence tests are also performed on data for a sample of US cities in order to provide a benchmark against which to compare European cities. | |
| "INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL CENTRES, OFFICE MARKET RENTS AND VOLATILITY." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Despite continuing developments in information technology and the growing economic significance of the emerging Eastern European, South American and Asian economies, international financial activity remains strongly concentrated in a relatively small number of international financial centres. For example, BIS figures suggest that 85% of foreign exchange transactions and 77% of international debt issuance take place in just ten centres; the top five stock exchanges account for 61% of global equity market capitalisation. That concentration of financial activity requires a critical mass of office occupation and creates demand for high specification, high cost space. It also links the office markets of those cities into a network of global capital flows with impacts on volatility and drivers of risk which, in turn, has implications for diversification and portfolio strategy. This paper examines office rents and capital values for a sample of world cities in relation to city size, national economic aggregates, geographical location and economic function using a range of statistical techniques and seeks to explore the linkage between global financial activity and property market volatility. | |
| "INTERRELATION OF INCOMES AND CHARGES ON DIFFERENT CYCLES OF THE REAL ESTATE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The profitable and account part of investment process in the real estate is presented by the following key operations: - Chargeable part: decision-making, search and preparation of object; research of the market; architecture/designing/design; positioning in the market; construction/reconstruction; - Profitable part: sale and attraction of means from investors/credit establishments. The specified kinds of operations are interconnected. The best and the most effective utilization of a land lot in building and ready object, depends on consecutive and full application of operations. The profitable real estate is most sensitive to volumes and quality of spent operations. //On different cycles of the real estate, monetary streams of operations differ, but for the best and most effective utilization the volume of operations should be full. The formation of a portfolio of the real estate and the work with it, should include all kinds of the specified operations, - this reduces risks and increases profitableness of a portfolio of the real estate. | |
| "INVESTIGATING ISTANBUL OFFICE DEVELOPMENT CYCLE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The role of the economic growth in influencing office rents and space demand has been analyzed in various studies, especially in the US and UK office markets. The equilibrium conditions between demand and supply is investigated and theoretical models, which help to explain some observed characteristics of the office-development cycle, is suggested in these studies. Following the 2001 economic crisis, office rents decreased sharply and vacancy rates increased in _stanbul office market. Office market has started to recover since 2004, and the rental level increased steadily and reached the level before 2001, in line with the economic growth. Especially second half of the 2007, average office rent has increased with approximately 50% growth rate. On the other hand, the office supply grew only 2% in the last year. Although vacancy rates decreased dramatically (almost zero in the CBD), there is still lack in new office construction. It is observed that the speed of office construction movement responses to changes in market fundamentals is behind to meet new office space demand. The aim of this paper is to investigate the underlying mechanisms of the development cycle in Istanbul office market. For this purpose, relationship between office space demand, new supply and rental movements is analyzed. The effect of economic growth on the office sector and the distinct behaviour of the office market during the last ten years are also examined. | |
| "IS THE UK REAL ESTATE MARKET CONVERGING WITH THE REST OF EUROPE?" In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | This paper assesses whether the returns of the UK securitised real estate market are converging with those of the other countries in Europe relative to the returns in the US. Using time-varying parameter modelling techniques with monthly data over the period 1990 to 2007 we show that from 1998 the returns of the UK securitised real estate market became increasingly sensitive to perturbations in the European market relative to those in the US. However, since 2004 the returns in the UK real estate market have started to diverge from those of most countries in Europe. In other words, to all intents and purposes the UK real estate market has not converged with Europe and so diversification across Europe is still a viable investment strategy. | |
| "KEY ACTORS, THEIR ROLES AND MEANS TO IMPLEMENT SUSTAINABILITY." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | There is a nameable number of stakehoders involved in planning, constructing and operating buildings. Moreover the participants in the stakeholders' group vary from one project to another. Each one of these stakeholders is - more or less - capable of taking influence in the implementation of sustainable strategies that are composed of economical, ecological and social aspects. The question arises, who the key actorsconcerning sustainability are and therefore determine the impact on the environment, the economy and the society. Key actors are identified by analyzing their personal aims, their roles within the actors' network and their involvement in significant decisions. Their decisions frame the overall picture of the actors' groups and their impact on the building and its quality of sustainability. A strong factor in the decision making process is the application of certain technics and conventional methods that often don't allow to install specific parameters dealing with sustainability matters. Furthermore interviews with representatives of actors' associations have shown that certain technics either lack the opportunity of taking sustainability parameters into account or are not applied correctly (i.e. in a simplified way) at all. This paper gives a close insight into the structure of people working in the real estate business and the buiding industry and their boundaries and potentials to develop sustainable houses in Germany. | |
| "KICK-OFF!THE IMPACT ON THE REAL ESTATE MARKET IN POLAND AND UKRAINE DUE TO THE EUROPEAN SOCCER CHAMPIONSHIPS IN 2012." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Poland and Ukraine have an outstanding opportunity: hosting the European soccer championships is surely going to prove a real challenge for the Polish and Ukrainian economy and until 2012 it could mean unprecedented prosperity. Thousands of new jobs will appear in the building market, services, trade, tourism and other sectors. Along with rapid economic growth, salaries will go up and unemployment will fall. Investors rushed to buy shares in companies that might benefit from organizing Euro 2012. The Warsaw Stock Exchange's WIG index easily passed the 60,000-point mark, setting a new record. Euro 2012 will have an enormous influence on the real estate market in Poland and Ukraine. Numerous new facilities will appear, such as hotels and stadiums. After the UEFA selected Poland to co-host Euro 2012, investors announced plans to build almost 220 new hotels. Poland will also spend over 2 billion euros alone on building new stadiums in GdaÒsk, Warsaw and Wroc≥aw, facilities in other cities will be modernized. A rise in building costs is therefore inevitable which makes prices of apartments rise furthermore. There will also be major impact on the infrastructure: the need for an urgent improvement of the transport infrastructure will enforce changes and the acceleration of investments in that field, especially for the construction of the A4 motorway ñ the section to the Ukrainian border. Until 2012, Poland will gain more than 600 km of freeways. 2,200 km of expressways will be built or modernized as well as over 1,500 km of railway tracks. 12 local airports are also certain to be enlarged and a second terminal at Warsaw Ok_cie airport will be opened to serve up to 8 million passengers a year. From the economic point of view, Poland and Ukraine are the perfect choice not only because both countries are developing faster than most of the Western European countries. Winning the right to host the Euro 2012 soccer championships is set to stimulate development in Poland and Ukraine even more. | |
| "LAND CONVERSION AND DEVELOPMENT." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Land conversion and the Geography of Non-residential Real Estate Development in the Netherlands It is the aim of this paper to analyse the geography of non-residential real estate development over time and consider the interplay between development and local conditions. The primary question is: do local conditions let non-residential real estate development rates to vary? We address this issue by analysing building permits issued by Dutch municipalities between 1986-2006. In the empirical analysis we first analyse if and when by how much, non-residential development rates differ across space and over time. Secondly we consider what local conditions determines the development rates to vary. Finally we address the implications of non-residential development for land conversion and land use. | |
| "LAND PLANNING THROUGH PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS IN GREECE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The participation of the private sector in land planning is regarded as fundamental in the field of land development in Europe since the early 1960s. It is seen as offering benefits for both government and citizens. It forms part of the land development policy, aiming at expanding government agency capacity in land planning programs and at achieving a successful and cost-effective outcome. This form of partnership has undoubtedly negative aspects as well; still, it has the potential of becoming an important tool for promoting land development. Greece is lacking behind concerning the adoption of public ñ private partnerships for land planning projects, since the capacity of the collaboration between the public and the private sector in planning is still not fully appreciated. As yet, few public ñ private partnerships for development projects are undertaken, because of the inability of the authorities to apply the existing legal framework. The aim of this paper is to focus on the Greek institutional framework for the participation in land planning and to evaluate some of the projects carried out in Greece. This study expects to draw conclusions concerning the implementation of collaborative planning in Greece, to pinpoint the strong and weak points of the institutional framework and to examine how effectively these schemes actually achieve their goals. | |
| "LIFE CYCLE MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC REAL ESTATES FOCUSING THE PPP ROUTE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The value of a commercial project development is strongly related to market cycles. Public real estate is virtually independent from market trends. To increase the value of public real estate, an efficient life cycle management provides the bases. In practice, the previously neglected maintenance, the need for reconstruction and new building projects raise the awareness of a value-oriented life cycle management. It is therefore the aim of the paper to identify forms of best practice in property management for an efficient life cycle management. One possible way to establish a real estate life cycle management is by applying the procurement model of Public Private Partnership (PPP). With PPP, a private partner takes over design, construction, finance and operation of a public building or infrastructure for a long period of contract. Because of bundling the responsibilities during the life cycle and the implementation of controlling and incentive mechanisms in PPP contracts a sound basis for optimizing life cycle costs is established. This paper will in particular look at PPP in the university and research institutes sector. German research facilities and universities face numerous legal, organisational and economic changes including the property asset management. The aim of the paper is to analyse this process of reorganisation and to identify potentials and barriers of PPP. Notwithstanding, the basis for any decisions concerning life cycle management is relevant building and operational data. The paper will discuss a data structure model which contains the crucial data elements. | |
| "LIVEABILITY." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The genesis of this paper is survey work undertaken for the Sustainable Development Council of the Urban Land Institute amongst developers and investors in real estate. The survey sought to draw out the relative importance of factors affecting the viability and sustainability of projects. One of the surprises thrown up by the survey was the perceived importance of liveability to both sustainability and viability. Unfortunately Liveability has a plethora of different definitions and very little research has been undertaken to qualify or measure the term at any level, let alone that of an individual development. This paper postulates a pragmatic version of liveability and seeks to quantify its impact at the development level through the definition of a liveability model based upon the economic, social and cultural needs of the occupier. The model takes as input liveability points awarded for each of the components based upon the development design, neighbourhood and macro statistics. These points are then weighted and aggregated into a liveability score for the development. The liveability score is then tested against the market to validate and calibrate the model. In this case the market is represented by a series of case studies representing the whole spectrum of liveable space, both commercial and residential. | |
| "LOBBYING FOR REAL ESTATE - WHO IS THE REAL ESTATE MARKET." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Not just since the beginning of the sub prime crisis in the US we are aware, the Real Estate Industry plays a crucial role in modern economies. In Germany ñ although the biggest export nation of the world with a strong industrial sector ñ real estate stocks make up some 88% of the total capital stock. Compared to the economic importance, the real estate industry plays a minor role within the pressure groups in Germany and properly throughout the world. This paper analyses the reasons for the week lobbying of the Real Estate Industry, looks the mayor changes that took place within the market, and describes the new evolutions in Germany, and the EU. | |
| "MARKET AND BUSINESS MODELS IN FACILITIES MANAGEMENTS IN EUROPE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | "In principle, the article applies results of a market structure analysis of the FM industry in Europe, which is part of an international research project on facilities management. After a brief introduction into the European facilities management market, its development and characteristic supplier types, the article outlines a fundamental market structure and examines whether the individual European FM markets, for all their differences, have certain things in com-mon that point to a general market-development model. Relevant parameters such as Michael E. Porter's ""competitive forces"" are used to analyse typical market and business models. It also cate-gorises the countries of Europe in terms of market maturity. This investigation is an essential component of the doctoral thesis of Mr. Sven A. Teichmann MBE, doctoral candidate of Prof. Dr. Karl-Werner Schulte HonRICS CRE at the International Real Estate Business School (IREBS) of the University of Regensburg in Germany." | |
| "MEASURING THE ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY LEASED OFFICE SPACE: A BRISTOL CASE STUDY." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | This paper investigates how the existing stock of medium to large office buildings in a typical UK city performs in relation to current environmental sustainability benchmarks. The vast majority of office space in any UK city is not new; over two thirds of the stock in England & Wales was built before 1985. So, whereas current efforts to benchmark the environmental sustainability focus on the design and procurement of new buildings, this paper examines the management and occupation of existing buildings. The research focuses on speculatively built office buildings of 10,000 square feet or more that have been constructed in Bristol over the past 50 years. These buildings are located in the city centre and in out-of-town business parks. Taking the BREEAM Management & Occupation Assessment Method as a starting point, the environmental performance of a stock of over 400 buildings is examined. By classifying the stock in terms of type, age and location and analysing rents, lease terms, vacancy rates and other market information, the findings of the research reveal how potentially difficult it might be for existing offices to meet increasingly stringent mandatory and discretionary environmental performance standards without the injection of substantial refurbishment expenditure. The implication of this might be that, as the environmental performance of new buildings improves, the demand for and thus price paid by both landlords and tenants for increasingly underperforming existing buildings will drop. This raises a question: are poor rental and capital growth and early onset of obsolescence in existing office buildings unintended consequences of the current focus on environmental performance of new buildings? | |
| "MICROSIMULATING URBAN OFFICE MARKETS - THE EXAMPLE OF STUTTGART." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Time-series based office market models from urban economics (Rosen 1984, Wheaton / Di Pasquale 1996) describe the market movement for entire cities, but they do not consider local heterogeneity. Cross-sectional models like hedonic price modelling and the adaptation of the hedonic models for vacancy rates are difficult to couple with forecasting results. However, office market research needs spatio-temporal information in the way that forecasting and a detailed spatial resolution are integrated. The microsimulation is a methodological approach that fulfils both requirements. The paper draws especially on the concept of location choice and land-use simulations from urban economics (e.g. Waddell 2003). The case study shown in the paper is Stuttgart, a city in Southern Germany with 4.325 office buildings. About 7.000 office occupiers are complemented by synthetically generated missing values. Occupiers (starting population) and buildings are stored in GIS. An iteration consists of the following steps: First, each user decides by a Monte-Carlo-Simulation whether to stay, to leave or to move. The probability for a decision is influenced by building properties, user types and location variables that are estimated with a multinomial logit regression and a mover data sample. Second, all moving and immigrating occupiers choose between coincidentally offered available buildings (binary logistic regression for different user groups). The simulation is programmed in Visual Basic for Applications and offers the parallel simulation of multiple scenarios. The statistical evaluation of these scenarios results in information about the risk of vacancy in individual buildings and the absorption time of newly built office clusters. | |
| "MOBILITY AND TENURE CHOICE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The objective of this paper is to address the questions what explains the cross-country variation in mobility (agents that change both jobs and residence), and is labor mobility related to tenure mode? The basic framework of the model is where the economy consists of two symmetric locations; with each location populated by 2-period-lived overlapping generations (and an initial old generation). A representative young agent has preferences defined over time-dated consumption and shelter services. For simplicity, we assume that agents must consume one unit of shelter in each period. Furthermore, we assume that agents do not value consumption when young and have linear preferences defined over consumption when old. Even in this simple economic environment, we show that the housing tenure choice largely depends on the probability of labor (income) shocks that triggers the agents to move. Moreover, we show the effects of housing frictions such as the transaction costs and the rental premium due to externalities on housing tenure choice. | |
| "MODELING AND FORECASTING OFFICE INVESTMENT MARKETS IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Property markets in Central and Eastern Europe experienced turbulent development processes since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ensuing abolition of communism in the Central and Eastern European region. This paper examines the development processes of office investment markets in Prague, Budapest, Warsaw, and Bucharest by using both a qualitative and quantitative approach. In particular, the development of office investment yields in these markets has been examined by using existing modeling methods and regression based times series analyses. The findings of the paper indicate that property market fundamentals play an important role in emerging markets, as office investment yields in Prague, Budapest and Warsaw are shown to be related to inflation rates, interest rates and rental growth. This contrasts with common beliefs that property investment yields in mature property markets are driven by property market fundamentals such as rental growth and interest rates, whereas emerging markets are predominantly driven by incidents. Furthermore, we show that the Central and Eastern European office investment markets are affected by the so-called ëwall of moneyí which has been flooding property investment markets and led to a global yield compression. Especially when comparing developments between Prague, Budapest and Warsaw versus Bucharest, the staggering effects of the global appetite for property investments on property investment markets become apparent. | |
| "MODELLING OF THE SHOPPING CENTRE SALES." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Mejia and Benjamin (2002) state that as the number of shopping centres increase, non-spatial factors become more important to the success of shopping centres. This also implies that the advantage of building, site and market related factors decreases. By differentiating the shopping centres can succeed, when they act as complements to other centres, instead of being substitutes. It has been argued that the shopping centres in Finland are not profiled enough, meaning that they are not substitutes for each other. In this research the purpose is to classify the different levels of the shopping centre market in Finland. In the research the shopping centres in Finland will be classified using cluster analysis. Another purpose for the research is to model shopping centre sales in Finland using hedonic modelling. What kind of attributes affect the sales of shopping centres and how much? The data for the research includes information for example on sales, visitors and different variables on tenant mix for the shopping centres in Finland. The research will give important information on what kind of attributes affect the sales of the shopping centres in Finland. On the other hand the research also identifies different classes of shopping centres in the Finnish shopping centre market. This information can be compared to the classifications of shopping centres in other countries, for example United States. | |
| "MODELLING THE TAKE UP OF LOW COST HOME OWNERSHIP PRODUCTS IN THE UK." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | There are growing issues of access and affordability to owner-occupation in the UK and in most other industrialised countries. The UK has led the way in developing a range of Low Cost Home Ownership schemes that provide different ways of assisting particular groups of households. Each employs different mechanisms with respect to the source of housing supply, the available finance, the target groups of households and the nature and extent of subsidy provided. It is important to understand both their distinct intended impacts and the actual outcomes. This paper looks at two wellestablished low cost homeownership products in the UK and focuses on identifying who buys and what variables are most important in determining takeup of the different schemes. Our research objectives are: to identify the factors that influence take-up of the two products; to investigate whether the decision to take up the products depends on household attributes, affordability, supply, relative user costs between tenures or other factors; to examine whether there are differences in the factors affecting take-up between regions and therefore between different types of housing market; and to assess whether take-up is in line with government objectives. To achieve the objectives, two tenure models, Shared Ownership and Homebuy, have been developed and binary logistic regression models were used. The findings suggest that the two products serve different purposes. The major factors directly affecting take up mainly relate to household attributes and to housing market issues. Thus take-up differs both between schemes and regions. | |
| "MOVING INTENTION AND CONDOMINIUM LOCATION CHOICE BEHAVIORS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | This paper intends to quantify the extent to which mass transit and other factors impact on the selection of condominium location. The study is based on Bangkok, Thailand data collected during August 2006. The analysis will examine three groups of variables: (1) demand profile (career type, income level, number of household, and current dwelling type), (2) reasons to move, and (3) location (reasons to choose location, distance between prospective location and the city center ñ especially mass transit station locations, and distance between current dwelling and seeking condominium. The research results are aim to benefit to condominium developers, governmental policy maker on mass transit plans, condominium buyers on each of the stakeholdersí part of involvement for condominium sustainability developments. | |
| "MUNICIPAL REAL PROPERTY ASSET MANAGEMENT IN GREECE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | In Greece, municipalities own or control substantial amounts of real properties, including public buildings, schools, housing and land. Although municipal governments usually attend to the day-to-day operational needs of their real estate holdings, they have never thought of their holdings as a ìportfolioî whose composition might be modified to better serve public purposes. However, more and more they understand that there is a need to review if the current use of individual properties is appropriate from the perspective of opportunity cost, mode of management and finance, or match its long-term needs for property for its own use and as investment. For the first time, the new Law 3463/2006 on Municipal Government includes disposals for the management of municipal properties, but it is not effective, due to the lack of guidance, and the inexistence of provisions regarding the inclusion of these assets in the municipal balance sheets. More, the management of Municipal properties is excluded to the Municipal Operating Programs that are elaborated. Thus, property asset management including inventory, property management and accounting and asset management, is not yet possible. This paper considers the following issues in municipal property management perspectives in Greece: the concept of public properties in Greece and the relative legislation a) the whole actual legal system governing properties, b) the possible forms of the asset management, and c) the economic aspects of management. | |
| "MUNICIPALITY AS AN OWNER OF HOUSING STOCK - A CASE STUDY OF LODZ." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The spreading transition of Polish economy initiated processes of first municipalisation and then privatisation of the public housing stock. Municipalities became owners of a considerable portion of the housing stock, frequently depreciated and requiring large outlays on repairs so they have had many problems with maintaining and managing the stock. Additional problems have been created by many obligations in housing sphere imposed on municipalities by legal regulations. The aim of the paper is to present some problems with managing the housing stock of municipality in Lodz, one of the biggest Polish cities. Authors want to present some possible solutions for existing hindrances. | |
| "New housing units on the roofs of existing buildings - The creative and innovative ways of augmenting housing offer and raising the value of existing housing stock?" In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The construction of the rooftop extensions is the viable way that makes the housing refurbishment less costly for tenants, enables to augment the demand for the housing stock in the built area without additional requirement for the housing space. The sustainable and energy efficient housing units in refurbished buildings and on their rooftops can reduce utility costs, provide the flexible and often very elegant housing spaces, etc. In spite these advantages there are many obstacles that inhibit the wide utilization of the roofs for the new housing units. We are dealing with these problems from Slovakian as well as from wider European perspective. We also present the partial research program results from the EU Intelligent Energy project SURE-FIT | |
| "OFFICE MARKET STRATIFICATION FROM CLUSTER PERSPECTIVE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The spatial clustering of interconnected firms is a frequently observed phenomenon; this is also the case in Amsterdam. Clusters are believed to contribute to the economic growth of a region. The increased economic growth, results from improved enterprise competitiveness related with positive external economies, such as a common skilled labour pool, the availability of specialized suppliers, a critical mass of clients and knowledge transfers. The focus of this paper is on clusters of sectors with a high share in office employment. It is plausible; that clusters of specific sectors will be located at urban locations where the location features match with sector specific requirements. These urban areas of sectoral specialization could also be an indication of the spatial office submarket structure. Analyses of local office space markets often assume a unitary market, which implies that the prices of office features remains constant across the entire market. However, different sectors have widely varying preferences and their willingness to pay for those features may also vary. As a matter of fact, the stratified structure of the office market is often mentioned and the office market is frequently described as a set of interrelated submarkets. Based upon the analyzed pattern of spatial sectoral concentration, clusters, office submarkets are determined. Subsequently, a study is undertaken to test if the determined submarkets accurately represent the office market segments. The results of this paper, provides insight into the location preferences of the various sectors and into the office submarket structure. | |
| "OFFICE SPACE MARKET DYNAMICS AND REAL ESTATE CYCLES." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The cyclic nature of real estate market is generally recognised and has received much attention. Especially, rent adjustments due to changing market conditions have been extensively studied. Quite a few authors have modelled rent adjustments as a function of (lagged) vacancy rates and others employed economic indicators, such as domestic and regional product, and employment. This paper analyses office space market dynamics throughout the different phases of the real estate cycle. Since 2001, the Amsterdam office market is considered a replacement market, characterised by a stable or decreasing stock in use. However, not all the urban areas in Amsterdam seem to be suffering to the same extent from the zero growth, or decrease, of the stock in use. In some areas, an almost direct response on the overall deteriorating market conditions was observed, which expressed itself in increased vacancy rates, higher supply-demand ratios and decreasing real rent levels. On the contrary, in other areas a lagged response to the deteriorating market conditions was observed. Furthermore, the volatility of the observed cycles for various urban areas within Amsterdam differs, which may indicate extreme dependency on local demand and supply flows. The research does not only focus on real rent adjustments, but does also take into account the spatial distribution of transactions, the share of the various sectors and the average size of transactions throughout the different phases of the cycle. In addition, the analysis is performed on the scale of the whole city and for specific urban areas. | |
| "ON LOCAL HOUSING SUPPLY ELASTICITY." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Housing markets have been established as fundamental to our understanding of business cycles, labor mobility, household wealth accumulation, portfolio allocation, and urban dynamics. Housing supply is a key element to explain housing price levels and fluctuations and recent literature argues about the extent to which residential land regulations drive housing price changes. However, research has failed to treat regulation as endogenous to the housing market equilibrium, and to local attributes that have an independent impact on housing supply. In this paper I use new US data about the local extent of restrictive housing development regulations and a wealth of institutional and demographic variables for the metropolitan areas of the United States. I give empirical content to the concept o land availability by processing satellite-generated data on elevation and presence of water bodies to precisely estimate the amount of developable land in each metro area . I demonstrate that development is effectively curtailed by the presence of slopes above 15% and that most areas that are widely regarded as supply-inelastic are, in fact, severely land-constrained by their topography. Furthermore, the extent of topographical constraints correlates positively ands strongly with regulatory barriers to development. I estimate a system of equations where housing prices, construction, and regulations are all determined endogenously. Housing supply elasticities can be wellcharacterized as functions of both physical and regulatory constraints, which in turn are endogenous to prices and past growth. The results provide operational estimates of local supply elasticities in all major US metropolitan areas. | |
| "OPERATING LEVERAGE FOR COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The rapid globalization of the commercial real estate market opens up for new research question such as effects of specific local definitions of market rent and net operating income. An ongoing harmonization of definitions is driven by the need for return and risk measures for real estate that is in line with the rest of the financial sector. This paper is about the effects of different definitions of market rent and customs for distribution of the responsibility for operating and maintenance cost between the owner and the space user. The rather extreme case of Sweden is taken as an illustration of a special case for risk ñ operating leverage. E.g. is an UK lease contract often only compensation to the owner for capital cost while the property owner in a Swedish lease contract also provides full operating and maintenance service. The UK and Swedish lease contracts are two extreme cases that are discussed with respect to definitions of rents, net operating income, yields and expressions for risk. | |
| "OPTIMAL PROPERTY TAXATION." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | While there is a huge literature on the incidence of the property tax, little research has been done on the optimal design of property taxes. In the present paper I design a model suitable for examining issues relating to the optimal design of a property tax system. One important issue that is addressed is the choice of tax base. Should the tax be levied on the aggregate value of the property, the value of the land, the value of the building structure, etc., or should different tax rates be used for these elements of the total value of the property. These issues will be discussed within a model of welfare maximization. | |
| "OUTSOURCING MANAGEMENT BY REAL ESTATE INVESTORS IN THE NETHERLANDS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | In the Netherlands outsourcing management of real estate by institutional investors is not something obvious. Since real estate investment became in use by institutional investors about 1960, investors started their own real estate management departments. Only property management, that is concerned with daily administrative, technical and commercial management as well as maintenance activities, was outsourced to external parties. Meanwhile, these so called real estate management organizations got more professionalized caused by increased experience and changed (real estate) market circumstances. For example, this professionalization finds expression in merging local parties into (inter)national operating real estate management organizations, benchmarking of management performances and standardization of contracts. Nevertheless, the relationship between investor and manager is under pressure. Profit margins are small and real estate investors are still inc lined to think that the services delivered by real estate managers are below standards. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether there are chances for real estate management organizations to reinforce their market position. To answer this question a survey was done among three different types of real estate investors: institutional investors, limited partnerships and private investors. In the survey current outsourcing strategies, future strategies, motives and the opinion about real estate managersí services were questioned. In the conclusions a comparison will be made between outsourcing strategies of different real estate investors. Chances for the real estate management sector are formulated. At the end, the paper reflects on the sector as a whole in relation with other sectors and other countries. | |
| "OWNERS OF DEVELOPED LAND VERSUS OWNERS OF UNDEVELOPED LAND: WHY LAND USE IS MORE CONSTRAINED IN THE BAY AREA." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | We model residential land use constraints as the outcome of a political economy game between owners of developed and owners of undeveloped land. Land use constraints are interpreted as shadow taxes that increase the land rent of already developed plots and reduce the amount of new housing developments. In general equilibrium, locations with nicer amenities are more developed and, as a consequence, more regulated. We test our model predictions by geographically matching amenity, land use, and historical Census data to metropolitan area level survey data on regulatory restrictiveness. Following the predictions of the model, we use amenities as instrumental variables and demonstrate that metropolitan areas with better amenities are more developed and more tightly regulated than other areas. Consistent with theory, metropolitan areas that are more regulated also grow more slowly. | |
| "PERFORMANCE OF OPEN-ENDED REAL ESTATE FUNDS IN GERMANY: ARE INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS BETTER OFF THAN RETAIL INVESTORS?" In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | In Germany, openended funds represent the prevailing form of indirect real estate investment for retail and institutional investors. As of 2007, more than 140 funds would exist, amounting to over 100 bn Euros in assets. The performance of such funds has been subject to critical questioning as it used to show a remarkably stable pattern over time. The aim of this paper is to analyze the performance and asset allocation of open-ended real estate funds to shed light on performance patterns of these major investment vehicles. Thereby, the crucial question will be addressed as to whether significant performance differences occur between retail funds and institutional funds, the latter with either single investors or multiple investors, or old and new funds after accounting for differences in the respective asset allocation. For this purpose, the property performance of more than 140 funds investing in Germany and abroad, based on data from the fund association BVI and individual statements of accounts, are each measured against tailored IPD performance benchmarks of direct property investments. Such benchmarks shall mimic the asset allocation of any particular fund. The results will give new insight into the performance of open-ended real estate funds. The analysis shall help explain performance patterns across open-ended real estate funds and add to an improved understanding of the German indirect real estate investment market. | |
| "PERFORMANCE OF REITS - A Sector- and Company-based Analysis of the Link between Market Cycles, Real Estate and REIT Returns." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The purpose of the study is to analyze critically the importance of physical market cycles for the performance of REITs on a sector- and company-level. This is done in a two-tiered analysis. First, by analyzing the underlying assets ñ the property holdings ñ that REITs have in different markets over 48 quarters and combining them with the corresponding market cycles. Second, analyzing the link between the ìphysical market cycleî of a REIT sector or company with performance measures like FFO (proxy for profitability), stock price and FFO-multiples (proxy for pricing). | |
| "PREDICTING HOUSE PRICES WITH SPATIAL DEPENDENCE: IMPACTS OF ALTERNATIVE SUBMARKET DEFINITIONS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | We analyze the impacts of alternative submarket definitions when predicting house prices in a mass appraisal context, using both ordinary least squares (OLS) and geostatistical techniques. For this purpose, we use over 13,000 housing transactions for Louisville, Kentucky. We use districts defined by the local property tax assessment office as well as a classification of census tracts generated by principal components and cluster analysis. We also experiment with varying numbers of census tract groupings. Our results indicate that somewhat better results are obtained with more homogeneous submarkets. Also, the accuracy of house price predictions increases as the number of submarkets is increased, but then quickly levels off. Adding submarket variables to the OLS model yields price predictions that are as accurate as when geostatistical methods are used to account for spatial dependence in the error terms. However, using both dummy variables for subm arkets and geostatistical methods leads to significant increases in accuracy. | |
| "PREPARING BEIJING FOR THE OLYMPICS: BUILDING AN UNSUSTAINABLE CITY?" In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The preparation for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing has been characterized by massive infrastructure and property development, with the latter used to boost local fiscal revenues and economic growth to help the former. However, the resultant growth comes at a price, i.e. the loss of sustainability. This paper examines property-led development in Beijing in the run-up to the Olympics and its impact on environment, the property market and urban competitiveness of the Chinese capital city. It uses an analytical framework on urban sustainability, underpinned by indicators drawn from economic, social, environmental and institutional dimensions, to evaluate major property development and infrastructure projects on their contribution, both positively and negatively, to sustainability. It is found that both residential and commercial developments are not well coordinated with the transport systems, reducing the efficiency of public transport and causing widespread congestion and air pol lution. The reliance on urban expansion for economic growth has aggravated resource constraints, e.g. the shortage of water. Institutional barriers disrupt rational decision making on location and density of property developments, leading to chaotic land uses, urban sprawl, loss of greenfield sites, oversupply of commercial space and shortage of sites for low-end housing. The demand for capital from infrastructure and landmark projects reduces investment for low-cost public housing. The paper concludes that hasty and uncoordinated development for the Olympics has undermined sustainability in Beijing and a plan-led development approach should be adopted to control growth, improve coordination of land uses, alleviate pollution and rehabilitate the ecological balance. | |
| "PRICE DISCOVERY AND MARKET EFFICIENCY IN MALAYSIA PROPERTY MARKET." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The research title is price discovery and efficiency of Malaysian property market and it is pursue due to the importance of property asset in the Malaysian economy. The objectives of research are to look into issues related to efficiency in the Malaysia property market between direct and indirect property investment. Issues such as market segmentation and integration will be highlighted as well as how these two markets interacted. Additionally lack of local research on this matter makes issues on market efficiency is still a question and gives an opportunity to explore further on this topic. The research will heavily rely on various econometric methods as a research procedure and due to non-existence of commercial property index, an index of commercial property market will be develop based on transaction data in various state under study. This index then will be used as a test variable against others selected micro and macro economic variables. Numbers of research has been carried out in regards to market efficiency and on the linkages between direct and indirect property market such as Wang (2000), Okunev, Wilson and Zurbruegg (2000), Toluca, Myer and Webb (2000), Chau, Macgregor and Schwann (2001), Yuming Fu and Lilian (2001), Barkham and Geltner (1995) and Newell and Chau (1996). However, their findings produced mixed result for instance Greame and Chau (1996) in their research on the linkages between direct and indirect property performance in Hong Kong find strong evidence that changes in property companies price lead changes in office and residential by one quarter. Barkham and Geltner (1995) also conclude that they found evidence of the existence of price discovery that occurred in the indirect property market. They found that in American market, price information does not fully transmit into indirect property market by a year or more whereas in U.K market direct property market is more closely and immediately linked to the indirect property market. Research on price discovery using Hong Kong real estate market data provides slightly different result. According to Chau, Macgregor and Schwann (2001) the results show that the returns to indirect real estate in Hong Kong convey little or no information about the appraisal-based return to Hong Kong real estate. They suggest that the sets of factors affecting return in the direct and indirect markets overlap but are not identical. Applying different method of measurement would also give different result. As pointed by Okunev, Wilson and Zurbruegg (2000), their research found that by using linear causality tests produce spurious result which shows causality runs from real estate to stock market, despite no evidence on any long-run linear relationship and suggest this could be due to structural breaks within time series and a nonlinear co integrative relationship between the markets. When conducting a nonlinear causality test, strong unidirectional relationship running from stock market to the real estate market is found and it is consistent with the presence of any structural breaks. They also suggest, given the nonlinear relationship between the markets, simple extrapolation will not serve much purpose and knowing that a three to six month lag period exists will only be of use if the full functional relationship between the two markets can be modeled. In the study to analyze long-term relationship among five indices, Tuluca, Myer and Webb (2000) found that price is discovered between direct and indirect real estate markets through feedback process, with the private market possibly leading the process. They suggest that due to particularity of real estate market, price discovery is a more complex process than initially believed and the definition of market efficiency is different. The differences in previous findings indicate that in depth research is required to be conducted within its local property market so that nature of relationship between direct and indirect can be understand further. Other than that, lack of research in this area in Malaysia also pose significant problem. Problem such as determination of allocation investment portfolio requires in-depth understanding of any investment market for fund manager. On the other hand, additional understanding in property market in relation with other investment market also important for policy making decision. | |
| "PROFESSIONAL PARTICIPATION AND PARTNERSHIP WITHIN RE EDUCATION IN BELARUS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | "Need of a society in experts of some field lays in a basis of any education. Detailed requirements to the educational qualification of any expert cannot be formulated without participation of professional community. It concerns also to RE education. The present report describes a situation in the field of RE education in the Republic of Belarus after an output of the review (N.Trifonov, 2002). Thus the role of professional participation and partnership at all stages of this process is emphasized. In Belarus the need in RE professionals has appeared with purchase of independence and occurrence of new market attitudes - in early 90s of the last century. It has been initiated by public organization of RE professionals, the Belarusian Real Estate Guild and originally carried out as a two-week course for RE agents on the base of re-training of high school graduate students was formed. Following stage was an introduction of RE formation in a system of higher education. It was expressed in occurrence of specialization ´real estate managementª within frames of a speciality ""economist-manager"" at two leading capital (Minsk) universities: the Belarusian State University and the Belarusian National Technical University. Within the frames of this speciality the staff for RE agencies, RE developers has prepared and, mainly, preparation of valuers was conducted. In the beginning of this century in the Belarusian National Technical University and the Brest State Technical University the speciality ´examination and management of the real estateª, also substantially focused on preparation of valuers has been opened. At last, since 2006 in the Belarusian National Technical University the speciality ""engineer-valuer"" has been opened. As the initiators of occurrence of these specialities the RE professionals have acted, first of all the Belarusian Society of Valuers, the BSV. Members of the BSV developed curricula and became the first teachers. And now leading disciplines on these specialities, first of all on valuation, are read by representatives of RE professional community. An introduction of accreditation of training disciplines by a public professional organization should be a logic continuation of this process. In the territory of the CIS countries such organization is the Council of Valuerí Associations of the CIS." | |
| "PROFESSIONAL SOCIALIZATION OF VALUATION GRADUATES: PACIFIC RIM EXPEREINCE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Professional socialization can be described as the acquisition of values, attitudes, skills and knowledge pertaining to a professional subculture. The literature suggests that study and consideration of professional socialization assists in improving tertiary education and graduatesí preparedness for the real world pressures of professional working life. This paper presents both Australian valuation graduatesí perspective of their socialization into the valuation profession and the perspective of program leaders in Australia & New Zealand. It identifies the values and skills they deemed important as a novice professional value and when they believed they had achieved the status of a professional valuer. It provides insights from the novice professional valuer, for the provision of mentoring and supervision and what may be implemented by the profession to deal with some perceived shortcomings. | |
| "PROFITABILITY OF ENERGY SAVING INVESTMENTS IN GERMAN HOUSING STOCK." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | This paper analyses whether investments in energy saving measures are profitable or not. Based on two typical buildings (single family house and multi-family house) the authors have calculated the profitability of a given set of standard measures (e.g. wall insulation, roof insulation, new heating system) which are not yet part of the German energy ordinance but could be part of it in the near future. The calculations were made from the view of owners who lives in their houses as well as from the view of landlords. The fist method used within the study is suitable for owners who live in their houses. A refurbishment investment is efficient if the price for the unit of saved energy is lower than the expected price for the energy to be paid at each future time period. The calculations show that the analysed energy saving measures are profitable for owners even if the future energy price will not rise compared to today. For landlords the situation in Germany is different. The landlords have to pay the investment costs, the tenants get the saving of heating costs. The landlord has only the possibility to raise the rent according to the German rental law. The calculations were made with the Net Present Value Method. Here the present value of cash outflow (the additional costs) is subtracted from the present value of cash inflow (mainly the additional rent). A positive NPV means that the investment should be made (is profitable). The calculations show that a general statement about the profitability of energy saving investments for landlords is not possible. It depends mainly on the situation of the rent before refurbishment relating to the local rent level, the assumed raise of the local rent level in future and the decrease of vacancy through the energetic refurbishment. These factors are different for different regions in Germany. | |
| "PROJECT FINANCE ON REAL ESTATE MARKET - CASE STUDY." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The city of Sopot has rich experience in co-operation with private sector. It includes management of the municipal supplies, programme of revitalization. The sale of production companies and investments with private capital participation are examples of successful co-operation. The example of last mentioned co-operation is project of Sopot Centre Redevelopment, which has been realized in the Project Finance mode. Project Finance is a method of investment financing that has gained and important place on the real estate market. This method has been applied to financing private and public-private infrastructure investments and real estate investments as well. In certain cases, with respect to principles of that method, the variety of Project Finance solutions enables to overcome financial restrains and meet growing investments needs. The aim of that article is to analyze to case of Sopot Centre Redevelopment, identify the barriers of Project Finance developm ent in Poland and propose actions which can to be undertaken for broader application of that method in Polish conditions. | |
| "PROPERTY DERIVATIVES - VALUATION AND RISK ANALYSIS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The paper presents the theoretical framework related to the so called property derivatives. The main feature of these financial structures comes from the fact that value of property derivative depends on the value of the underlying property. In the paper two types of property derivatives are distinguished: - property index derivatives ñ these are financial derivatives traded on the market, in which underlying instrument is property index (like IPD index); - real property options ñ theoretical structures which describe the opportunities to acquire or develop of property real assets at a cost determined in the present with the benefits delivered in the future; they enhance the decision making process in real estate investments by introducing more precise valuation of real estate investments. In the paper the following problems are discussed: - types of risk in real estate investments; - review of the market of property index derivatives in different countries; - proposals for the valuation of property index options and property total return swaps; - risk of property index derivatives; - review of possible real property options; - valuation of real property options and its use in real estate decision making process. | |
| "PROPERTY IMPLICATIONS FROM THE PRIVATISATION OF ELECTRICITY SUPPLIES - LESSONS (FOR NSW) FROM VICTORIAíS EXPERIENCE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | New South Wales (NSW) the largest state in Australia is currently going through the debate about the privatisation of its (state owned) electricity generation and supply business. This follows similar privatisations that have occurred in other states of Australia. In Victoria the supply of electricity was formerly administered by the State Electricity Commission of Victoria (SECV) through a three level structure that covered generation of electricity, high voltage distribution and retail level distribution. The Victorian Government decided to privatise the electricity industry in 1993. The privatisation aimed to provide a more efficient use of the community's resources, create an internationally efficient electricity industry, maximise customer choice and reduce the State debt burden. The privatisation split the SECV into five retail electricity distribution businesses, a regulated monopoly transmission owner, a wholesale electricity market and a number of competing generating businesses. The privatisation was undertaken progressively from 1994 to 1996. This paper examines the proposed NSW privatisation proposal to evaluate and estimate the potential impacts on the utilisation of property assets and to determine whether the impact will be similar to those noticed in Victoria. | |
| "PROPERTY RIGHTS AND URBAN REGENERATION IN THE NETHERLANDS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The person or organisation that owns property rights over land is entitled to determine how land is used, though within the limits that are set out by public land use regulations. Therefore, property rights over land are crucial in the process and the result of urban regeneration. In the light of urban regeneration it is often necessary to acquire the property rights, for instance because the original owner is not willing or not capable to redevelop. In those cases a temporal landowner - in the Netherlands this often includes housing associations, property developers but also municipalities ñ redevelops the land. The intent of this paper is to unravel how the way property rights are (re)assigned, and the way owners deal with them in the process of urban regeneration, affects the physical result of urban regeneration. This paper reports on an empirical research in which eight regeneration projects in the Netherlands have been investigated. All the projects include a significant and comparable number of housing units, but vary in the particularities of the property rights regime. The approach that has been applied is as follows. In each case a morphological analysis is made of the situation that precedes the conversion. In addition, the ownership configuration at that stage has been reconstructed. Both these exercises have been repeated for the final result of the regeneration project. An important part of the research is aimed at revealing the process between these starting and finishing points, with particular attention for the way the owners have dealt with the property rights. Obviously, the way each project was carried out and the product that was delivered varies greatly. But there are also similarities. The paper concludes that the assignment of property rights over land affects the physical result both directly and indirectly. Directly, since many of the initial property boundaries are clearly visible in the footprint on the site at the end of redevelopment. Indirectly, because the total land acquisition costs often weigh (too) heavily on the whole project. This is compensated by physical measures (among other measures), such as increasing the number, the size and the type of houses or reducing the quality of the public spaces. | |
| "PROPERTY VALUATION AND ENERGY CERTIFICATION." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | With the Europe-wide introduction of the energy certification for buildings (Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, EPBD, 2002) the accurate assessment of the thermal quality of buildings becomes increasingly important for building valuation. The energy certification is a means to predict the energy efficiency of a building and hence energy costs. In face of the rising and volatile energy costs this must be seen as a very substantial information for investors, tenants and building owners which potentially will influence their market behaviour: Values and rents of buildings with a high thermal quality will potentially increase, those of buildings which poor thermal quality are likely to decrease. To what extend this new situation will influence the market is not clear at this point of time, but building valuers have to consider this fact in the valuation process. Trying to derive reasonable approaches to consider energy efficiency in the buildings appraisal process, we int erviewed a number of buildings valuation experts in Austria. Our results give a picture of how measurements of energy efficiency could be included in the practice of building appraisal and how the introduction of the energy certification for buildings will change the real estate market. | |
| "PUBLIC RISK PERCEPTIONS OF HVOTL IMPOSITION AND PROPERTY INTERFERENCE IN AUSTRALIA." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | As a result of recent population increases in South East Queensland, significant pressure has been placed on existing infrastructure, particularly linear infrastructure such as roads, high voltage powerlines and water pipelines. Hence the need for significant upgrading and the subsequent use of compulsory purchase powers for land acquisition. However, little attention has been given in professional and academic literature to assessing public perceptions of infrastructure suppliers with respect to property interference and the negative externalities associated with such infrastructure provision. Results of 4 focus group surveys into public perceptions of power line infrastructure provision are discussed and attitudes towards property interference and environmental risk analysed. The research forms a platform for developing a model of externality effects on public risk perceptions and property value. | |
| "RATES OF RETURN IN INCOME VALUATIONS OF SPECIALIZED INDUSTRIAL PROPERTY." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The present article concerns taking into account risk when valuing specialized industrial properties with the use of income methods. The uniqueness of industrial properties means, that even in the most developed capital markets (real estate and business markets) there is a lack of reliable, comparable data that can be used in a valuation. Industrial properties are often a complex set of assets, which include land, specialized buildings, installations and other elements that function within the operational activities of a Going Concern - GC. Simplifying the matter, one may summarize, that indirect methods of income valuations of industrial properties are based on the valuation of a part of the business, from which the value of land is derived. The purpose of this article is to present possibilities of applying, in the valuation of specialized industrial properties, the concept of different rates of return for real estate and for the operational activities of a business. When valuing such properties, the lack of market information about transaction prices and rents brings about valuations based on dividing the determined value of the going concern among its assets, where different rates of return are used for different assets which comprise the going concern. The level of rates of return for the real estate component depends mainly on the difficulty level of converting the land into an alternative use. The expected rate of return in such situations is inversely proportional to the easiness with which the propertyís use may be changed. In the present paper, an example of an indirect income valuation of an industrial property is presented and different rates of return are applied to the real estate and the going concern. | |
| "RATING OF REAL ESTATE FINANCING - APPROACHES FOR REAL ESTATE DEVELOPERS FOR A TARGETED RATING PREPARATION." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The commencement of the New Basle Capital Accord (Basle II) has changed the business environment of real estate financing basically. Contemporaneous the risks of investments in residential and commercial property are risen as a result of the increasing complexity of the real estate business. The consequence is that banks have to analyze the risks of real estate investments more detailed as in the past. The risk analyze of real estate developer companies includes not only the financing of the proposed project but all business activities. Banks are using internal rating approaches which allow on the one hand an exact risk classification concerning the company and the proposed real estate project and on the other hand the appraisal of the particular probability of default. Banks decide on the approval or the refusal of a credit placing on the basis of this information. In addition banks peg the level of the interest rate and their risk premiums to the risk classification (risk a djusted pricing). Therefore the rating has an important influence of the economic situation of each real estate project. A good rating grade can lead to decreasing finance costs - a bad rating can lead to increasing finance costs and can be the reason for a refusal of a credit placing. These effects could have negative implications for real estate developers. Real estate developments are characterized by a high number of stakeholders, the particular characteristics of properties as assets and higher default risks compared to other investments. The consequences could be increasing risk premiums as a part of credit terms and decreasing development profits. That means real estate projects which are classified by banks as high-risky could be unrealisable. The first section of this paper includes a description of the structure, the function and the effects of rating approaches for real estate development financing against the background of the changed business environment. On thi s basis in the second section approaches for real estate developers are deducted to optimize their targeted rating preparation and to reduce the default risks from the banks point of view. | |
| "RATING OF RETAIL PROPERTIES AS PART OF AN ACTIVE ASSET MANAGEMENT." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | With more global international investors acting in the European real estate market there is a growing demand for professional and local Asset Management. The Asset Manager supports the investor right from the identification of investment opportunities over the holding period until the clustering of portfolios/properties for disinvestments. As the investment market of the past few years has focused more or less on offices in Germany, foreign investors are now developping new products in form of funds, REITS or investment platforms seeking for specific and focused segments such as retail, residential or logistics. As the fees of the Asset Manager are mostly directly linked to the economic success of each property, it has to be a fundamental interest of the Asset Manager to develop and implement a rating tool to support the entire decision-making process from the purchase of the property until its disposal. The paper describes the requirements, the content, the analysis and the implementation of a rating model for highstreet retail properties. The model uses 15 economic parameters and benchmarks on portfolio level including demography, labour market, economic power and market attractiveness on macro and microlocation. Additionally 10 parameters and benchmarks on property and tenant level help to evaluate rental income, tenantís financial situation, service charges as well as the structure and attractiveness for potential retailers of such highstreet retail properties. The implementation and handling of the model by an Asset Manager are shown for a portfolio with 32 retail properties with an investment volume of 120 Mio. Ä. | |
| "REAL ESTATE EDUCATION and RESEARCH IN AFRICA - HOW CAN IRES SUPPORT AFRES?" In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The paper describes the current status of real estate education and research in West and in East Africa, identifies the problems lecturers and students face and makes proposals how the academic community in established countries can support AfRES affiliated universities in Africa. | |
| "REAL ESTATE ILLIQUIDITY - IS IT BAD OR IS IT GOOD?" In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Poor liquidity is often considered to be one of the main drawbacks of direct real estate investments. In the following paper I argue that it does not necessarily need to be so. A search model is used to study the dynamics of the sale process for a property investment. An investor willing to sell an illiquid property is assumed to review randomly arriving purchase offers and to decide about accepting or rejecting them. The outcome of the liquidation is a function of the applied search strategy, which is defined in terms of a reservation price. By optimizing the strategy, a well informed investor should be able to achieve expected sale receipts that are higher than the average valuation of the property among market participants. This is equivalent to selling above the market price that would result if the property was perfectly liquid. There is, however, a trade-off between higher expected sale proceeds and the uncertainty about achieving them. Thus, illiqu idity might be advantageous for some investors possessing superior information about the current market situation and ready to accept (liquidity) risk. | |
| "REAL ESTATE LOCATION STRATEGY: WHAT CAN BE LEARNED FROM OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT?" In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Finding the optimal location for real estate needed for the operations of a firm is a strategic decision that determines the firms operating environment in the long term. It is a decision that requires understanding both the impact of the location itself on the firms operations (such as costs or closeness to supplies and customer) as well as managerial consequences of the type and ownership structure of the chosen real estates. This paper provides the integral mixing of both the operations management aspects of location strategy and the real estate management issues that relate to the location decision. As such it is on the intersection of two bodies of knowledge, (Corporate) Real Estate Management and Operations Management. Clearly, an all-round manager should be exposed to the interaction of these two fields of research, in order to make the best locational real estate decision. For this purpose, the authors present an extended class outline that c ombines the relevant knowledge and decision-making methods of both field, indented for use in undergraduate, graduate or executive courses in real estate or operations management. | |
| "REAL ESTATE SURVEYING AND LCC FOR A FOREST REAL ESTATE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | In this paper a real estate surveying concept for a forest real estate is outlined. In this area the following terms are important: management strategy, income, value of forest real estate, value of business, surveying, life cycle costs (LCC). For forest companies forest real estate and property are either their most significant cost or most significant assets, but still forest companies underestimate the property value issues. The objective of the research is to determine how different business entities at an enterprise consider the property value: a) value estimation (valuation), and b) value management (property management). Three parties of one certain enterprise will be captured in the research: 1) Forest management, 2) Asset management, and 3) General management. In Asset Management LCC can be used for strategic and operational decisions as well as for controlling. The influence of different calculation methods on LCC-supported decisions will be demonstrated by examples. The topic is tightly related with two internationally relevant research fields: forest real estate management and valuation of properties. Both fields are new in Belarus and are almost not being examined. This paper creates a manual for the entire management process of a forest real estate: from creation and development to production. | |
| "RECODA - PROCESS INNOVATION IN REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | RECODA is an interdisciplinary research project currently set up from Fraunhofer Institut, Technical University Berlin and Bauhaus University Weimar. The aim is to redesign the process of real estate development projects by including Benchmarking, geographic information systems (GIS) and virtual reality. So it should be possible to learn from finished projects via Benchmarking and simulate the planning results in architectural, economic and legal terms. The feasibility study has to be understood as a kind of balanced scorecard, where the basic decisions of a project are made. If one can get more and better information into this early stage of the process, it will be possible to get better investment decisions and risk control. On the other hand the project costs are comparable low to later adjustments. There are innovative tools developed and available in GIS or Benchmarking that are currently not linked to each other or with the development process. In o ther industries like the automotive industry this method of reorganizing the development process is called frontloading | |
| "REGIONAL SCIENCE AND REAL ESTATE RESEARCH - WHAT CAN THEY LEARN FROM EACH OTHER?" In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The research communities of regional science and those of real estate research have very little overlap. They typically do not attend the same conferences and seem to use different journals. For example, of the 719 citations in the journal ìReal Estate Economicsî in 2006 only three were to the ìJournal of Regional Scienceî, the flagship journal of that discipline. Only two out of 1327 citations in 2006 in the ìJournal of Regional Scienceî cited articles in ìReal Estate Economicsî. The paper explores the common ground between the two disciplines and argues that each one can learn important lessons from the other. We will characterize the two disciplines, identify the difference in their approaches and try to find reasons why the situation is as it has been sketched above. Then, based on this characterization, we will identify gateways between the disciplines and sketch existing and not yet existing links between them. Based on this information we will speculate about the lessons each one of the disciplines may learn from the other when establishing and fully utilizing these links | |
| "REGULATORY AND MARKET CONSTRAINSí EFFECTS ON REITS CAPITAL STRUCTURE AND SHARE VALUE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Most (Continental) European public REITS and comparable investment vehicles are subject to prudential and tax regulation aimed, respectively, to protect and favor retail investors. Regulation typically limits leverage ratio of REITS and recognizes them as income tax free entities. At the same time, as in the Italian case, market evidence shows that public REITS typically trade at (deep) discount on NAV figures. Those legal and market constraints: leverage limitations, market discount on NAV, tax controls, have severe implications on the capital structure of REITS by limiting managersí financial options when defining the optimal balance sheetís liability configuration. In turn, financial options limitations might lead to suboptimal financial structures, generating negative effects on REITSí share value consistently with financial valuation approaches. Suboptimal financial structures could contribute to partly explain market prices discount on NAV figures. The paperís objective is an economic analysis of the effects (i) on capital structure and (ii) on REITSí share value of the above mentioned, major legal and market constraints affecting REITSí business from a loan economics perspective. The hypothesis is that regulatory limitations incentivize REITS to maximize the allowed leverage level regardless of the optimal financial structure managers would choose if constrained free. At the same time, debt maximization induced by regulation generates compliance risk. It arises in the case of market turnarounds lowering real estate asset values below leverage limitations forcing REITS to sell properties at critical points in time at detriment to the investors. The analysis focuses on Italian market evidence. | |
| "RELEVANCE OF HIGH-QUALITY LANDLORD-TENANT-RELATIONSHIPS IN HOUSING COMPANIES." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Growing internationalization and professionalization of the housing industry on the one hand, changing demographic circumstances, increasing requirements of quality levels and other shift in demand on the other hand can be conducted on German housing markets. These market dynamic changes the business environment, creates new challenges and affects every type of housing company, non-profit as well as yield oriented. Thus an increasing marketisation of the housing industry can be constituted. Aspects like efficiency, transparency about the work performed and applicable management techniques become more and more important. Therefore two assumptions should be constituted and proved in this paper. The first assumption assumes a growing importance of market-oriented structures for housing companies. In this case high-quality management of the landlordtenant- relationship can be a good leverage to improve the market orientation. The second assumption presumes th at housing companies have weaknesses in managing the customer relationships. If both assumptions are right, a professional value oriented and high-quality customer relationship management (CRM) is an important success factor of housing companies in the future. In this paper it will be shown that many literature-based arguments can be determined to accept the first assumption. Results of empirical data, based on interviews with CEOs of German housing companies in 2006 and 2007, show that the housing industry has indeed high potential to optimize their customer relationship management to meet the market requirements. Therefore a gap between requirements and implementation in terms of CRM in the housing industry can be adopted. | |
| "RENT, OWN OR REVERSE YOUR HOME?" In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | We examine the optimal dynamic portfolio decisions for investors that either rent or own a house in the presence of reverse mortgages. Using stochastic dynamic programming different scenarios are modelled to find out how the existence of reverse mortgages changes the decision or the point in time when to buy or rent a house over the life cycle. Our results highlight the importance of the home reversion option for the decision whether and when to buy a house. In addition the article extends current ìrent or ownî life cycle literature by adding the reverse mortgage option as new key factor that may alter previous results regarding the important determinants of home ownership. | |
| "RENTING VERSUS OWNING AND THE ROLE OF INCOME RISK: THE CASE OF GERMANY." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | For most households, choosing whether to rent or buy a home is a difficult, multifaceted problem. It is well-established that relative cost and affordability aspects are important for the household's tenure decision, such as the tax treatment of owner-occupied homes, the cost of moving home, and credit constraints. But risk aspects might also play a role. Not only do households have to grapple with the uncertainties of future movements of rents and house prices, but also with the exposure to labor income risk, which varies across professions and regions. Correlation between these risks may influence the rent or buy decision, because fluctuating rents may allow diversification. In this study, we empirically investigate the impact of regional rent risk, its co-movement with profession specific labor income risk, mobility needs, and wealth constraints on the tenure mode decision of German households. We use the SocioEconomic Panel Study to construct constant-quality regional rent indices and constant-quality income indices for homogenous professions. We find that factors such as rent risk, mobility needs, and wealth constraints have the expected impact on households' tenure mode decisions. We also obtain some evidence that households also use the tenure choice to diversify risk. In the aggregate, the correlation between average rental shares and income-rent correlation in a profession-region panel is positive, though small. Pooled probit estimates and dynamic panel probit estimates, that control for unobserved heterogeneity, provide further support for the positive impact of the correlation between labor income risk and rent risk on tenure mode decisions. | |
| "Residential Mobility in the Dutch Housing Market." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | This paper is the first part of a dissertation with various topics on the Dutch housing market. Future research is likely to include studies into price formation and development, and consumer behavior in the housing market. Conijn (2006) claims that the Dutch housing market is strongly dysfunctional. There are little people that will disagree. Too little new construction, problems for new entrants on the housing market, hardly any connection between the rental and the owner-occupied sector: these are just a few topics exemplifying the problematic state of the Dutch housing market mentioned by Conijn (2006). One of the most commonly mentioned solutions in the Dutch housing debate is the stimulation of moving behavior. This paper addresses some of the key issues of (the stimulation of) moving behavior in the residential housing market. The focus of this study, however, is mostly on the interplay between the owner-occupied sector and the rental sector in the Dutch residential housing market and its effects on residential mobility as it is especially there that there seems to be a lack of mobility. In this study residential mobility is modeled using interview data from the Dutch Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment: WoON 2006. A vacancy chain analysis is performed to model residential mobility and study the similarities and differences between the owner-occupied and the rental sector. Furthermore, the vacancy chain analysis is used to simulate some policy implications. A loglinear model is used to model the interplay between the owner-occupied and rental sector as well as the interplay between sub-segments within those sectors. Finally, this study seeks explanations for the presented mobility patterns based on the before mentioned housing questionnaire. This paper adds to existing literature by stratifying the origin/destination tables that serve as the basis of this study in a different way: not by tenure classes and than by price as is common in this line of research, but according to the user-cost principle (Conijn and Elsinga, 1998). After all, housing in the owner-occupied sector serves both as a consumption good as well as an investment. Interpreting mobility of households is therefore confounded when looking across housing sectors. The user-cost principle is introduced in this study to deal with this issue; the user-cost principle subtracts all subsidies and fiscal effects and adds all expenditures to come to a figure that solely represents the cost of the housing services consumed. This allows for a more tenure neutral comparison of residential mobility. Preliminary results suggest that indeed the owner-occupied sector and the rental sector in the Netherlands are two very detached sectors. Moreover, evidence suggests that the lack of mobility between both sectors can be ascribed to the Dutch (implicit) subsidization schemes and financial constraints. | |
| "REVEALING THE COST DRIVERS FOR SERVICE CHARGES - A STATISTICAL APPROACH." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Optimizing service charges has become an important task for enterprises. Since these costs represent a major share in a companyís cost structure it is very important to be aware of the origin and cost drivers of this factor. Therefore the analysis of service charges is inevitable but often complex because of the heterogeneity of buildings and the lack of consistent data. The primary objective is to identify the main characteristics of buildings that influence operating costs. Hence this paper seeks to fill this gap by applying additive mixed regression models and a linear SUR-Model on a dataset containing detailed service charges for 1,400 German buildings located in 94 cities retrieved from 2000 to 2005. In a first step, service charges are estimated separately using semiparametric additive models with random city and firm effects. Based on these results, the models are then re-parameterized in order to achieve linear models. In a further step, we estimate a seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) model for these linear models. The results of this study can be used for ex ante as well as ex post analysis of service charges and are of great interest for owners, investors and operators of office buildings. The cost structure of any given building for example can be compared objectively to the results of this study and therefore reveal optimizing potential. The use of statistical methods makes the data comparable and transparent and therefore improves usual benchmarking approaches. | |
| "Reverse Mortgages as a Pension Instrument." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | In many countries the retirement landscape is subject to a rapid change in form of a sharp decline in traditional pensions coupled with low saving rates and longer life expectancy. Therefore a lot of people are at risk of having insufficient resources in retirement. One gleam of hope for some pensioner is housing equity, which is mostly the largest asset in a household portfolio. Until now the common way to finance private consumption out of owner occupied property is either to sell the house or to raise a loan. The former possibly would not be the first choice of elderly who do not want to leave their home and bequeath their homes their children. Furthermore, a comparison of this alternative with a reverse mortgage bears the difficulty due to the different utility of rented and owner occupied homes. The former requires reinvestment of the loan in combination with repayment of the mortgage and thus implies the necessity to finance additionally the interest spread of investment and mortgage. Additionally, many financial institutions do not borrow substantial amounts to elder people. The finance model of reverse mortgages was first introduced in the United States in the late 1980s, in a real estate market, where many people are home owners. In recent years, in many countries the introduction of reverse mortgages is discussed. In a reverse mortgage contract, the borrower receives payments as a lump sum, as a lifetime annuity or as a line of credit. Repayment are only required at the time the borrower leaves the home for good, sells the home or dies. Furthermore, the repayment is limited by the sale price of the property. We will discuss different alternatives to unlock equity which is held as an owner occupied home. Especially we compare (i) liquidating a home by selling it on the real estate market and renting a new home, (ii) raise a mortgage and reinvestment on the capital market, and (iii) other possibilities of entering a reverse mortgage contract. As previously mentioned, pensioners possibly would avoid selling the home. But there are also disadvantages of reverse mortgages. They do not only provide a way for unlocking equity bounded in a privately owned home, they also involve various costs from the borrowerís perspective like an upfront payment or high interest rates. We show through simulations how lifetime expectancy, housing price, cash requirements and the spread between credit interest and debt interest influence the optimal choice between selling the house and receiving a reverse mortgage. | |
| "RISK AND RETURN OF GERMAN REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT VEHICLES." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The aim of the paper is to give a better understanding of the risk return relationship of various investment products in Germany. The paper analyses the performance of open ended funds (both public and special) and listed real estate companies. For the purpose of this analyis a benchmark for open ended funds is developed and used as a benchmark, as well as a benchmark for listed real estate companies is developed as either no suitable index exists or existing indices flawed in one way or another (e.g. market capitalization, index weighting etc. ...)Various two-dimensional performance measures are used (e.g. Sharpe Ratio, Treynor Ratio, Tracking Error) for the purpose of ranking the various investment possibilities. | |
| "RISK OF MORTGAGE LOAN FINANCING - MEASUREMENT AND HEDGING." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The paper discusses risk of mortgage loan financing. Two basic financing structures are considered: mortgage loans and mortgage backed securities, including covered bonds. Three main types of risk are covered: credit risk, interest rate risk and property price risk. For each type of risk different risk measures are discussed. Then the aggregate risk measure is derived. The second part of the paper contains the overview of different hedging instruments used in mortgage loan risk management. The third part of the paper discusses the issues of risk of mortgage backed securities, including subprime loan crisis. | |
| "RISK TRANSFERRING - DEVELOPERíS PRACTICE IN POLAND ." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | There is no real chance to eliminate the negative impact of risk onto the investment process. So that investors can only implement some steps to mitigate the adverse consequences of the risk. One of them is to transfer the risk on the other participants of the investment process. In Poland, this practice is applied particularly by the residential developers. The aim of this article is to present the methods used by Polish developers in this field. | |
| "ROLE OF LARGE LANDOWNERS IN FORMATION THE PROPERTY MARKET AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The paper will present the sphere of activity, across which the large landowners can influence on space of property market. Among large landowners we especially can point out communes who possess the considerable part of land and buildings on urban areas. The paper describes activities of large landowners influencing on spatial as well as economical condition of functioning local property markets. The results of research will concern mainly the activity the local authorities (sale of land, building of technical infrastructure, spatial planning etc.) and their results on property market (the influence on demand, the supply and price). Analyse shows, that the large can have large influence on demand and supply, but also the prices on local the property market. Oriented activities these owners can simultaneously make up the important factor of local development across favour the investment initiative on given area. | |
| "Roof-Top Extensions and Housing Refurbishment in Slovakia." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | In countries of European Union (EU 27 excluding Malta) are situated approximately 100,1 million multifamily dwelling units according to the Report for European Housing Ministers Conference held in Prague, 03. 03. 2005. These dwellings count for an average of 47.5% of the total housing stock in the European Union countries. At present in Slovakia, and also other countries of Central and Eastern Europe, there is a vast housing area which was built after the World War II. This is the matter of a complex of residential buildings that were built in the form of mass housing construction. Until the year 1990 the construction but also the renovation of residential buildings and housing developments was planned. After the year 1990 there was a change of socio-economical model of functioning of states of Middle and Eastern Europe. Changes were manifested in every area of life and in the area of housing politics they led to massive privatization of the housing fund localized in residential buildings in Slovakia for the prices which mostly did not correspond with the market value of sale of real estate. Privatization of the housing fund negatively affected its technical condition. Regular renovations ceased or were performed uncoordinatedly in parts depending on the financial situation and on ìthe level of awarenessî of the new owners. In Slovakia is in place a law on condominiums, which prescribe the establishment of a condominium in case of multi ownership. Owners can choose whether they establish a condominium in a multi-family residential building or close a management agreement with another natural person or legal person. Condominiums are until now important players in management of multifamily housing stock despite than in last few years started to increase the number of professional facility management companies. In former Czechoslovakia played an important role in construction and management of multifamily houses cooperatives. Their share on market was decrease in second half of 90¥s. The market share of cooperative before 1991 was 45% and in 2001 was 28.5%. Considering that the economy of Slovakia is not capable of replacing the existing housing fund which is located in the multifamily houses that were built after the World War II, it is necessary to dedicate an increased focus on renovation of this housing fund. The expenditures on multifamily housing stock refurbishment in last decades were comparing with the demand on a very low level. The main problems of the current multifamily housing stock in Slovakia are: need for modernization, low level of energy efficiency and insufficient building maintenance level. One of the options how to create sufficient sources for renovation of apartment buildings is to utilize the roof of the apartment building as a construction area and build it up. Means acquired from the sale of built-up after deducting the costs can be used for renovation. It is a matter of a one-time possibility which is limited by many factors that depend on localization and constructive technical solution of the apartment building. In Slovakia, in different parts of the country, there are around 4500-6500 multifamily houses which can be extended by one or two floors. Of course this is only a rough estimation which is based on the number of houses which are lower than 8 floors. Roof extension for multifamily houses is a good possibility to create additional dwellings close to the central part of cities without build up existing green spaces. Profit from the selling of new dwelling units is an ìextra sourceî to finance the reconstruction and modernization of multifamily houses. Roof extension in existing residential areas is a very complex issue and has positive and negative influence to the living space and living standards. Multifamily houses are situated in every European country. In the western and eastern part of Europe are problems joined with multifamily houses different scope. There is one element which is similar in every country and that is the energy saving potential after the refur bishment. To create additional apartments in existing living areas is a good possibility to make correction in existing structure of size of apartments. In current multifamily housing stock in Slovakia is the share of the flats with size 100 or more square meters very low compare with the Western Europe. This article is an outcome from international research project SuReFit ìSustainable Roof Extension Retrofit for High-Rise Social Housing in Europeî. | |
| "SELECTION OF RESIDENTIAL INVESTMENTS CONTRACTORS - RESULTS OF POLISH RESEARCH." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The article presents the results of the authorsí research concerning a selection of residential investments contractors. On the turn of the year 2007 and 2008 a pilot study among Polish clients, developers, housing associations and main contractors, was conducted. The study involved a survey among selected respondents to whom questionnaires were sent by email. The choice of respondents depended on their experience in selecting contractors (subcontractors). Only top-level management personnel were asked to complete the questionnaire. Finally 54 correctly completed questionnaires were analysed. Apart from answering the questions, the respondents had an opportunity to comment freely on the topics mentioned in the questionnaire. One of the purposes of the research was to obtain data concerning the ways of selecting residential investments contractors. The questionnaire also concerned the procedures and criteria of contractorsí prequalifications, used by the investors. Another aim of the research was to establish whether the long-term cooperation between the participants in construction industry existed and which selection factors can influence the decision-making process. The results of the research indicate that all responders prefer competent, verified contractors (subcontractors), with whom previous cooperation was satisfying. Most of responders have evidence of previous contractors. In the case of investorsí selection from several tenders, the most important qualification factor is contractors experience, supported by references and an appropriate number of similar projects already completed. In the case of a direct offer, the most important factor which can influence the decision to initiate cooperation is confidence. | |
| "SHOPPING CENTRE CATEGORIES AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH REAL ESTATE BUSINESS AND URBAN PLANNING." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Concentrated Shopping Premises categories tend to be viewed by market analists (e.g., agency companies) as consisting of shopping centres, retail parks and outlets, though it is possible do find further categories in the former, through simple economic analysis. Some of the categories reflect the actual investment performance, other the underlying real estate development opportunity. All of them bear some specific relationship with urban and suburban areas which may enhance local development or bring some form of decay. What if developers have been too enthusiastic and some shopping centres shoudn't have been developed? A case study based in Portugal, with possible use for East European economies where this type of premises is growing fast. | |
| "SMART BUILDINGS: ACCESS TO NEW TECHNOLOGIES. HOW TECHNOLOGY EFFECTS IN REAL ESTATE MARKET." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | This research focuses on the impact of new technology in real estate market. New technologies such as: broadband services, telephones, pc networking and home offices, cable, digital and satellite TV, home cinema surround system, multi room audio, security systems, are some of the services that affect the values of properties. This research gives a critically review in existing literature and models that can predict the impact in real estate prices. Technology is rapidly changing and it is a big issue of research in real estate. How new technology affect the prices of properties? How properties are ready to include all off these new demands of modern life style? These are some of the questions that will be answered in this paper. | |
| "SOURCES OF ALPHA AND BETA IN REAL ESTATE FUNDS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Since the mid 1990s, in a generally strongly performing property market, there has been huge growth in the aggregate size and number of global property funds in both listed (REIT) and unlisted formats. Fund managers have been able to raise capital for funds which reward them with performance fees without clear evidence of historic out-performance against market benchmarks or targets, but in a more challenging market this may not be the case. It will be increasingly possible to assemble performance records, and following this there will need to be more analysis of those records. Potential analytical performance systems will include traditional attribution methods but will also need to cover the concepts of alpha and beta widely used in other alternative asset classes. This paper will examine issues related to this. What is beta, and what is alpha in real estate investment? How can it be measured and isolated? Can performance records and performance fees adequately distinguish between these drivers? | |
| "SPATIAL CONCENTRATION IN INSTITUTIONAL INVESTMENT IN THE UK." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Geographic diversity is a fundamental tenet in portfolio management. Yet there is evidence from the US that institutional investors prefer to concentrate their real estate investments in favoured and specific areas as primary locations for the properties that occupy their portfolios. This paper examines the extent of Industrial estate investment concentration in institutional investment in the UK at two points in time; 1998 and 2003, and presents some comparisons with equivalent concentrations in the other main sectors. | |
| "SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES FOR THE FIRE INDUSTRIES: A MEASURE OF THE IMPACT OF OFFICE RENTS IN PARIS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | This project focuses on the location decision of office establishments for finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) industries and some other service industries (legal, accounting and consulting activities) within the Œle-de-France region for the 2006 year. More precisely, the research focuses on the impact of the real estate components in the location decisions in Paris business districts for headquarters of the above mentioned sectors. The office rents level as well as others real estate charges or taxes may have a deep influence on the specific location of headquarters or other office establishments. The project statistical purpose is to study the geographical distribution at the local unit level for the FIRE industries as well as the other service industries (legal, accounting and consulting activities) and to measure the impact of the spatial distribution of office rents level in Paris. Based on office rents level and evolution since 1997, we produced rent index estimates for specific locations, with a focus on Paris central business district, La DÈfense and the western business district in the Œle-de-France region. On another hand, we used financial data of firms (mostly EBIT margin) to examine on what extent the real estate components weights on these financials and may have an influence on the location decision of firms. This research may indicate whether companies of these sectors can financially support to relocate their headquarters in expensive business districts of Paris. | |
| "SPATIAL INVESTMENT ALLOCATION: OPPORTUNITIES, LIMITS AND RISKS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | In The Netherlands economic activity, jobs and universities are concentrated in The Randstad, including the four big cities Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht. People follow jobs. The growth of The Randstad housing stock lags behind the growth of employment and behind the potential growth of population, especially in the Amsterdam-Utrecht-zone. Real estate prices are high. Interregional commuting and total traffic congestion grow fast. In the coming decade the potential labour force (20-65 population) decreases. Consequently, further concentration of jobs and population in The Randstad means disproportional decline in other provinces, where existing property will loose function and value. This varies from smaller towns and villages, which are unattractive to live and work, and where prices are low, to ñ at the other end of the spectrum - the enduring concentration areas. Those in general are central towns, where schools, jobs and urban functions are still concentrated.Investors are confronted with growing problems around the spatial allocation of their real estate investment (regional and functional spread portfolio and the mutations by new investment and disposal). In this contribution, after the regional analysis of economic, population and property development, a projection for the future will follow. For investors main questions will become: how to deal with the changing relations between Population, Economy and Property in concentration, twilight and contraction areas? What are the consequences in terms of investment opportunities and disposal, and what are the long run risks in terms of operating cash flow and exit value? | |
| "SPIN-OF EFFECTS in an area based development." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Area based development is a logical result of the changes in the society and the building environment. Since the early í90 there is experienced with area based development: the physical and functional change of an area-without restriction of geographical boundaries- initiated from the urgency of a social problem or economic opportunity, which took place in a long and complex field of force of different participants, and by which spin-off effects via synergy between different functions and with large scale investments are created. Spin-off effects can be defined as the all-embracing structural effects of the area based development. These effects can be positive as well as negative and are very various. The effects have different dimensions: they can occur inside or outside the plan demarcation, they can be intended or not, direct or indirect. Different spin-off effects of area based development are intended and they can be part of the feasibility study and contribute to the decision making process for large scale development. The whole process of area based development can be divided in four different phases. The spin-off effects should be a part of the feasibility study in the early plan phase. Through the insertion of the spin-off effects in the feasibility study the decision-making will be improved. Insight in the spin-off effect is important because they can enlarge the support for the plan and can guarantee that the aim behind the area based development will be achieved. | |
| "STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF CRACOW REAL ESTATE MARKET IN 2004-2007." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Statistical data base covered more than 8000 sale transactions of apartments in the city of Cracow. The presented analysis of this data consists of five parts: - trends in the price of 1 m2 for the whole city and separately in four districts. Different functions have been fit to the price time series, and then they were used for forecasting purpose; - regression analysis of the influence of area, location, and submarket type on the price; spatial analysis of the price on the primary and secondary markets; - search for the theoretical model of time-constant price distribution; - cluster analysis of apartments sold. // Different approaches allowed to analyze the Cracow real estate market from different perspectives. The observed growth of prices until 2007 could be described by an exponential function which cannot serve as forecasting tool since some turning point is clearly observed recently. There are significant differences in prices in districts of Cracow. Some other important factors have been also found. The apartments are not a homogenous set. Five groups have been found by cluster analysis. These groups can be characterized also by some outside attributes which were not applied for clustering. | |
| "STICKINESS OR INSTABILITY: SPATIAL VARIATIONS IN THE EFFICIENCY OF THE PROPERTY MARKET." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | This paper addresses two issues about the efficiency of the property market. It has long been argued that as data in the property market is based on valuations it has a tendency toward smoothing or stickiness. The research to date to assess this argument has been based on national perspectives. However, the accuracy of valuations will partially depend on local factors, for example valuations are likely to be more sticky in thin markets, i.e., suggesting a role for the scale of a local market. Similarly while investors had perfect foresight then yields would be determined by rational expectations on rental trends (and future yield changes). Again the responsiveness of yields while driven by national factors could similarly depend on the characteristics of a local market. This paper examines the quantity of information available in the property market at aggregated and disaggregated levels. It tests for market efficiency at different spatial scales of analysis. Specifically we test whether thin markets compromise efficiency and hence have a negative impact on the marketís investment attractiveness. Key Words Market Efficiency Information Cities Valuations Smoothing UK | |
| "STRATEGIES FOR THE ACTIVATION OF INNER-CITY POST-INDUSTRIAL SITES IN POLAND - THE MI DZYTORZE-AREA IN GDYNIA." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | "The master thesis deals with general conditions of the development of brownfield sites in Poland. Particular regard is made to the discussion of strategies for the activation of post-industrial fallow land under the ""MiÍdzytorze-Areaî in Gdynia. The topicality of this theme is evidenced by major projects such as the conversion of the port on the Vistula River in Warsaw (Port Praski) and the future use of the docklands area in GdaÒsk (M_ode Miasto). Large-scale conversion projects are characterized by their high degree of complexity, long realization horizon, and huge capital expenditure requirements. For this reason the type of cooperation focused on is the Public Private Partnership (PPP). By means of the MiÍdzytorze-Area reference example a PPP model has been developed and various instruments for its implementation have been discussed. The current general conditions for town and real-estate development in Poland have been highlighted and strategies for the successful and sustainable accomplishment of such challenges have been developed. The requirements of the work lie in the preparation of proposals for overcoming the still dominating sectoral approach to an interdisciplinary and integrated approach. The goal is a discussion of the controlling general conditions with regard to the 2005-adopted polish PPP Law and the resulting consequences for the real-estate industry. Reference to the current global discourse on the sustainability principle in real-estate and urban development is made with the thematic focus being on projects for the revitalization of inner-city areas, and the particular situation of Poland is placed in an international context." | |
| "STRUGGLING FOR RENTS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | In many metropolitan areas around the world there exist binding restrictions on residential development that are regularly adjusted to the increasing housing needs of the urban population. Such adjustments of direct land use regulations often give rise to significant scarcity rents. These rents are somehow distributed between the parties involved in the development process: the owners of the land where building restrictions are relaxed, the municipal authorities that determine the restrictions, the developers of the land and the residents of the newly constructed housing. The institutional and economic constraints and the behaviour of the various actors within the limits imposed by these constraints determine the outcome of the development process. The purpose of this paper is to study the efficiency and distributional properties of the resulting outcome. To do this, we develop an economic model that allows us to analyse the various issues within the inst itutional context of the Netherlands. The model is consistent with two stylized facts about land use and housing supply in that country: the absence of a substantial response of housing construction (both in terms of quantity and quality) to the increase in the real house price that has occurred since 1970 and the discrepancy between land prices and the willingness to pay for land in the heavily urbanized western part of the country. In an attempt to explain the frequent occurrence of delays in the construction of new housing we extend the model by introducing uncertainty with respect to the development of house prices. This introduces new issues: adaptation of existing plans in response to changing market conditions (which is time-consuming) and waiting for improvements in market opportunities may become attractive strategies. | |
| "STYLE ANALYSIS IN REAL ESTATE MARKETS: BEYOND THE SECTORS AND REGIONS DICHOTOMY." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | If in equity markets style analysis has been studied extensively, in real estate ones it is only now emerging as a valuable tool for measuring and benchmarking performance and risk. So far studies in the property market have identified three investment categories (rather than styles): sectors (offices, retail and industrial), ëadministrative regionsí (as defined by IPD) and economic regions. However, the low explanatory power reveals the need to extend this analysis to other investment styles. In fact real estate investors set their strategies considering other factors which may be found relevant as for other assets. Building on finance literature, we identify four main real estate investment styles and test their significance in explaining portfolio returns. We apply a cross-sectional multivariate model to a dataset of more than 1,000 properties containing qualitative information to define the different styles. We find that ëequity-likeí styles increase the explanatory power and should then be used by fund managers to set benchmarks and to analyze portfolio returns. | |
| "SUPPLY-SIDE FACTORS WITHIN THE INVESTMENT DECISION-MAKING PROCESS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Supply-side factors within the investment decision-making process There is considerable empirical evidence that planning policies have profound impacts on the performance of the investment property market in the UK. It is less clear, however, how information about the planning policy environment feeds in to the investment decision-making process and through to property values and asset performance. This paper seeks to explore this issue. It reports on eighteen in-depth interviews with members of the property investment community and focuses on the decision to invest in the retail sector of the market. The paper uses a six stage model of the investment decision making process as a framework for analysing the way in which concerns about planning policy impact on investment behaviour. The results suggest that an understanding of the policy environment and the development of a close relationship with local planning authorities is most important in the investment process, especially in the post-acquisition asset management stage. The research al so reveals that access to policy intelligence is highly variable and that analysis of the likely effects of planning regimes varies with asset class, fund type and fund strategy. | |
| "SUSTAINABLE URBAN POLICY ON HIGH RISE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Urbanisation in the Netherlands differs from countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, where urban sprawl a real problem. But even with an almost stable population the spatial demand is growing. Manageability of the city and preservation of the countryside requires that the process of expanding urban areas is brought to a halt. Increasing the density could provide a way out. In this context, high rise might be part of the sustainable solution. High rise strategy, if any, in Dutch cities, is limited to zoning in which tall buildings are allowed, suggesting a market capable of filling-in the outlines. In this manner, the national need for increasing density is not met sufficiently. Better acknowledgement of the additional costs of high rise, that recoils clients, is needed. By developing methods that utilize the relative high land revenues to stimulate sustainable, high rise might contribute to a more sustainable city. | |
| "SWISS WAY ON REAL ESTATE EDUCATION." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | CUREM, Center for Urban & Real Estate Management ñ Zurich offers the only RICS-accredited real estate programme in Switzerland ñ the Master of Science in Real Estate (MSc Real Estate). Our Scientific Director is Prof. Dr. Karl-Werner Schulte (IREBS: International Real Estate Business School der Universit‰t Regensburg), an outstanding academic in the field of real estate research. CUREM was founded in 2004 by real estate professionals and is up to this date privately funded. It is completely focused on the real estate industry and aims to contribute towards its professionalisation. From the start, CUREM has endeavoured to bring international knowledge to Switzerland. This is reflected by the Swiss and European background of its teaching staff. CUREM aims to participate and contribute significantly to national and international research bodies such as INREV, ERES or srett. | |
| "SYSTEMATIC INFLUENCES ON REIT LIQUIDITY." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Research into market liquidity has increasingly focused on transaction (trade-by-trade) data. This has been valuable but has also increased the costs of studying the behavior of liquidity over longer periods of time. It has, however, also been shown that daily data can be examined in such as way as to extract results consistent with trade-by-trade data and this offers the possibility of exploring factors that might influence the behavior of market liquidity over time. In this study we use daily data over a fourteen year period and produce a quarterly series of metrics that reveal how market liquidity of the REIT sector has changed over that period. In this paper we also adopt a non-linear functional form in estimating illiquidity ñ after examination of the data and of the regression diagnostics, we argue that the problem of heterogeneity was affecting not only the significance but also in some cases, the parameter estimates themselves. By adopting a log-based transformation, we thus arrive at an estimate of market depth which would accord with the economistís definition of elasticity. | |
| "TEMPORAL MIGRATION AND HOUSING MARKET RELATIONSHIPS. THE ROLE OF THE RETIREE MIGRANTS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Retiree migration in Europe has been an increasing phenomenon during last fifteen years from the North countries to the South. Spain has been one of the primary destinations for this group and they have tended to concentrate in only some coastal and very warm areas, like Alicante, Islands and the South. We have studied the two main groups of this migrants,Germans and Britons, and conducted a survey in order to collect primary information about their habits, tastes and other reasons which could be the basis to explain their presence in some of the markets. We explore the role of the economic reasons on the decision to buy homes in Alicante based on a panel constructed using primary data merged with secondary data about general information of housing market (house building, housing prices and migration) and also through adding housing market information of the areas from where the retirees come from in their countries. The pseudo-panel allows us to evaluate the role of difference on housing prices on the decision taking process to buy a house and the main differences about how the two European nationalities face the housing market. | |
| "TENANT MIX - THE MOST IMPORTANT TOOL FOR THE SUCCESS OF SHOPPING CENTERS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Shopping centers are a big and growing part of retail real estate markets in Finland. The sales of shopping centers are growing faster than sales in retail sector as a whole being presently about 10 % of total sales (in Finland). In Helsinki Metropolitan Area (HMA) the 20 biggest shopping centers had the total sales of 2425 MÄ in 2006. Apart from the fact that the shopping center industry is getting more and more important the academic research of shopping centers is still quite rare. In international research the tenant mix has been stated as the single most important determinant to the success of shopping centers (Greenspan, 1987). The different dimensions of tenant mix should be studied in order to find out which business fileds are most important for the success of the shopping centers. How different business fields are located in the shopping centers and how the shopping centers in Finland are pro-filed? The main objective of this research is to clarify tenants¥ preferences of the most important shopping centers in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area (HMA) and why. What kinds of attributes are important for the tenants? For this purpose it is crucial to create extensive (and eventually longitudinal) data compilation about shopping center markets. The most important factors and their effect on the success of shopping centres in HMA will be studied. The results will show which shopping centres are appreciated by the tenants and how these appreciations have been transformed into success in the form of rents in major shopping centers in HMA. The results should suggest/point out the attributes that need to be taken into account when planning and building new shopping centres. This kind of information is very valuable for planners, constructors and owners of shopping centres. All information is important when making a major investment like a shopping centre that affects its whole neighbourhood. The tenant data will be gathered by interviews on business place managers of various retail companies. The companies will be selected so that 80 % of total sales of shopping centers in HMA will be covered. The gathered data will be analyzed with statistical methods of factor, principal component and regression analysis to find out how the users/clients view the shopping centers of HMA. In addition, the GIS tool will be employed in the study. It has not been used in the academic research of commercial real estate in Finland, and therefore this research can be considered one of the forerunners in Finnish GIS research in the field of commercial real estate markets. The dissertation will be written by combining five papers published in well-known international research journals and the summarizing introduction. | |
| "TENANT RISK IN THE ITALIAN REAL ESTATE FUNDS: ANALYSIS AND COMMUNICATION." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The certainty and the volatility of tenant periodical cash flows related to real estate investments can prominently impact on the expected return estimated ex-ante. Therefore the tenant risk is a crucial factor for the investors and their asset allocation choices. The paper considers the Italian real estate funds and aims at analysing tenant risk basing on lease contracts and at verifying if this kind of risk is well communicated to shareholders and to the whole market in general. The paper starts with a literature review of major contributes in this field, produced by both academicians and real estate institutions. Thanks to a strong partnership with Investment Property Databank (IPD), which provides aggregate data of the Italian real estate funds market, the research offers an empirical analysis of contracts signed in Italy during last years. Methodology will be very similar to that one that IPD has consolidated in the past in other countries. Contracts will be hence investigated under many features, in order to highlight different risk profiles, according to sector, location and floor area, with a particular attention in break option clauses. Results will be then compared with other IPD studies focused on other markets: UK and France basically. Finally, the study will be concentrated on annual reports and other public documentation produced by listed Italian real estate funds, in order to evaluate how the tenant risk is explained and communicated to the market. | |
| "Tenants Renewal Decision for Occupation at Purpose Built Office Buildings within the Central Business District (CBD), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | As the country progresses to achieve 50 years of independence, the initial central area of business activities of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia located between the two rivers, Klang River and Gombak River (the city early formation business area) has undergone tremendous changes. Business activities that have transformed from pure market and commodity transactions to service oriented ones, have seen a shift of business occupation from shophouses and shop offices to purpose built office buildings. The various identification of the office buildings location in Kuala Lumpur which have been adopted by the National Property Information Centre (NAPIC) are Central Business District (CBD), Golden Triangle (GT), Within City Centre (WCC) and Suburban area. The Central Business District (CBD) identified as the older part of Kuala Lumpur city was gazetted in accordance with the Comprehensive Plan No 1039 in 1970. The office buildings located within the area shall be identified for the purposes of this study. While older office buildings located in secondary location or on the fringe of Central Business District (CBD) area are said to be more susceptible to being left vacant due to its unpopular office addresses and poor building images, similar buildings located close by the Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC), an area within the Golden Triangle area gained from the strategic location and continued to enjoy sustainable occupancy rates. In a research report entitled ìWhy rent in Kuala Lumpurî by the National Institute of Valuation (INSPEN), Malaysia in 1993, examines the key selection criteria for office space occupation in Kuala Lumpur. Key factors used as guidelines for classification of office buildings were location, building design, building services, rental rates and building image. The study has also revealed that majority of the building are managed in-house. It was also generally observed that the tenants in the Golden Triangle Area were more maintenance conscious than their counterparts in the CBD area, possibly due to their derived expectation of the better quality services to correspond with the comparatively higher service charge levied to them. The study however did not specifically rank the importance of the facilities accordingly or gauge the level of tenant satisfaction in terms of expectation and performance towards the factors identified. Various studies on the tenantsí occupation within office buildings have been examined. Axlander and Muhlebach (1990) had observed that tenants require supporting system to manage their business. Moreover, Kotler (1997) has identified the main factors to be considered in facilities selection such as rental, access to public transportation, and environment. In another study, Dean, Lee (2000) had stated that a survey of tenant satisfaction should include willingness to receive suggestions and implement them, appearance and property conditions, the quality of service management, contract agreement, tenant relationship, renew objectives, property characteristics and readiness to solve problems. Asser (2004) has indicated in her study that amongst other factors that influence the renewal decision include the size of the occupied space, the level of employment in the market, as well as location. Logical building characteristics such as age of the space and the size of the buildings did not appear to have a large impact. A study by a local property consultant firm, Rahim & Co Research Sdn Bhd in 2005, revealed that the majority of the tenants are looking for following factors in making their decision to relocate; they are namely location, office address, convenience accessibility, rental rates, building specification and facilities, building condition, age and maintenance. It is interesting to note that various factors has been identified to solicit tenantsí requirements from previous studies and it would be another additional information to find out whether these factors are still relevant in the current market office and business scenario in Kuala Lumpur. A specific focus on the CBD of Kuala Lumpur as an area (the study area) which is considered no longer a choice area for the location serves to examine whether other improvements could suggest in overcoming the situation. | |
| "THE ATTITUDES OF TENANTS CONCERNING ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Over the last few years more stringent environmental laws and soaring energy prices increased the need for the real estate industry to react. In this paper environmental issues concerning the German housing market shall be analyzed. The attitudes of tenants (and to certain degree home owners) concerning environmental questions are analyzed. One important question raised in this paper is whether tenants are willing to pay for improvements at their flats which help them to save energy and therefore money and which have a positive impact on the environment. The paper compares data from different studies with own data. Beside this the attitudes of tenants will be compared with data from another important industry, the automotive industry. | |
| "THE BEHAVIOUR OF HOUSE BUYERS IN GREECE UNDER BUBBLE CONDITIONS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | As is the case in most European countries, during the last five years housing prices in urban areas of Greece have increased by about 10% annually. This phenomenon was particularly extreme during the period 2005-2006, while the number of property transactions and the rate of new construction recorded was higher than ever. This pattern cannot only be attributed to globalisation, liberalisation of the financial system, the fall in credit interest rates, or any other national and international factors. State policies have undoubtedly played a major role. More specifically, state agencies anticipated the announcement of the date of the imposition of VAT on real estate and the increase in taxes on properties transactions. These proposals were inflated and highlighted by the media and also by professionals such as real estate agents, construction companies and banks. The result was the appearance of a movement mimicking the features of a housing bubble, althoug h the consequences of the new system of taxation would not really have had such a significant impact on housing prices. This paper explores the role such an environment has in the decision process about buying a home, and also its interpretation from a socio-economic perspective, which further differentiates this work from Robert Shillerís well-know research on US cities in the 1980s. To this end, questionnaires were circulated to home buyers in two Greek cities after the implementation date of the new taxation system (1.1.2007). | |
| "THE CASE FOR INVESTING ACROSS ALTERNATIVE ASSET CLASSES IN AUSTRALIA." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The case for alternative unlisted investments is based on offering stable and high income yields, low market volatility and enhanced riskadjusted returns. Such investment attributes have enticed increased allocation of capital to property and infrastructure investments in Australia. In turn, there has been a proliferation of investment products in the alternative space by fund managers. This paper examines the proposition of an investment framework which offers a combined allocation to alternatives investments; specifically to unlisted property and infrastructure. This is based on the premise that investment performance can be enhanced via diversification benefits and by managing and mitigating the joint risk pertaining to both assets classes. The concept of jointly allocating across alternative asset classes is supported via the construction of efficient portfolio frontiers. A frontier with both unlisted property and infrastructure delivers a superior enhanced investment outcome than frontiers with individual exposure to alternative asset classes. Furthermore, an investment framework is presented which offers an integrated process which jointly considers the relative risk/return value proposition and portfolio construction issues across alternative asset classes. | |
| "THE DETERMINANTS OF THE QUALITY OF NEW HOUSING SUPPLY." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The quality of newly constructed housing affects the character and possibly the future prosperity of locations for decades. Arguably, the quality of housing also causes externalities to residents in surrounding areas. Given the seeming importance of housing quality it is surprising how little is known about its determinants. In this paper we fill this gap by providing a theoretical framework and by exploiting 26 metro area American Housing Survey (AHS) datasets to identify the determinants of the quality of new housing supply. The basic idea is that circumstances under which a house was built affect its quality. Since housing is an extremely durable good, this has implications for the housing stock quality for many years. We use this fundamental characteristic of housing to first assess changes in housing quality over time for a large number of metro areas in the United States. We then investigate the effect of local demand conditions on the quality of n ewly constructed housing, hypothesising that housing quality improves with prosperity and deteriorates during downturns. Stylized facts for the Netherlands and a preliminary analysis for the United States provide tentative support for this proposition. Local supply conditions are analysed by considering indices of the restrictiveness of land use regulation at the metropolitan level, and by comparing new construction in suburbs to residential development in city centres, where land is relatively scarce. | |
| "THE DETERMINATION OF MARKET RENTS FOR HOUSES IN THE NETHERLANDS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Housing corporations are willing to partly adjust rents to market conditions. At the moment rental prices in the social subsidised housing sector in the Netherlands are regulated and only partly reflect the underlying house values. On the other hand the Dutch commercial rental housing sector is relatively small and information on commercial rents is hardly available. In this paper a method of determining ëmarket rentsí is presented, that is based on the number of reactions, i.e. people that showed interest in a house conditional on the non-negotiatiable asking rent. When the number of reactions is relatively high (low), it is assumed that the fixed asking rent is lower (higher) than the market rent. The number of reactions is explained by 1) the ratio of the house value and the rental price, 2) the ratio of a house quality rating and the rental price, 3) the rental price itself and 4) the rental date, where the house value is the yearly apprai sed value used for the property tax. The market rent is defined such that the probability of not renting the house is small, say 5%. Rents can be adjusted based on the outcomes of the model, such that the probability of not renting the house is 5%. Results are presented for different regions in the Netherlands, based on a large database containing rents, values and reactions. The results are compared to market rents that are determined by user costs of housing. | |
| "THE DIFFERENCES IN OCCUPIERS' LOCATION PREFERENCES." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | In recent research, the heterogeneity of the occupiers and the submarkets is highlighted in order to better understand the spatial demand derived by the occupiers and the dynamics of the office markets. This paper aims to extend the intrametropolitan office choice literature by testing the differences in the occupiers' preferences in intrametropolitan settings. As a distinction to previous studies a new research area, Helsinki Metropolitan Area is examined by comparing the findings of the previous studies. Thus, the variation in location preferences across the firm characteristics as well as the variation over the space are considered in order to understand what type's of office use are attracted to a particular location. Implicitly, the adequacy of location theory is tested in modern business settings. Empirical data on broad list of location preferences and characteristics of randomly selected occupiers was collected by computer-assisted telephone inter viewing and via a mailed questionnaire. Based on the results of 58 responses (implying response rate of 71 percent) accommodation factors and accessibility, not surprisingly, were the most ranked highest location preferences among all occupiers. However, by using logistic regression, it is possible to identify the characteristics of the companies, which explains the preferences of different occupiers. | |
| "THE DIFFERENTIATION, DYNAMICS AND DETERMINISM OF PLANNING REVISITED - AN INSTITUTIONAL APPROACH TO LOCAL HOUSE PRICES." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Institutions influence the meanings people share regarding the environment as well as governing the interactions between them. The formation of property value can never therefore be either ëtotally subjectiveí or ëtotally objectiveí by nature. The planning process is a specific type of institutional influence: non-uniform, being under constant flux, and having a deterministic starting point. Planning is furthermore linked to housing market outcomes, and to analyse this linkage necessitates multi-layered analysis. In this study we have three goals: first, to show how ëold institutionalistí understanding of market processes is still pertinent amidst the recent ënew institutionalistí hype within social sciences (in particular, research in urban and regional levels of housing and property market processes in many contexts, as this school of thought easily adapts to various circumstances and conditions); second, to demonstrate the point on one such phenomenon: how planning (in a broad sense involving both formal and informal dimensions) influences and is influenced by the formation of house prices and land value; and third, to test these ideas within the processes of urban renewal/regeneration ñ a planning measure in the broad sense ñ within a very localised housing market area (one or two neighbourhoods). | |
| "THE EVOLUTION OF INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS TO SUPPORT THE INTERNATIONALISATION OF REAL ESTATE MARKET ACTIVITIES: SOME EVIDENCE FROM EUROPE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Real estate in common with many other business sectors has experienced significant levels of internationalisation in its market activities over the last decade. These range from the internationalisation of key market actors such as real estate service providers and investors to the increasingly cross-border nature of a wide spectrum of real estate involvements. Such developments inevitable have profound implications for individual market structures and the range of market objectives which they accommodate. This paper sets out to examine one aspect of this process specifically the evolution of various institutional arrangements designed to support and facilitate the internationalisation of real estate activities. Using a broadly institutional economics approach to markets the paper first outlines a market rational for institutional arrangements to support the internationalisation of real estate market activities and then examines how such arrangements have evolved in the context of European real estate markets. The paper concludes with an assessment of the sustainability of the institutions which have evolved to support internationalisation in the European context and looks at the case for further supporting institutions specifically related to the areas of regulation and market risk. | |
| "The Factors Influencing the Changes in Real Estate Values." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | In the first part of the planned thesis, the author will use previously presented and published conference materials to make generalisations about the specific topic of the doctoral thesis. In doing this, the author will rely on the analysis of real estate value and its various aspects which the author and his co-authors began in 2003 in Kuopio and built on between 2004 and 2007 in Milan, Dublin, Weimar and London; the author will develop and further build on this analysis, focusing primarily on the sources, components and motivational factors of (real estate and buildings) value. This in-depth analysis will focus on the historical aspects of analysis and on the formation of user preferences in determining the sustainability of all the studied aspects, whereas the thesis will clearly distinguish between sustainability and efficiency. These aspects of value to be studied as well as the decisions of their preference are connected to the status quo of the valueís user; therefore, in parallel to what has already been outlined, attention must also be paid to the motivations behind the choices that the users of value (property and buildings) make. An analysis of the motivations will clearly require the author of the doctoral thesis to analyse the factor system and its different structures as a certain coding intended to be read by the users and prepared by specialists in the field (Eco: 1972). Linguistically, both already established languages as well new meta-language mutations of all the various multimedia could be used for such coded presentation of value. Once the researcher has been placed into the role of the reader of the coded messages of a value judgment, the next stages must be the generalised levels of over-coding and re-coding whereby the impact of these on value dynamics is observed, taking into account the multi-complexity of the relevant parameters. The elementary discourse of this entire approach is based on, in addition to the above, on a division into two generalised opposites ñ the components of value are considered as nature or as artefact, and the potential construction of value is considered as a set of signs, as space (semiosphere), or as a set of values, the components of real estate (real estate space - reality). At the same time, following from the suggested topic and its detailed analysis, the attention of the research must be focused on the motivations behind the behaviour of the valueís user, such as (in addition to what has been mentioned above) membership in the society, in identity groups or some specific ethnic factors (Korzenny: 2006). This latter aspect creates a situation where in addition to Wellsí psychographic approach to decision-making, the author will also look at the so-called Zetterbergís eight lifestyle factors and their potential impact on peopleís behaviour, their figurative (post-, co- and pre-figurative) compositions, as described by Margaret Mead in 1970. These specifications and this partially behavioural analysis will take the discussion back to the historical paradigm which attributes significant meaning to places and events (Camus: 1943); since the interpretation of these is a dynamic process, time-wise, we will arrive at a special level of marketing ñ the marketing of value, considering the specifics and the nature of the time. The entire approach to the subject, as planned thus far, fluctuates around the various aspects (as certain descriptions) of value and its development. Therefore, the author considers it important to focus on the movement in time, from a narrative description or judgment of value to certain formalised description practices, and from these back to a developed narrative description as an integrated method for emphasising the various aspects of value. In conclusion, the thesis will determine the connections between real estate space and semiosphere and will also offer additional ways for the description of value and will explain the existing methods, both in terms of the concepts canonised in standards and the concepts legalised in acts of legislation. It must also be pointed out that that the author is convinced that this proposed doctoral thesis will also make it possible to introduce new discourses into the academic study and the teaching of real estate value, so that various professional disciplines can be adequately presented. | |
| "THE FARMLAND PRICES AT THE URBAN FRINGE- SOME EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | It is well documented that the sales price of farmland at the urban fringe is strongly affected by the development of the city. The divergence between sales (market) price and use value (income-capitalized value) indicates the potential conversion of land from farming to urban uses. The magnitude of this price (value) difference is believed to be associated with a number of urban factors. This study empirically examines the price differences in a spatial context. I-Lan, a city that has in recent years seen a surge of purchase in farmland, mostly at the urban fringe, is examined as a case study. A total of 2397 pieces of farmland transacted from year 2000 to 2005 are analyzed. The price difference between sales price and use value is largely explained by factors such as the distance to the employment centres, the accessibility to the major transportation node, the site suitability for urban use, among others. Moreover, the price differences diminish drasti cally with the distance from the city centre. Using the price difference at the city centre as the benchmark, price differences are reduced by approximately two-thirds at the 10 km (6 miles) from the city centre. The price differences have become insignificant at the location of 30 km (19 miles) from the city centre. The empirical findings confirm that the farmland prices are significantly affected by the urban factors. The price of farmland, particularly for those located within 10 km from the city, is scarcely explainable by farming revenue. Farmlands close to the city are priced as an urban site with the expectation of land conversion in the near future. | |
| "THE HARMONISATION OF PROPERTY VALUATION - THE ROLE OF VALUATION PARAMETERS AND TERMINOLOGY." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The rapidly advancing internationalisation of property investment and finance has created a multitude of transnational engagements of investors, financiers and properties, changing property valuation from a national to a truly international discipline. The differences in national valuation approaches present a severe limitation of the informational value and comparability of property values. These circumstances bring about the growing need for harmonization, in analogy to the development in financial reporting and valuation standards for consolidated accounts. While the harmonisation of value definitions has progressed considerably through the efforts of the IVSC, valuation methodology has been mostly neglected. This can be attributed to the complexity of the matter as well as to professional differences regarding the need for a standardisation. This paper points out an alternative approach emphasizing the role of valuation parameters and terminology in the harmonisation process. In order to substantiate the role of valuation parameters, the structure of property valuation in the international context is illustrated. The analysis of the traditional view of the structure serves as a basis for the development of the model of the extended context of property valuation. Having established valuation parameters as an effective route for the harmonisation process, the potential for the qualitative and quantitative standardisation of valuation parameters is examined and the results are summarized. This process is closely related to valuation terminology, of which the supportive role for the harmonisation is outlined. In conclusion the harmonisation of different national valuation terminologies is put forth as a practical step towards standardised valuation parameters. | |
| "THE ìGREEN VALUEî - A NEUROECONOMIC APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING THE PREFERENCE FOR GREEN REAL ESTATE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | During the last five years Earth has seen all-time records concerning the intensity, frequency, and damages of natural disasters. The real estate sector is increasingly considered to be one of the main sources of climate change: buildings are responsible for more than 40% of the final energy consumption, for 40% of total waste, for more than 16% of global fresh water demand, for 40% of raw material demand, and for 25% of lumbering. Facing a growing number of scientific evidence real estate actors cannot ignore their key role any more. Even though a general euphoric mood can be perceived in the branch, astonishingly, an all-embracing orientation towards sustainability and fast establishment of ecological measures has not yet taken place in practice. One of the main barriers is the uncertainty of professional real estate market participants concerning the effects of sustainability measures on the profitability of their real estate projects. While it is mostly acknowledged that it is possible to realize a reduction of a buildingís operating costs through ecological measures, the tenantsí reluctance to pay a price premium for ìgreenî space that exceeds their own energy cost savings is seen as a major hurdle. Even if some studies show a growing willingness of consumers to purchase ìgreenî products, this trend has not fully reached the real estate markets yet. Following a neuroeconomic approach this paper tries to give an insight into tenantsë decision-making regarding Ñgreenì real estate products and to identify ways to foster the demand for sustainable buildings. | |
| "THE IMPACT OF MORTGAGES, HOUSE PRICES AND RENTS ON HOUSEHOLD CONSUMPTION IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | We empirically investigate the effect of changes in mortgage payments, housing prices and rents on consumption in the Czech Republic. We combine household expenditure survey data with regional data on apartment prices, which results in a unique micro- level dataset. We find that higher real estate prices result in a consumption increase for apartment owners; higher rents imply a consumption reduction for renters. | |
| "THE INFLUENCE OF THE MORTGAGE CRISIS IN THE DEVELOPED COUNTRY ON THE REAL ESTATE VALUE IN THE COUNTRIES WITH TRANSFORMATIONAL ECONOMY - A BELARUSIAN CASE STUDY." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The purpose of this study is to examine the behavior of American and European real estate markets after the mortgage crisis in comparison with transformational real estate markets, with an emphasis on the three largest evolving markets like Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian real estate markets. Country specific financial and macroeconomic time-series data likely to influence yields and prices growth are employed in the analysis. A number of hypotheses about the relative performance of the CEE countries relative to their western counterparts are investigated. This paper analyzes also the relation between incomes, gross grocery product, gross regional product, demographic structure and real estate prices. Based on a macroeconomic multifactor model, a variety of different factors is examined in the time period 1992 to 2007. Predicting the development of real estate markets has always been a major concern for market participants, especially for investors. The amount and depth of data about a subject market as well as the stability of the market's institutional environment largely impact the quality and difficulty of market forecasts. Therefore, the prediction of emerging real estate markets is especially difficult. Using the case of Belarus, this paper explores to which extent economic-mathematical techniques can be helpful in the context of predicting the development of an emerging real estate market. Statistical and econometric techniques are employed to find the drivers that influence the major housing market and its development in future. | |
| "THE LINK BETWEEN PROPERTY AND ECONOMY." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | This paper supplies empirical evidence of the long-term relationships between the property markets in the UK and Germany and their macroeconomy. In so doing, findings contribute to improve the evaluation of the properties¥ behaviour from a macroeconomic point of view. The analysis is based on monthly data for the examination period between January 1993 and Juli 2007. In order to choose convincing variables the selection of the macroeconomic factors is provided by coefficients tests for omitted or redundant variables as well as by Granger causality tests. As the isolation of property-related earnings of institutional investors¥ porfolios is still a serious problem, the majority of academic literature is focused on estimating REIT returns. In contrast, this paper examines direct property indices, which are determined by an appraisal based methodology. In this way, it is possible to explicitly take into account the heterogeneity of the underlying real estate objects. Deviating from the existing studies, this manuscript is interested in the interdependency between the macroeconomy and the German and UK property markets in a long-term view. For this purpose we apply the cointegration concept to vector autoregressive (VAR) models using the vector error correction framework (VECM) according to Johansen (1988). To the best of our knowledge the use of this approach in the context of real estate investments is so far missing in scientific literature. | |
| "THE NATURE OF HOUSING SUBMARKETS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The housing submarkets literature has continued to grow but somewhat unevenly. It is typically atheoretical, concentrating on innovations in empirical methods for boundary identification and hedonic regression refinement. This paper aims to provide the first step towards the development of a taxonomy of submarkets based on six criteria: existence, dimensionality, spatiality, continuity, granularity/convexity, and stability. Consideration of these issues will, it is hoped, deepen and enrich our understanding of what we mean by housing market segmentation. | |
| "THE NAV DISCOUNT OF THE REAL ESTATE FUNDS: EVIDENCE FROM THE FIRST TAKEOVER BIDS ON THE ITALIAN MARKET." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | This paper enters the wide international debate about the average discount on the Net Asset Value (NAV) of the closed-end funds, considering the recent takeover bids on the Italian real estate funds. The poor empirical analysis and the anecdotical available surveys on the Italian real estate funds market stress that the main reasons of this phenomenon are referred to the structural characteristics of the market (the scarce outstanding shares, the poor liquidity of the secondary market, etc.), to the peculiarities of real estate funds (the holding discount, the low disclosure on corporate governance of management companies, etc.) and to the features of the underlying assets (the fairness of the independent expert evaluations, the real estate systematic risk, etc.). This paper argues these assumptions in the light of the first takeover bids recently occurred on the Italian real estate funds market: the one on Tecla Fund and Berenice Fund managed by Pirelli RE SGR and the one on Beta Fund managed by Fimit SGR. Working out an empirical research on a database of the whole segment of the Italian real estate funds, from the date of the placing to December 31st, 2007, this paper aims to verify if the average NAV discounts on Italian real estate funds is also a function of behavioural reasons. Particularly, the survey observes the discount tendency during the takeover bid periods and puts in evidence some specific signals and performances shown by the market. | |
| "THE PERCEIVED QUALITY OF REAL ESTATE JOURNALS: DOES YOUR AFFILIATION MATTER." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | This study reports the findings of a recent survey of the real estate academic and professional community based on the associations of the researcher respondent. Members of the ARES, ERES, AsRES, PRRES and AREUEA were asked to rate their perception of 18 real estate journals that are currently available as academic publications (peer reviewed). Over 300 respondents completed the electronic survey during the latter half of 2007. Respondents provided quality rating of the journals as well as where they actually published. Responses by affiliation of the respondents are currently being analyzed and will be presented in this paper. That is do members of ERES view the alternative publications differently then their colleagues that are members of ARES or AREUEA. Also, we hope to ascertain which journals are clearly global publishing outlets and which ones are not as well recognized around the world. Responses will also be examined to see if they vary depending on the profe ssion of the respondent (academic or practitioner) as well as the level of the respondent that is in an acadmic setting (associate, lecturer, senior lecture, full professor). Results will be useful to the rank and file to guide them as to what journals they should target for their publications if journal qulity matter for promotion but also to the various academic organizations and publishers that roduce the journals, particularly for the journals that are not as widely recognized once the respondents come from another part of the world. | |
| "THE PERFORMANCE OF ITALIAN REAL ESTATE FUNDS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Italian real estate has become an increasingly popular investment class due to its relatively good returns and low risk compared to shares and bonds. In particular, real estate funds in Italy have shown enormous growth over the past few years, however, little is known about their performance. This paper corrects this oversight and considers the risk-adjusted performance of Italian real estate funds a number of risk metrics and monthly data over the period 2002 to 2008. | |
| "THE PROJECT RAMON LLULL: MAPPING, CADASTRE AND LAND INFORMATION." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | This project deals with the management of land information concerning its legal situation and the data related to its physical characteristics and geospatial situation. The information related to land circulates through parallel, but independent flows creating separated and unrelated circuits that give rise to disseminate information about two basic aspects of real estate; the physical characteristics and the legal situation. This set of conditions has created a situation of mistrust, arising from the differing outlines of the land information structures that lead to the development of independent territorial systems, whose data bases are organised by different, and in many cases incompatible sets of rules. In 2003 a line of investigation named ìProject Ramon Llullî began to be developed in the University of Alicante (Spain), aiming for the standardisation and coordination of the use of legal and graphic data related to real estate. The development of the Project is structured in two successive phases, the first of which has been fully completed and the second is currently in progress. The Project is being conducted in accordance with the following guidelines: 1. Managing the cadastral cartography as a reference point 2. Contextual perspective for territorial data processing 3. Using public deeds execution as a time frame for graphic data update 4. Prevalence of the real data over any other kind of information This paper presents a thorough description of the process as it is being carried out. | |
| "THE REAL ESTATE MARKET'S RESEARCH IN POLAND - CURRENT PROBLEMS AND FUTURE HOPES." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | In Poland, the lack of data is the major hindrance to research into the real estate market. Data at low aggregation level (municipalities, counties) frequently prevents the extraction of any information allowing the identification of householdsí wealth, the availability of land for residential building, or the rate of unemployment. These are the factors that play the key role in stimulating local markets of real estate (Gibb, Hunter 1998). The lack of transparent commercial real estate marketís data is responsible for some investment impediments. Autorís aim is to present existing situation, evaluate some attempts made in the sphere of real estate market research in Poland. | |
| "THE REAL ESTATE-GENOME PROJECT: EXPRESSIVE IMAGES, FRAMEWORK FOR THE REAL ESTATE MARKET." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Several surveys have already concluded the absence of statistical relationship between the performance of the investment portfolio and the quality of the management involved. One of the reasons for the inadequate control is the lack of knowledge about the actual risks, which is the consequence of the intransparency of all the concerned processes, separate and sub-processes of this multi-disciplinary industry. They were never brought in picture. One is inclined to focused on its own part of the processes, ignoring the toing and froing influencing relations between the parts in total. This paper explains the set-up of the research project which aim is to present a picture of all those processes within an all-parts enclosing framework, including that of the definitions, descriptions and explanations, as well as short texts as the necessary clarification and differentiations. It is called the real estate-genome project in analogy of that of the human body. | |
| "THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ECONOMY, SUSTAINABILITY AND RISK." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The real estate sector has to increase its efforts to contribute to a sustainable development. This concerns primarily energy efficiency and the CO2 emission of the buildings, as well as secondary aspects like healthy living, a considerate use of natural resources during construction and recyclability. In Addition to that especially housing companies have to consider social aspects like the special needs of tenant groups like elder people, families and single parents respectively the buildings flexibility. At the same time even the formerly non-profit municipal and company-owned housing companies are forced to increase their profitability. They see themselves caught in a double windmill between economy on the one hand and ecology as well as social aspects on the other hand. According to this sustainability investments always must have a positive effect on the buildings profitability, too. However, an immaculate economic investment analysis often does not take effects on a buildings risk situation into account which leads to wrong decisions. This paper wants to point out the positive effects of ecological and social advantageous buildings on their economic risk. At first the paper illustrates common requirements on sustainable buildings as well as the relevant risks and their mutual influences. Subsequently the effects of building characteristics on the economic risk are pointed out and set into relationship to factors of sustainability. Finally the paper comments on future developments and coming requirements in the field of sustainable buildings. | |
| "THE RISING NATURAL VACANCY RATE IN THE GERMAN OFFICE MARKET AND ITS EFFECTS ON REAL ESTATE FINANCE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | In this paper we argue that financial institutions are generally not well prepared for an increasing natural vacancy rate and offer some solutions that may help to reduce the negative effects in the future. Before doing so, we thoroughly investigate the development of the prevailing or current vacancy rates and the equilibrium or natural vacancy rates in the German office market on the city-/county-level and on aggregated levels since 1990. We construct a model to determine the natural vacancy rates, which is in line with the real estate literature (Rosen and Smith (1983), Wheaton and Torto (1988), Sivitanides (1997)). In contrast to previous studies, however, we differentiate between the ìnaturalî vacancy rate, which mostly represents the base vacancy needed for a functioning real estate market plus a cyclical component, and ìstructuralî vacancy, which is an irreversible result of long-term structural changes of the society, the e conomy, or the real estate market. This distinction can help to better understand the mechanisms and perspectives of the real estate market, especially in regions with grave structural problems. After that we show that the standard instruments used by banks in their internal ratings (property valuations and cash flow models) cannot cope with a rising natural vacancy rate and should be adjusted and broadened. | |
| "THE RISK MITIGATION IN REAL ESTATE LOANS: THE EFFECTIVENESS IN ITALIAN ECONOMIC CYCLE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Literature and regulation on financial intermediaries consider real estate loans being credit risk mitigated exposures due to the role played by the collateral. The effectiveness of the mitigation stemming from the real estate collateral depends on the recovery value the intermediary can expect during the work-out period: the increasing of the default rate can determine the decrease in the recovery values due to the excess of real estates executions. Nonetheless, the relationship between defaults and recovery values can be influenced by specific factors, that is characteristics affecting the single exposure, and semi-specific factors, such as the type and the duration of the recovery procedure, the competent court and the geographic location; such factors can determine the default status and the recovery procedure occurring in different economic cycle phases. In Italy, real estate loans represent a relevant percentage of financial intermediariesí total assets and semi-specific factors appear to play a relevant role. The paper aims to study the confidence of the negative relationship between defaults and recovery values; moreover, the paper aims to verify the relevance of macroeconomic factors on both the borrowersí attitude to enter into default status and the real estate exposures recovery values during different economic cycle phases due to semi-specific factors influence. The empirical analysis is based on relevant long run aggregated data for the Italian market stratified by semi-specific factors. | |
| "THE ROLE OF FINANCE IN THE HOUSING PRICE EVOLUTION." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Housing prices have experienced an intense increase during early XXI century in Spain as in other countries. Some of the explanations for this evolution tend to focus the responsibility of the process on the intense changes on fundamentals while others point out the role of speculation. Finance is one of the fundamentals. We maintain here that changes on the international liquidity situation could have played an important role to stress the market mechanism and, then, increase the prices at the same time that building in the case of Spanish housing market. Using VAR framework, we isolate the role of each component of fundamentals in the long term relationship equation in order to observe the different periods when each of them are leader of the housing prices. We find that during 2002-2006, the role of fundamentals change giving to finance factors higher relevance to lead prices, changing to the common model after 2006. | |
| "THE ROLE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT: KEY FACTORS IN RESTRUCTURING POST-SOCIALIST, SECONDTIER EUROPEAN CITIES." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | After a 40-year period of government domination and planning, former socialist countries began an uneven transition to a free market economy. The diachronic aspects manifest in various larger-scale economic and political fluctuations have been well documented. Less well documented are the synchronic characteristics of these transitions manifest in urban development patterns. In the 1990s, with large inflows of capital and the restitution of property, real estate markets in Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary began to develop. Large inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI) were directed mostly toward activities in the capitol cities where new retail, office and residential space was developed. Thus, while capitol cities experienced prosperity, many second-tier cities were neglected by international real estate developers and investors. No small part of the lagging real estate development in these second-tier cities derived from the capability of local stakeholders, particularly government and its agencies. As a result, growth of the larger national economies was restricted. Using a case study of four second-tier cities in Poland and the Czech Republic, this paper examines pre- and early post-transition urban and real estate development patterns involving greenfields, brownfields, blank spots, network and surface infrastructure in these cities. It compares the patterns in these cities to identify key similarities and differences in how they enhanced or limited further real estate development and discusses the role of local government as it has previously and should in the future address how large-scale urban patterns can be managed to stimulate effective real estate development. | |
| "THE ROLE OF THE PROPERTY AND BUILT ENVIRONMENT PROFESSIONAL BODIES IN A TRALIA." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Professional bodies need to maintain and grow their membership base. Moreover to survive and thrive a new generation of members are needed for professional bodies in property and the built environment. Wilkinson and Zillante (2007) identified the issues of under recruitment and an ageing membership in the Building Surveying profession in Australia and Elliot & Warren (2005) similarly identified a declining valuation profession. Professional bodies not only need to recruit more student members into the profession during their studies, but they also need to convert these student members to fully qualified members. Warren and Wilkinsonís (2008) survey of 661 Australian student perceptions of built environment professional bodies showed that students value professional qualifications but that there is a lack of understanding of the role of professional bodies. The employerís perceptions of Australian graduate employeesí membership of surveying, property and construction professional bodies was examined in a survey of major national and international firms (Wilkinson and Warren, 2008). This research sought to identify the importance placed on professional institutions by employers and the measures adopted in terms of encouraging professional body membership in the workplace. This paper presents an analysis of the two surveys of students and employers and seeks to reveal the differing perspectives of the two parties. It identifies the critical issue for professional institutions globally in recruiting new members and expanding the institutions both locally and international. The paper suggests ways in which employers and professional institutions can work together to increase student and graduate understanding of the importance of professional institution membership and grow the property and construction professions int ernationally. Keywords; Australia, built environmental professional institutions, employers, students, graduates. | |
| "THE ROLE OF TIMBERLAND IN UK INVESTMENT PORTFOLIOS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Timberland is now regarded as a long-term investment with both institutional investors and absentee owners. This paper utilises the IPD Forestry index to examine the performance of UK timberland over the period of 1987-2006. Forestry land in both Australia and the US was found to provide significant risk reduction and portfolio diversification benefits in the portfolio resulting from the low risk and low correlation with stocks and bonds. This paper will analyse the returns for UK forestry land to determine if similar benefits apply in the UK. Timberland has also been found to make a significant contribution to a portfolio of stocks, bonds and real estate, particularly at low to midrange portfolio risk levels. Again, the UK data will be analysed to see if similar benefits are provided the UK forest land asset class. | |
| "THE SCENARIO OF A MORTGAGE CRISIS IN AN EASTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRY." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | With the growing resonance of American subprime crisis, the issue of a comparable scenario is of interest for countries that have recently seen an upsurge in home prices and a fast expansion of primary mortgage market. This paper is focused on the case of Romania, one of the newest EU members, that has experienced both aforementioned symptoms. Unlike in America, the primary mortgage market is undersized and debtors' selection criteria are reasonably enforced in Romania. The main danger emerges from the huge popularity of loans denominated in foreign currencies. Many debtors are more or less consciously exposed to a significant exchange rate risk. Given a very large current account deficit and the turbulences from global credit markets, the scenario of a substantial depreciation of Romanian currency, that in turn could trigger a wave of mortgage defaults, appears plausible. | |
| "THE SHAKE OUT OF THE OFFICE MARKET: SPATIAL CONCENTRATION AND QUALITATIVE SEGMENTATION." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Since 2001 the Dutch office market is dominated by oversupply. The growth of the stock in use stagnates and new office production is completely available for replacement of existing stock. Due to this development, in combination with limited demolition and limited transformation, vacancy of outdated offices has increased to 13 percent of total office stock. Despite the expectations by owners and investors that the second-hand office market will revive, most of the vacant outdated office buildings will remain out of use. From a spatial point of view, office stock in use is concentrated in The Randstad, especially in the Amsterdam region. This reduces office investment performance outside the concentrations. However, the asset market did not react on the deteriorated market conditions with higher target yields. Increased vacancy levels and rental risks seem to be compensated by the low real cost of ownership due to low real interest. The relation chain from space market to asset market and to construction market ultimately leads to an unbalance of supply and demand of stock. The oversupply of offices is an advantage for users, however from social, environmental and owners/investors point of view the financial and social loss is a growing problem. From Dutch point of view modelling the office market has to be refined for price inelasticity of space demand, non-rational target yields, and weak influence of construction market conditions and segmentation of the office stock. | |
| "THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PROPERTY COMPANIES ON THE AIM STOCKMARKET." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Property companies and REITs make a significant contribution to the global stockmarkets; currently accounting for £1.1 trillion in market capitalisation, with significant public information available for both property company and REITs. This has seen investors focus on these transparent property companies/REITs, both in property securities funds and in mixed mandates with unlisted funds. As part of the London Stock Exchange, the AIM stockmarket was established in 1995 and has developed into the worldís leading stockmarket for smaller, growth companies for both UK and international companies. At September 2007, the AIM stockmarket accounted for over 1600 companies with a total market capitalisation of over £90 billion. Property companies are included on the AIM stockmarket; being less transparent than other listed property companies/REITs on the London Stock Exchange. Thepurpose of this paper is to assess the significance of the property sector on the AIM st ockmarket, with a risk-adjusted performance analysis conducted over 2000-2008 to assess the performance of the AIM stockmarket compared to other major UK property markets. | |
| "THE SIGNIFICANCE OF UK COMMERCIAL PROPERTY IN SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE PROPERTY INVESTMENT." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Socially responsible investment (SRI) has taken on increased significance in recent years, as investors have given an increased priority to environmental, social and governance issues in their investment decision-making, and companies have focused on the triple bottom line. This has also seen the development of socially responsible property investment (SRPI). Given the overall significance of commercial property as an investment, it is important to assess the contribution of commercial property in SRI. The purpose of this paper is to assess the significance of UK property companies in the context of SRI. In particular, the significance of UK property companies in the various global sustainability/SRI benchmarks will be assessed. A UK SRPI index will be developed and its risk-adjusted performance assessed over 2000-2008. | |
| "THE START OF A NEW ERA - THE ECOLOGICALLY QUALIFIED TABLE OF RENTAL." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | In the European economic area the qualified table of rental has established itself as authentic decision guidance regarding rent levels of cities and communities. With the ecologically qualified table of rental a new era will start in Germany. Besides the integration of the housing quality features such as property type (detached house, semi-detached house, multifamily house, etc.), size (m≤), fit-out (heating system, floor finishing, etc.), design (architecture) and location the so called ecologically qualified table of rental integrates ìthermotechnical building equipmentî. As the ìthermotechnical building equipmentî can not be integrated directly into the statistic analyses of the rental table, it needs to be operationalised via a primary energy ratio. The ecologically qualified table of rental is a promising approach to increase fairness in rent levels and at the same provides a framework for the implementation of energy saving measurements for rental housing. Highlighting the new approach in the compositions of the residential rental table, application of the new feature ìthermotechnical building equipmentî within the determination of the comparable rents as well as the financial consequences for landlord and tenant will be dealt with as well as a critical evaluation. | |
| "THE STRUCTURE OF TIME ALLOCATION BETWEEN WEEKDAYS AND WEEKENDS: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF TAINAN CITY." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Demand of achievement of various life purposes drives people to make efforts under time limitation. Therefore time allocation of a week is basic and crucial for people. Normally, weekdays are almost occupied by many essential activities, such as work, diet and sleep. People will make use of weekends to interact with other family members and to achieve other life aspirations. Therefore, this study proposes that time allocation of weekdays and weekends are related. Following previous hypothesis, the structure of time allocation between weekdays and weekends will be modeled by using structure equation model. By using ìActivity Diaryî, individualsí time use data and evaluation of time of each activity on weekdays and weekends will be collected. Consequently, impact of factors on time allocation will be clarified. | |
| "THE UNREGULATED REAL ESTATE MARKET." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Since the eighties the free market approach is crowding out the traditional regulation of building activity and real estate development. Gradually, developers and investors got a more dominant position in real estate development and accommodation. The advantages of a more market oriented development of real estate are evident. Nevertheless, the functional fragmentation in usage, property, asset, capital, development, land and construction market limits the co-operation of the market actors and their collective tuning. The lack of transparency, elasticity and competition leads in combination with the externalities of property to a market performance, which has to be assessed on market efficiency and social impact. In The Netherlands the post war system of production regulation by building permits is dismantled in the late sixties and seventies. What remained was the regulation of building production by a permissive land use planning of the local government. On the national scale, this regulation stimulates oversupply of land for building activities, since municipalities compete with each other for more people, jobs, housing and property. In this contribution the Dutch real estate system will be analysed and discussed in terms of past and future market and planning conditions, market efficiency and social impact. Market efficiency is investigated within the chain usage market, property market and development & construction market. Subsequently, market imperfections are identified and evaluated. In a prospective view the real estate market is projected in terms of public and private demand, supply and capacity of the real estate & construction sector and optimal governance. | |
| "TO BUY OR NOT TO BUY? HOUSING, MORTGAGES AND TAX-DEFERRED INVESTING." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Saving for retirement and the acquisition of a private home are among the most important decisions private investors face in their lives. Tax rules are an important factor influencing household portfolio structure. Both the taxable treatment of housing and assets in tax-deferred retirement accounts are favorable to individuals. Under current US tax-law, interest payments on mortgages are usually deductible from personal income. Profits in tax-deferred accounts are tax-exempt. The tax-deductibility of interest payments on mortgages combined with investments in tax-deferred accounts might offer taxarbitrage opportunities, as already pointed out in Amromin et al. (2007). The portfolio choice literature with housing does not allow for tax-deferred investment opportunities. The portfolio choice literature in the presence of tax-deferred investment opportunities does not focus on housing as an asset class. In our study, we join these two lines of research and combine these widespread investment vehicles in a life cycle model. JEL Classification: G11, H24, R21 | |
| "TOWARDS THE ESTIMATION OF THE ATTRACTION OF EUROPEAN RESIDENTIAL MORTGAGE MARKETS: A METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The European household borrowing has been growing significantly for some years, mainly stimulated by the residential mortgage demand. This phenomenon has persuaded many European banks to consider strategically the possibility to seize the development opportunities of this business also on some not domestic mortgage markets. The main theory about the productive asset landscape location shows that the different attraction degree, or the different ability in attracting new businesses, is driven by a number of territorial, social and economic factors and by their specific combination. Starting from this point, the paper tests the assumption that the size and perspectives of any residential mortgage market is a function of a set of variables strictly correlated to its two fundamental dimensions: total outstanding and gross new credit. It is well-known in literature that a generic indirect relation exists between the residential mortgage market trend and the tendency of some specific macroeconomic variables (such as interest rates, financial markets and so on) and that residential mortgage markets are directly driven by specific ìvalue driversî. The analysis stresses the fact that also construction and overall building conditions represent a sensitive variable to forecast residential mortgage market tendencies. By working out an environmental analysis, this paper aims at defining a viable methodology to estimate the attraction degree of residential mortgage markets calculating an attraction composite index (RMMA index); the latter could supply se nsitive information useful to guide the strategic decision of a bank considering the option of enter in a non domestic residential mortgage market. | |
| "TRADITIONAL AND NON-TRADITIONAL TOOLS FOR THE DESCRIPTION OF SPACE AND PLACE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. |
In the contest of description of the real estate is very important to refresh the understandings of market professionals in terms of traditional and non-traditional tools used for the description of space and place. In this case the traditional tools are known for a long time and their origin location is the classical record of different geographic markers. On the other hand these markers were used for describing absolute space (mathematical space), relative space as a socioeconomic space, relative space named experiential or cultural space, etc. Lastly named introduction of the broad variety of the spaces provide us with the new final destination where we may monitor and observe the connection of human being with the place and space. This monitoring also pays our attention to the two terms used Tuan to describe the human emotions towards the place: topophilia and topophobia. For better and more clear argumentation of these emotions are used some basic approaches from chronot opical cultural theory, first of all considering itís synchronically and diachronically built up. Named explanations helps us to build up the chronotopical theory of property and to return to the some incorporation of traditional and non-traditional time-space approaches initiated in early 20-ties of last century by Mikhail Bahtin. |
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| "TRENDS IN CORPORATE REAL ESTATE: IS EDUCATION MEETING THE PROFESSIONAL NEED?" In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Purpose ñ The aim of this paper is to evaluate an innovative and contemporary approach to teaching, learning and assessment in an undergraduate final year and postgraduate module that have been designed to meet the requirements of Corporate Real Estate Management. Design/methodology/approach ñ The authors will establish that Corporate Real Estate Management has finally come of age, and has developed into a new professional area which has its own clear identify. The major trends that have formed the development of Corporate Real Estate Management are identified. Innovative learning, teaching and assessment strategies deployed in final year and postgraduate modules developed at Sheffield Hallam University to meet these changing professional demands, are evaluated using the focus group methodology. Findings ñ The study establishes the significant drivers which have transformed practice in this area including the move from one-of-fee based transactions to relationship based consulting. It identifies the learning, teaching and assessment strategies needed to respond to such changes and provide students with a valid and contemporary education. In particular it confirms elements of student autonomy and employability that can be embedded in courses and the skills that students value in terms of raising not only their understanding of corporate real estate but their confidence in managing client based multi dimensional business and real estate problems. Originality/value ñ The trends in the market place have established a requirement for a new type of professional. This professional should understand the business context to which they can offer Corporate Real Estate Management solutions. This approach requires a different skill mix and knowledge base than previously required. This paper establishes how Sheffield Hallam University have responded in an innovative way to meet these changing professional requirements. | |
| "UNCONVENTIONAL CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: RETHINKING DEVELOPMENT APPRAISAL." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | There are a number of convetional techniques that are used to appraise real estate development opportunities. Probably the major advance in development appraisal over the last two decades has been the widespread adoption in the academic literature of (discounted) cash flow techniques instead of the traditional residual approach. All development-focussed textbooks outline and illustrate these conventional techniques reinforcing their use in practice and in development appraisal software. However, conventional approaches to the application of discounted cash flow techniques are not applied in a manner that is consistent with mainstream capital budgeting theory (see Geltner, Eichholtz, Clayton and Miller, 2007; Brown and Matysiak, 1999). It is revealing that the real estate academics that have identified this issue specialise in real estate finance and investment rather than real estate development. In this paper, we discuss the flaws in conventional DC F applications to development appraisal and suggest an alternative that is more consistent with mainstream capital budgeting theory. We also consider some of the challenges that arise in the practical application of such an approach. References Brown, G and Matysiak, G. (1999) Real Estate Investment: A Capital Market Approach, Prentice Hall, London. Geltner, D. Eichholtz, P. Clayton, J and Miller, N. (2007) Commercial Real Estate Analysis and Investments, Thomson South-Western. | |
| "UNDERSTANDING COMMERCIAL PROPERTY MARKETS IN SCOTLAND - A REGIONAL AND UK PERSPECTIVE." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Commercial property plays a key role in the economy as an essential input into the process of production. However, unlike the private residential market the commercial property market receives little attention in terms of its impact on the economy. While some analysis has been undertaken for the UK as a whole, no similar work has been undertaken for Scotland. Such an analysis is timely given continuing drives to improve growth in the Scottish economy and given that recent market corrections have resulted in commercial property values falling significantly. In this context, the paper quantifies the contribution that commercial property makes to the Scottish economy in terms of output and employment, reviews recent development and investment trends in Scotland, examines the causes of recent market corrections and compares these to trends in performance in the UK market overall. The paper also examines the potential impacts of recent changes in market behavi our on regional economic performance e.g. through changes in development activity. | |
| "UNLISTED PROPERTY FUNDS: SUPPLYING CAPITAL TO DEVELOPING MARKETS?" In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | There has been huge growth in the aggregate size and number of global unlisted property funds since the mid 1990s. In Europe, and more recently in Asia, growth in the number of fund launched has exceeded 20% per annum. Developing markets need real estate equity capital to supply the real estate resources and facilities essential to a growing economy. Using a new global unlisted fund database from Property Funds Research, this paper will explore the extent to which the developing global markets have been recipients of equity capital from unlisted funds, and the factors which appear to explain which countries have done well ñ and those that have not. | |
| "URBAN REGENERATION AND LAND POLICY IN DUTCH NEIGHBOURHOODS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The aim of this study is to explore the possibilities of existing land policy instruments in the context of urban regeneration and the relation between government, housing corporations and private developers. In spite of a certain Dutch reputation in the area of urban regeneration, the process does not function well in a lot of cases. The social and real estate development needs improvement. This paper first looks at the primary factors that generate the current stagnation from an institutional point of view. The authors give some suggestions to give improve the process by institutional structuration. One of the possible options comes from the division of certain rights that are involved. Recent studies in this field of research suggest the division of land in a developing component and a governance component to improve a smoother functioning of processes. Our study continuous by a theoretical outline of two existing instruments: the transferable development right and (private) land lease. Rather than the use of these in an directive way it apparently breaks down the strong position of the private landowner. This division can also be implemented in the process and the actors themselves. It will result in a change of the playing field of urban regeneration. After discussing the observable possibilities the land policy instruments some final conclusions are drawn. | |
| "USING REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT APPRAISAL METHODS TO EVALUATE REGIONAL POLICY EFFECTS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Regional policy has four major components: objectives, strategies, instruments and evaluation. In order to achieve the objectives of regional policy, governments employ a wide variety of instruments. Micro-policy instruments of regional policy are concerned with influencing the allocation of labour and capital, both between economic activities and between regions. However, one of the most significant problems tends to be the evaluation of these policy instruments and their effectiveness in achieving the policy objectives they are aimed at. This paper proposes an evaluation of the effects of micro-policy instruments of regional policies on the regional development of economic activities that are essentially dependent on real estate and location, such as tourism activities and the hotel industry, by the use of real estate appraisal techniques. The approach is primarily based on Alfred Marshallís theory of agglomeration economies. | |
| "VALUATION - UNCERTAIN WORLD, UNCERTAIN PRICES." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The current world economic climate is uncertain. The credit crunch has lead to a stagnation of market places, including the property investment market, and market players are all ìwaiting to see what will happenî. In this market, more than any other, the process of property valuation is fraught with uncertainty; there are few, if any, market transactions to act as comparables; the interpretation of market sentiment is difficult and the underlying economic indicators are acting counter-intuitively. In a market where investors are choosing not to purchase investments because of uncertainty, it would be ingenuous to pretend that uncertainty doesnít apply to valuations. This paper looks at the UK market and the continuing debate about the reporting of uncertainty in valuations. The booming investment market of the last few years has shielded the profession from the need to consider fully the impact of uncertainty. This paper argues that we need to do so now or risk a repeat of the problems that occurred at the end of the 1980s when valuers were found to be complacent in the way that they reported valuation figures. | |
| "VALUATION METHODOLOGY FOR THE HISTORICAL MONUMENTS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The historical buildings are recognized in Europe as having a positive value, not only cultural, but also economic, in terms of tourism, social status and commercial efficiency. Many historical buildings are monitored seeing the protection of the unique qualities and characteristics that give their architectural, cultural and historical value. When analyzing such properties, the valuators must be aware of the financial and cultural value of the historical buildings and the potential influence given by the augmentation of their financial and cultural values, as well as the consequences of intervention measures. This is the reason why the valuers must identify and inspect the historical buildings in the process of evaluation, so that their financial, cultural, architectural and historical interest can count, including any intervention of protection, in determining the value of the building and the requirement of intervention measures. The valuation of the historical buildings is a very complex activity, that must consider the knowledge of the building exigency, as well as the interpreting the contribution of the intrinsic quantified components in determining the value, in the context of the structural and functional exigency, of the adequate intervention technologies, and last but not least, the proper materials used in this interventions. The notion of historical monument includes both the architectural conception and the urban or rural settlement that show evidence of a certain civilisation, of a significant evolution, or a historical event. Therewith, the notion of historical monument extends also on small works that over time acquired a cultural significance. | |
| "Valuation practice of German open-ended real estate funds." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The German valuation system is frequently accused of being not only unique in its institutional setting but also of the degree of smoothness it achieves. Formally adhering to a market value concept, German valuers are perceived to merely deliver on the promises made by fund managers who advertise a ìsteady growthî and ìlow volatilityî investment alternative. However, empirical evidence is scarce with regard to the scope and degree of return smoothing and other systematic appraisal errors. A thorough investigation of the German valuation practice seems warranted, as it will help to gain better understanding of observed property valuations and its implication for the stability of German open-ended funds. To what extent do valuations understate true return volatility? Do valuations lag prices and do they introduce a systematic bias to reported performance measures? Is the German legal/ regulatory framework to blame for such possible shortcomings or do the problems root in actual valuation practice? These and related questions will be addressed within this project. | |
| "VALUE CREATION FOR SHAREHOLDERS IN SPANISH REAL ESTATE FIRMS, 1996-2007." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | The years 1995-2006 can be characterized by the enormous momentum and buoyancy of Spanish real estate market, especially in the residential market. Prices have accelerated and supply has tried to match an increasingly active demand, both domestic and international in its origin. 2007, instead, has seen a dramatic deceleration in both transactions and price growth, together with falls in the stock market value of most quoted real estate firms, following the Astroc debacle in Spring 2007. This paper intends to ascertain whether this tendency has been translated into value creation for the shareholders of Spanish real estate firms. The ultimate goal of this investigation is to know whether the real estate boom has also be beneficial for the purchaser of real estate firmsí equity. First, we follow Fern·ndez (2001), in arguing that value creation for the shareholder takes place when the difference between the rate of return accrued to shareholders on behalf of their equity and other market benchmarks is positive. Next, we choose as benchmarks the average return of Ibex 35, the main Spanish stock market index, and the risk free return that can be typically obtained when purchasing public debt. Preliminary findings show that there has indeed been value creation in some years of the period considered. Sharp fluctuations of the stock prices in 2007, however, has prevented further value creation and has put into jeopardize the value gains of previous years. Moreover, the paper documents which firms have created or destroyed more value for the shareholder. | |
| "VARIANCE DECOMPOSITION OF REAL ESTATE RETURNS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Nominal property returns can be broken down into two components: real property returns and inflation. A structural VAR model is proposed to estimate the relationships between nominal property return, real property returns and inflation. Bayesian Methods (Markov Chain Monte Carlo) are used to estimate the system. Non Information Normal Wishart priors and the Gibbs sampling algorithm are used to carry out the posterior simulations. Economic theory is used to impose restrictions on the system. The results are helpful in distinguishing which factors account for higher variance in property returns. | |
| "WHERE ARE WE ON THE PROPERTY CYCLE?" In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Much has been written on the Property Cycle and the interested reader will be very familiar with the representation of the Property Cycle as a sinusoidal curve with various parts of the curve labelled in terms of the state of the Property Market (expansion, contraction, etc.) and the associated features of the market at that particular point of the cycle (the point at which one would expect high and low vacancy rates, increasing or decreasing levels of property investment, increasing and decreasing levels of construction or take-up of space, etc.). Little has been written, however, on the ìrealî shape of the cycle or on estimation of where we are on the property cycle at particular points of time. Is the cycle, in fact, as symmetric as is usually represented (typically with equal up-side and down-side amplitudes and similar time on the up-swing and down-swing)? This paper will briefly consider the shape of the property cycle together with the question of estimating our position on the property cycle. The latter seems like quite an easy matter to estimate a position on the cycle but there are, in fact, a number of considerations which make this not such a straight forward question to answer. Data from the Property Directions Survey (conducted semi-annually in Australia over the last 10 years) will be considered. | |
| "WHICH FACTORS ATTRACT FDI IN REAL ESTATE? SOME PRELIMINARY FINDINGS." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | In recent years, some firms operating in the real market sector have displayed a rather internationally oriented behaviour. This behaviour has been materialized in large amounts of foreign investments that have been directed to other countries. Within this set of companies, the Spanish ones encompass a prominent and dynamic group. This paper intends to ascertain which are the main variables that influence real markets firms when deciding which host country to choose as a potential destiny. We use data obtained from the behaviour of some important Spanish development firms playing in the sector in the last few years. We analyse the potential impact of three kind of factors, that have been signalled by the literature on FDI as relevant: first, the size of the country, as proxied by its GDP or population. Next, its macroeconomic and social environment, as described by various macroeconomic variables (inflation, growth, public deficit) and other, more sophisticated indicators of institutional development (indexes of economic freedom or country risk). Finally, we investigate the role of the market concerned, in this case the real estate market. Preliminary results suggest that all these variables are relevant. In particular, the size of the market appears as very important, Generally speaking, firms tend to prefer larger markets, despite higher country risk premiums, to small markets of rather stable countries. This pattern, also documented in other industries, suggests the existence of a fixed cost that has to be incurred upon when trying to access other countries. | |
| "WILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR NOISE REDUCTION IN RESIDENTIAL AREAS AFFECTED BY AIRPORT TRAFFIC: THE CASE OF BARCELONA." In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | This paper reports the results of a research designed to assess the impact of Barcelonaís airport extension in terms of noise increase. A contingent valuation (CV) approach was carried out in order to extract the stated preference for noise reduction for a representative sample of neighbor residential areas; using this technique the participants revealed their willingness to pay (WTP) for a proposed noise reduction. One of the main problems of CV is the protest answers, it is to say, the people that do not reveal their WTP, although they do value positively the good offered. For this reason two approaches were tested: the first is the conventional one where people state directly their WTP for a specific noise reduction; the second one the interviewed people state their hypothesis of real estate revalorization in case that such noise reduction would occur. The results reveals that direct WTP has a protest rate of 37.19%, meanwhile the second indirec t WTP has only a protest rate of 7.8%. Furthermore, the data analysis based on logistic models suggest two conclusions: 1) as higher is the knowledge of the problem related with noise source higher is the WTP, controlling the rest of variables, and 2) also higher is the level of protest rate. It is to say, people aware of the airport problems are more skeptical about the valuation process (e.g.: the solution proposed to reduce the noise, the payment vehicle, or the noise reduction offered), this skepticism drive to boycott the experiment and consequently it masks the WTP. Both effects produce a reduction on the aggregated mean WTP. For this reason the opinion and valuation of an environmental good (as silence) is not only influenced by the individual perception, but also is influence by the knowledge about it, and the social perception; for this latter reason the predictive capacity of models is improved when the socio-spatial correlation interactions are solved. Finally the results also suggest that the impact of airport noise is! also in fluenced by the existence of other environmental noises and the configuration of urban fabrics. | |
| "WIND POWER: A BLOT ON THE LANDSCAPE?" In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Wind energy is one part of a larger solution to solving the world wide energy crisis. However, as with all new developments, there are costs as well as benefits. In the case of wind farm development it seems that there is little real evidence to substantiate some of the claims for or against it. The research for this paper raises, not only issues specifically about economic value effects but the broader debate around social and community impacts. Previous work by the authors has concentrated on the impact of proximate wind farms on house prices. It has focused on one or two areas of the UK which had particular characteristics in terms of economic activity, tourism, proximity to coast etc. The authors have now extended this work in several ways. First, they have tested to see if these areas are likely to be representative of the whole country. Further studies of other regions where wind farms have been built have been considered. Second, there is a view that the impact of the wind farm is actually not significant in terms of house prices when located beyond one mile. There does, however, appear to be more of an effect on the market (and therefore potentially prices) where there are wind farm proposals being considered. This study seeks to explore this issue further. Finally, their work examines impacts less to do with property values and more related to community values. | |
| "WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY AND SHOPPING CENTRE MANAGEMENT - OPPORTUNITIES OR THREATS?" In Book of Abstracts: 15th Annual European Real Estate Society Conference. ERES: Conference. Krakow, Poland, 2008. | Wireless communication is increasingly being used in UK shopping centres, by the centre management, retail outlets, and visiting customers. Wi-Fi access presents shopping centres with both opportunities for income generation and threats from signal congestion, but few shopping centre managers have taken steps to manage Wi-fi use and there are good reasons why this needs to change. Free Wi-fi access, such as through ëhot-spotsí, can act as a public service and is a channel through which the shopping centre can engage the consumer directly, to market the centre and inform customers about services available. Retailersí use of Wi-fi for stock control, delivery management and ëqueue bustingí is enabling them to offer higher levels of service and make more efficient use of sales space, potentially with knock on consequences for store turnover and rents. Public concerns about Wi-fi tend to centre on data protection, civil liberties and heath & safety issues. Overall, the significant increasing use of wireless communications means shopping centre airspace will be carrying traffic using many different standards and protocols, some of which may conflict with each other unless systems are properly installed and managed. This paper is based on survey responses from 57 UK shopping centres and follow-up interviews with shopping centre owners, managers, IT consultants / specialists and retailers. It examines the opportunities and threats associated with Wi-Fi use and the recommended management actions to ensure the benefits outweigh any drawbacks for the centre owners, retail occupiers and the public at large. |