The paper aims at developing a 'planning grid' to address sustainable social housing interventions. The purpose lies in acquiring integrated competences to support, develop and monitor residential proposals, from the pre-feasibility up to the on-going phase, covering multi-dimensional impacts on housing costs, investment sustainability, energetic performances as well as on the quality-of-life level induced in the neighborhood surroundings.The methodological approach is based on the analysis of 30 tools currently widespread in the international building sector to assess environmental and energetic performances. Among them an in-depth analysis extrapolated 7 main certification protocols (LEED, ITACA, CASAClima, BREEAM, LiderA', Audis, SB100) and selected 132 indicators (out of the total 448), specifically pertaining to social housing.The selected indicators, useful to measure the environmental and energetic performances beyond the minimum mandatory levels requested by the Italian building sector, have been grouped together into new classes and sub-classes. Furthermore, each sub-class has then been analysed according to the macro-categories defined by the CEN TC 350 standard in order to integrate and uniform the check-list of requirements, purposes and goals coming from the different protocols. The synthetic 'planning grid' obtained, covering the whole life-cycle of a social housing intervention, considers, at the same time, the economic, social and environmental impacts on the building and its context, housing costs, life quality and the users' awareness of the housing resources consumption.The study represents a first attempt in the Italian context to organise a grid of fundamental minimum requirements to develop sustainable social housing initiatives. The set of 7 classes of indicators is out of doubt a strategic 'planning grid' useful to guide public and private decision making in defining design and management priorities, also within the field of public announcements.

An case Study - an 120 year old single-tenant building - an former railway head quarter had to be transformed under use – into a multi-tenant building to give another lease of live. Up to recently the consumption of energy could not be metered and billed to the tenants. It was decided to split up the building into letable areas of 400 sqm each. Infrastructure shafts, for water, sewage, heating and electricity had to be broken through on going rented spaces. New district heating ducts – with energy form a waste incineration plant - were implemented with better insulation. The plant rooms were totally new laid out with new variably adjusted heating pumps, to reduce the carbon footprint. A whole new efficient low temperature water heating system was built in. All energy consumption is being metered to save the utmost energy. Water saving fixtures and urinals are introduced to save water. Water retaining artificial trenches under a car park were introduced to retain more water from the partly new turfed roofs. New cables for electricity and new meters were introduced. To save further energy presence detectors for the energy saving lighting fixtures were introduced. Highly insulated windows were implemented, to save energy, yet to get thermal gain, through the window openings. The transformation of the building structure is accompanied with of the first German BREEAM in use and BREEAM.de certification.

The presented house price index for Denmark from 1860 to 2012 has been constructed by analysing already published data from Statistics Denmark. Houses are heterogeneous assets, and nowadays they differ in many aspects from houses in 1860. Due to improved building quality, urbanization and the revolution of the transportation, they are now situated in much larger cities and fewer houses are found in the countryside. Furthermore the houses are more and better equipped. Obviously, conceptual and practical difficulties exist in separating the value and the price of the houses when the development in house prices is depicted. The Danish house price index covering all the 152 years is in reality a simple average sale price index for houses. From 1920 on it was possible to construct another and a “pure” house price index, based on the Sales Price Appraisal Ratio (SPAR) method. Several challenges for creating the house price index arose, especially in converting the previous registered house prices in the statistics into current market prices.In real terms, the average sale price index increased more than the SPAR index for the years where the two indices were compared, and the difference express the qualitative improvement of the sold house through the years. The SPAR index contains long house price cycles, and the unique recent bubble is observed. The development in real prices holds no arguments for the SPAR index will increase in the long run. Already published long house price indices exist for Herengracht (the Netherlands), Norway, USA, France, and recently also Australia. Until now, the here presented house price index for Denmark is the longest countrywide house price index ever been published, based on official data, and qualitatively probably the best long house price index.

Real estate is today seen through the widespread sustainability discourse where buildings and land use occupies a core position. Land and buildings are also subject to sustainability evaluations along environmental, social, cultural and economic dimensions. In this paper cross-sectional data on house prices and sales volumes from Budapest, Hungary, for the period 2000-09 are analysed using time-windows generated by the self-organizing map (SOM) algorithms. In particular, upper-market cases are related to sustainable innovations insofar as such exist, which is examined using interviews and field inspection. The results however suggest that such features are largely absent in the period of data collection, although future markets are likely to be different in this respect.

Since the 1970s, we have seen a significant change in the attitudes of the society, governments and the business community toward sustainability measures and regulations. Most recently, the real estate industry has struggled through the mortgage crisis and the global financial crisis resulting in the emergence of a new period in which the real estate industry is addressing sustainability issues using a more holistic, systems approach. Companies are no longer adopting sustainability concerns solely for reasons related to social good; instead, they are focusing on how to prove to their stakeholders that they are focused on sustainable property performance and management - and that sustainability-related initiatives are positively impacting their bottom-line.Current market conditions have forced companies to address market uncertainties, and industry leaders are using sustainability initiatives as a means of managing risks and meeting the requirements of a market in transition. Companies are increasingly judged not only by the corporate social responsibility values, as reflected in their CSR statements, but also by the actions through which those values are actualized and how these actions impact their financial stability. This also extends to how companies make decisions about sustainability initiatives for their real estate assets. These market changes have resulted in new strategies for decision-making and assessment of both specific sustainability initiatives and sustainable real estate. Simons, Slob, Holswilder and Tukker noted that more complex and more integrated strategies will be needed to deal with the new societal challenges now associated with sustainability.

This paper examines the impact of local public amenities on house prices in the islands of Greece. By taking the Greek islands as the case study, which has not been studied in detail on this topic, we analyse how the presence of a public hospital, an airport, a higher educational institution along with other amenities affect the housing market (primary and second houses). The housing market attributes of the Greek islands are analysed e.g. the housing needs and consumption behaviour, determinants of the demand and supply, the significance of hospital care for the residents, and the need for fast transportation. With the use of hedonic modelling approach and a large dataset of residential properties in the islands of Greece, we try to ascertain the effects of these amenities on the house prices. The model also controls for several structural and locational characteristics of the properties as well as economic and demographic attributes of the islands. The econometric estimation attempts to address common sources of bias with such modelling framework i.e. unobserved heterogeneity, omitted variable bias, non-linear effects. Models are also tested for robustness across several specifications and samples.

This paper seeks to bridge the gap between theory and practice in delivering quality places through urban design. It complements the behavioural-based theoretical concepts of neoclassical economics with the institutional analysis in property development from the perspective of adding value through quality design. This approach focuses on the drivers and the relationship between actors in the planning, design and development process. The paper follows a sequential path of incrementally building a framework of institutional analysis to eventually present a model for delivering quality in the built environment. The final product presents a 'meso-range' theoretical framework that links concepts of neoclassical economics to institutional analysis and follows two principles. First, mainstream economics and institutionalism in property development should be complementary rather than exclusive of each other. This is based on the concept that institutional analysis and behavioural theories can be used complementarily to understand and describe the delivery of a value added product through the property development process. Second, since very little of the broad economic perspectives have been applied to the property discipline, there should be a theory with an economic focus that serves to support and link institutional models.

In urban renewal policies in the Netherlands, great importance is attached to housing diversification and social mix in neighbourhoods. The assumption that housing diversification will lead to more neighbourhood-based social interaction and social cohesion has been taken for granted, although empirical evidence supporting this assumption is scarce and inconclusive. It is therefore important to improve our understanding of the effects of neighbourhood characteristics on neighbourhood-based social contacts, based on empirical results. This paper aims to contribute to this line of research by studying the role of socio-demographics and neighbourhood characteristics in the formation of social network ties and social interactions with neighbours. These relationships are analysed using a multi-level path analysis approach. The analyses are based on data collected in 2011 in 70 different neighbourhoods in Eindhoven, the Netherlands in a survey among 751 respondents. The results indicate that neighbourhood-based contacts are influenced by socio-demographic characteristics. People who spend more time at home (people with children and people who do not work) and who have been living longer at the current address have a larger share of neighbours in their social network and higher contact frequencies with their neighbours. Immigrants have a smaller share of neighbours in their social network. Education is found to have a negative effect, whereas income is found to have a positive effect on social interaction with neighbours. Neighbourhood characteristics are not found to affect social network size, the share of neighbours in the network or the frequency of interaction with neighbours. This finding is at variance with the assumption that an adaptation of neighbourhood characteristics (through urban renewal) can lead to increasing social interaction among neighbours.

Research on business alignment in FM emphasizes the need for evidence-based reasoning regarding the added value of FM to organizational effectiveness in strengthening the strategic identity of FM (Price, 2002; Chotipanich, 2004; Chotipanich and Nut, 2008; Mak 2011). In the Netherlands, recent developments in new ways of working, and the requirements thereof in terms of FM products and services, have proven the ability of FM to evolve. In meeting the needs of new ways of working, Hospitality Management (HM) has become an integral part of the overall strategic identity of FM (Reijngoud, 2011). The current study reflects on the above-mentioned statements, and uses a case study approach to present evidence-based proof of the added value of HM in the evolution of property and facility management. The case study of Eneco – a large Dutch energy provider – traces the effects of a vision on overall sustainability that was adopted in 2008. This vision was translated and physically embodied in a new building and a new workplace concept with 1530 typologically diverse workplaces for 2300 employees (0.67 workplaces/employee). Bringing it all together is an integrated FM/HM strategy closely aligned to the organizational objectives in terms of sustainability, HRM, ICT and CRM (Customer Relation Management). Implementation of this strategy is recognized through its focus on three specific aspects: (i) user-behaviour, (ii) products and environment, and (iii) Facility services. By translating general and FM trends regarding these focus areas to a vision on the role and potential added value of HM in FM, an integrated approach that transcends the level of mere product provision and service delivery, was realized. Crucial in formulating this integrated approach were considerations regarding (i) the development of new FM and service delivery competencies, and (ii) the financial implications of the envisioned service contracts and products. As a result, these were benchmarked with current facility costs (NEN 2748, currently known as EN-15221) and integrated with three anticipated levels of experience on which the organization wants to accommodate all client (internal) and customer (external) needs and requirements. Knowledge of this case study contributes to a body of epistemological knowledge in FM education regarding the continued evolution of FM and the dynamic nature of its alignment with organizational objectives.

Based on the description of a sample Real Estate Management master classes at the Technical University Berlin, which is offered in cooperation with the George Washington University (GW) and the University of Amsterdam, the authors discuss the outcome of an interdisciplinary and international study program.The result is a set of special and unique experiences, with a wide range of diverse items, for example technical, economical, financial, ecological, planning and law matters, as well as the impact of different lecturers from different nationalities. An important segment of this education is the connection to the real estate practice with semester projects. A semester project helps students to learn in interdisciplinary groups, as well as on their own, with actual cases of existing properties. All these items illustrate a number of imported outcomes. An auxiliary question is why students choose this avenue of advanced education. The authors will provide results from a current survey to provide answers. Finally, the authors discuss the future of this educational approach with its threats and opportunities.

The Lehmann bankruptcy, the financial crisis in Greece and the ongoing problems of the Euro brought about a situation in Germany, in which people started to shift their assets into properties. In addition to an undersupply of properties in the major cities, the situation is getting increasingly severe, because owners of housing stock in these locations tend to stick to their properties, because they see a lack of other highly secure options to reinvest their money as they see properties as a safe haven in uncertain times. Over the last three years it therefore became more and more difficult for real estate companies to acquire new properties in the major cities for selling, and letting. In contrast to this there is still a substantial oversupply of housing stock in the countryside.In this situation the purpose of this paper is to examine the use of after sales marketing, and customer relationship management (CRM) by real estate companies as a means to acquire properties. This paper is based on a new survey from spring 2013. This study will provide a greater understanding of the attitudes and strategies of real estate companies in relation to after sales marketing issues.

Energy efficiency is one of the more economically sounds way to sustainability. Real Estate accounts for 30% of energy consumption in most developed countries. It also accounts for more than 30% of GHG emission. In the last several years many research have been looking to energy efficiency technology. Very few of them include the future energy price forecast in their valuation. Very few of them include the fact that different energy source savings may have different value. This paper demonstrates that one euro of annual energy savings in different source has a very different value when we account for expected future cost. It also underlines the fact that energy source prices are more or less volatile depending on sources. This should imply different discount rate for investment in technology that involves savings of those energy sources with high prices volatility. Following this demonstration the paper support the idea that whoever assesses the value of energy efficiency have to make assumption on energy source saved, future energy prices, appropriate discount rate and maturity of the investment. When researchers and professionals omit to do those assumptions explicitly they do it implicitly.Hedonic models have been widely used by researcher to assess the value of buildings properties. We use forecast at the moment of the transaction to underline the integration of energy efficiency value in building valuation with hedonic models. We use a US database to investigate the relationship between building energy consumption and building value. We also investigate this relationship with rent. Results suggest that the energy consumption that impacts the rent value is different from those who impact transaction price. It appears that overall energy cost impact the rent value, but not the transaction price.In conclusion, the economic sustainability assessment of an energy savings investment must take into account energy sources and future price.

Turkish REICs background goes back to late 1990s and their portfolio structure diversifies between different assets. Since 2005, REICs became specialized in certain areas, such as retail, residential, logistics and hotel.Residential REICs have a 'develop/sold' strategy while commercial REICs have 'buy/hold' strategy in Turkey. Therefore, residential REICs focus on 'developer's profit' instead of 'rental income and capital gains' and it causes high risk premium due to uncertainty in development projects. Over the period 2005 - 2010, residential investments have delivered higher returns than commercial, while return of commercial investments have been volatile.Turkish REICs present an alternative investment vehicle for both individual and institutional investors. Investors and fund managers search for accurate information on the performance of REITs, so this paper attempt to analyze the underlying drivers of performance of total return for Residential and Commercial REICs of Turkey, over time.This paper is a part of research project titled 'Performance Analysis of Real Estate Investment Companies and Direct Real Estate Investments in Turkey', supported and financed by EPRA.

Literature on 'green value' shows that certified office buildings have higher rents than conventional buildings. However, more recent works indicate that this rental premium diminishes with the expanding supply of certified buildings. Some authors suggest that this premium for certified buildings could evolve into a depreciation of buildings with poor environmental performance. As certified buildings become the rule for new office developments, buildings with poor environmental performance would no longer meet tenants' functional requirements and would become obsolete. This paper analyses sustainability features as a new factor of obsolescence. First part proposes a theoretical model to account for sustainability in refurbishment decision-making. In particular, we assume that refurbishment cycles are planned over a building's life to counter obsolescence and physical deterioration. Second part consists in an empirical study based on the French market. It analyses which are the sustainability characteristics sought after by real estate managers beyond the brand of the environmental labels. This paper contributes to research on 'green value' through a focus on obsolescence. The results could be used by investors to better evaluate sustainability in their investment decisions.

Real estate market trend could affect the value of both the direct exposures in property loans and the real estate collaterals of loans, therefore banks' performance and/or risk could change significantly in the case of real estate market collapse or expansion (i.a. Wheaton, 1999). Indeed, during the recent financial crisis, the real estate was features by a strong decrease in loans with respect to the before crisis period (Ivashina and Sharfstein, 2010). Literature focuses the attention prevalently on the effect of a change in the property prices on the macro-variables and the monetary aggregates (Quigley, 1999). Only few studies look at the effect of the real estate market trend on the banks'lending policy and bank's performance (Davis and Zhu, 2004) taking into account bank's characteristics . In the analysis of the banking features, no evidence is provided on the relationship between real estate market trend and the bank's performance and risk . Moreover, the evidences provided by such studies do not control for the type the bank and the loan purpose.Considering a representative sample of European banks and using the BIS property index for the reference country of the bank, we study the relationship between the property market trend and the bank performance / risk exposure, considering also lagged relationships and testing for any relevant causality relationship.. Following the approach proposed by Eisenbeis and Kwast (1991), we identify real estate banks in our sample and we test for the existence of any significant difference respect to other banks. Moreover, we control the evidences for the pre and post financial crisis period. Results demonstrate that real estate banks do not perform always the worse (the better) during a real estate market downturn (upturn) and the reaction to the market trend is driven also by other features of the bank.

In the past decade governments in Australia, both state and federal, have provided assistance to first home buyers in an effort to improve the availability and the affordability of housing as well as to stimulate interest in the housing market. Subsidies and tax breaks have been offered which are anticipated to encourage borrowing and to increase market activity. This study considers the effectiveness of such policies through an analysis of price, the time on market of a property before sale and the relationship between advertised price and actual transaction price for periods associated with the introduction of such subsidies. The study uses both descriptive and statistical analysis to quantify the effectiveness of the policy in terms of improving housing affordability and increasing market activity.

Every year natural hazards and especially hailstorms cause damages to the building stock amounting to millions or even billions of Euros in Germany. The accelerating climate change involves an increasing amount of (convective) energy within the atmosphere with adherent additional damage issues. These events lead to ascending running costs as a result of adjusted insurance costs and insurance companies are already reacting by forcing measures of adaption. Generally the actors of the housing and real estate property industry suffer by a lack of solid information on identification, analysis and assessment of climatic risks. Taking into account this additional information is of immense importance not only for their investment decisions but also for the insurance companies and regional planning authorities. Official building standards do not regard local hail hazard in their guidelines yet and real estate valuation does not take potential damages into consideration.This paper presents the first approach of a regional hail risk assessment for real estate the property market. The model uses empiric radar measurements of the German Weather Survey, which were filtered with lightning data in order to preclude false echoes. These data were analyzed with extreme value statistics to derive local hazard functions. The hazard function's output parameter (radar reflectivity) was transformed to the input parameter of available damage function, which establishes the functional relation between hazard and damage. The assessment of potential risks includes the estimation of a building's vulnerability (building-specific damage functions) in order to identify the monetary damage in terms of an annual expected loss.

In this study, we examine if behavioural biases, such as framing effects, escalation of commitment, and overconfidence are present when residential property purchasers are choosing between alternative properties. To accomplish same, we use a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) approach to examine the behaviour of property purchasers in Dublin during the property boom of 2005.The study was designed using a case study approach and the participants used a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making analysis tool to aid in their selection between alternative properties. The decision tool that was used is Direct-Interactive: i.e., the Decision-Maker gives scores and weights directly and is able to adjust them during the process. It also uses Structured-Criteria, i.e. it tracks elements of the decision to specific disaggregated criteria of the decision-maker.This research finds that using a decision tool provides better decisions as was expected from the method, however, a subset of property buyers resisted applying the tool to make non-rational choices. This indicates how strong behavioural biases can be and how influencing their affect is, even when making large monetary decisions. In conclusion, when a decision-making tool is introduced to enable property purchasers to improve their decision-making capability, a subset of property buyers may resist applying the tool to let their behavioural biases potentially override rational decision-making.

The behavioural approach to decision making under uncertainty combines insights from psychology and sociology into economic decision making. It steps away from the normative homo economicus and introduces a positive approach to human decision making under uncertainty. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the main themes in the behavioural real estate literature from the perspective of different market participants. It can be concluded that there seems to be general agreement that behavioural studies can help explain the inefficiency of real estate markets, but a large component of behavioural decision making in the property markets seems to be undiscovered.

Belfast's 'Peace Walls' exist to physically segregate and provide a measure of security to the communities on either side. A legacy of the Northern Irish 'troubles', they lie along traditionally controversial and/or fractious 'interfaces' between the (broadly speaking) nationalist, catholic communities and the unionist, protestant communities, typically in the densely populated streetscape of Belfast's urban fringe. Whilst they do, ostensibly achieve this aim, the question arises as to their longer term and/or wider socio-economic impact. Borders and boundaries have previously been viewed as places where different populations are kept apart. Increasingly, and for the benefit of all concerned, they are being viewed as places where people can come together. Whilst the incidence of violence and disorder is currently reduced in the vicinity of hard barriers, it may well be that these structures have the capacity to prevent the restoration of normal community interactions. They may also be providing their 'benefits' at a high cost, with regards to issues such as house price reduction. Accordingly, this paper attempts to measure the disamenity effect of peace walls on house prices, primarily focusing on the effect of distance, which is calculated using a hedonic pricing specification and spatially referenced data, using a GIS based approach. The emerging findings demonstrate that a greater negative pricing effect is evident with proximity to the peace walls in most, but not all sub markets and housing types. The results of the research are of particular interest to those concerned with property valuation and social policy formulation and analysis in regions with contested space.

This paper examines the performance of active US domestic real estate mutual funds (REMFs) relative to a passive benchmark, both before and after fund managers' compensation. We consider both the REMF sector as a whole, and also individual funds, separately against stock market and real estate market benchmarks. For individual funds, a cross-section bootstrap is used to separate fund managers' genuine skills from luck. We find that the REMF sector as a whole can beat a real estate benchmark but this is cancelled out by fees; and we find that the REMF sector cannot beat the stock market even when fees are not taken into account. For individual REMFs, we find no outperformance against the stock market; and we find genuine stock-picking skills, net of fees, only for a small number of funds in the extreme right tail, relative to the real estate benchmark.

This paper presents a dynamic multi-equation model based on a balance sheet identity, where technical aspects of capital structure are highlighted through separately observing debt and equity and their relationship to investment. Additionally, leverage dynamics are interpreted in their role for liquidity management. Interactions of leverage with lines of credit (LOC) and cash are considered in the light of financial flexibility. The major findings obtained by observing US REITs and REOCs from 1995 to 2010 are as follows. In accordance with the existing literature, cash and LOC reveal a substitute relationship. However, the calculus of financial flexibility and our findings suggest that leverage positively drives cash, which is consistent with Gamba and Triantis (2008), and also with the accepted perspective of debt minus cash being net debt (Spotlight A). Consequently, the very robust results indicate that leverage eliminates a significant amount of information. Further mechanical relationships, especially for market leverage, are suggested (Spotlight B).

The German cities Frankfurt, Munich and Stuttgart approach their climate protection initiatives in the real estate sector with different measures although their goals are nearly the same. This paper examines the underlying efficiency understanding and further limitation factors in the municipal decision-making process. The focus is on the requirements and promotion of energy efficiency and greenhouse gas reduction in real estate.As a part of a research group supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) we have an interdisciplinary look at these cities and make use of the Institutional Analysis Framework by Elinor Ostrom (1990) to collect and to aggregate decision-making impacts. Therefore, qualitative as well as quantitative data analyses based on a document analysis and interviews with representatives from the municipalities and the real estate sector are used to model the exogenous constraints of a city as well as the local decision-making arena.There seems to be evidence that cities take into account different efficiency approaches to legitimate their climate protection decisions. First results show that the decision-making process is characterized by an owner-, user-, or producer-oriented real estate management perspective. This fact heavily influences the measures taken, first and foremost the financial impact on the respective stakeholder.This paper categorizes urban strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the real estate business by identifying influencing factors in the municipal decision-making process. These findings will help to make use of the enormous greenhouse gas reduction potential existing in the metropolitan real estate sector.

By means of urban land use planning and readjustment, land management serves to control the development of settlements in cities. It also provides long-term planning foundations to meet the challenges of climate change. Not least due to these long-term decisions, land management will form the basis for investment in real estate, as real estate has to fulfil climate-relevant demands. Derived from higher-level guidelines, municipalities create individualised approaches towards climate change. These approaches interpret the principles of urban development according to specific starting positions. The article's focus is on to what extent higher-level requirements are met on the binding planning level, which impact these measures have on climate change, and how the underlying decision-making processes work.The cities of Frankfurt, Munich and Stuttgart will be analysed on the basis of their hierarchical planning system according to the most similar case design. Their formal and informal objectives of plannings and guidances will be compared to the binding values for the projects on the operational level. By means of a quantitative analysis of zone development plans, the different strategies of the cities can be revealed. The quantitative analysis also shows how the trends have changed and what guidelines have a real effect on the owners. Embedded in the Institutional Analysis framework by Elinor Ostrom, a qualitative document analysis and interviews with the municipalities uncover the processes that lead to the observed decisions and explain the motivation for the observed action.Despite having the same objectives, the cities pursue different strategies and set their priorities. Our initial studies show a discrepancy between the goals defined at higher levels and what is actually practiced. It appears that in practice, climate concerns are not given the same importance as they are given on less detailed planning levels. Climate change measures are not used as an authoritative basis for justification of projects, but instead, they merely serve as a supplement which can be used strategically to influence developments.The article outlines which measures of climate mitigation and adaptation from higher-level strategies are incorporated in actual projects and clarifies what status climate change has in local communities. In addition, decision-making processes and motivations which lead to commitment in climate change-specific land management will be revealed.

The 22 February 2011 Canterbury earthquake had a devastating impact on Christchurch property with significant damage caused to land and buildings. As at November 2011, around 530 buildings have either been demolished or identified to be demolished in central Christchurch. In addition, around 140 buildings have either been partially demolished or identified to be partially demolished. The broad aims of our ongoing research are to (i) examine the nature and extent of the CBD office relocation, (ii) identify the nature of the occupiers, (iii) determine occupier's perceptions of the future: their location and space needs post the February earthquake, and the likelihood of relocating back to the CBD after the rebuild and the release of the Christchurch Recovery Plan. To address these issues, the third of our six-monthly surveys of around 20 questions was developed. A total of 631 contacts received the survey. These contacts were obtained from two sources. Firstly, 275 suburban office occupier contact details were obtained from a physical survey of office occupiers as of August 2011. The survey recorded a response rate of 15.4% (97), a decrease from the previous two surveys when response rates were 22% (139) and 21.8% (140) respectively. This lower response rate may be due to survey fatigue. Based on the findings of the initial survey, just over half of respondents were relocated CBD occupiers and 45% were existing suburban office occupiers. Results from the first survey indicate that 66% of respondents have reduced their office size since the earthquakes. More than a quarter of relocated tenants signed leases of one year or less, and 27% of businesses are now working out of residential premises. In comparison to the previous surveys, the CBD has become less attractive to office occupiers. Currently, only 27% (26 of the 97 respondents) of the occupiers surveyed have an intention to move into CBD, which decreased as compared to the January 2012 and August 2011 surveys, recorded at 32% and 38% respectively.

We investigate whether nonlocal buyers of real estate pay different prices for similar assets as compared to local buyers. An efficient real estate market would operate against this but empirical studies leave the question unresolved. While some studies fail to detect or confirm price differences (Turnbull and Sirmans, 1993; Watkins, 1998; Clauretie and Thistle, 2007), other studies do detect them (Miller et al., 1988; Lambson et al., 2004; Ihlanfeldt and Mayock, 2012). Most studies of the question have utilized residential real estate and have focused on owner-occupiers. Two studies have used investors, but these have each considered only a single market (Phoenix; Las Vegas). We extend the literature in this study by examining investors in office properties across 138 US markets and, uniquely, by considering the question of price differences when investors sell as well as buy. We investigate this using a CoStar database of 10,971 purchases and 11,444 sales between 1996 and 2012. Aware of limitations in some previous studies, we use a propensity score matching approach to produce matched samples that reduce the potential effects of conflating factors such as selection bias, investor clienteles (Wiley, 2012) and marketing duration. We find nonlocal investors significantly overpay on purchase by an estimated 13.8% relative to similar assets purchased by local investors. We attribute this to a combination of information asymmetry and anchoring (by those investors from markets whose prices are higher than where they buy). We find that, upon exit, nonlocal investors sell a discount of 7% relative to similar assets sold by local investors. This is again attributable to information asymmetry but is not explicable by anchoring. Overall, nonlocal purchases and sales result in significant relative capital value underperformance.

The objective of the paper is to define conditions of mortgage market development in Turkey by presenting the findings of dynamic causal relationships between housing loans and selected socio/macro-economic indicators for the term 2005/01-2011/09. By using monthly time series, we employ granger causality tests, co-integration analysis and vector error correction model (VECM) in the research. The paper specifically aims to analyze the impacts of financial stability, financial risks, monetary policy, households' income/net wealth and housing demand to mortgage credits. We conclude based on the co-integration analysis that housing credit, interest rates, occupancy permits, real GDP per person and monetary aggregate (M2) have long term relationship with housing credits in Turkey. In the paper, we argue that the outcome has important policy implications for both Turkey and emerging economies. In this context, we underline that mortgage market policies in emerging economies should have a balanced approach between market economy and social needs.

This paper investigates whether international property investors can rely on comparability and consistency in international property valuations.A survey was conducted with further secondary data analysis to investigate the drivers, risks and confounding factors affecting global property valuations. Major risks identified were political instability, a comparative lack of transparency in property markets and inferior property rights including titles, rights to minerals, water and land use. The majority of respondents indicated it is only occasionally possible to consistently compare movements in international property values. With regards to financial reporting using International Valuations Standards (IVS), there was no agreement between those surveyed as to whether all IVS reports were consistent in the property asset description, supporting valuation data (including methodology) and definitions of value. The majority of those surveyed conveyed a valuation was not sufficient evidence to support the purchase price of an international property investment without making further investigations.The research concluded that a number of variable factors including valuer education, regulation, benchmarking, ownership rights, legal titles and market transparency affect international property valuation and application of IVS will be inconsistent.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to determine the accuracy of Contingent Valuation when assessing the value attached to the presence of a negative environmental impact, such as High Voltage Transmission Lines (HVOTLs)Design/methodology/approach - A case study was undertaken to:i.Carry out a quantitative analysis to determine the effect of the HVOTL on property values.ii.Determine the perceptions of property owners to the presence of the HVOTLs, andiii.Determine the property owners' 'willingness to pay' to have the HVOTLs removed, Findings - The results show a negative effect of 20% to those properties that are adjacent to the HVOTLs. This effect drops to a negligible amount at 100 metres. Owners believe there is a 10% effect whether they are adjacent or up to 400m from the HVOTLs. The majority of owners opposed any contribution towards removing the HVOTLs. A better understanding is required by Property Valuers, regarding how to appropriately measure the effect of HVOTLs on property values. Research Implications - The implication of this research is that Property Valuers need to change the way they take into account the presence of HVOTLs when valuing property, with more attention being taken to proximity. Three different approaches were taken to determine impact on property values, with each providing a different result. Originality/value - Results expand on current knowledge by demonstrating a disparity between what people say the value effect is, and what the actual effect is on their property value. Property owners showed a resistance against contributing towards removing the HVOTLs, although expressed their belief that their presence created a negative effect.

In this paper we examine corporate real estate ownership of Shariah Compliant firms in the United States. We investigate the constituents of the Dow Jones Islamic Market Index (DJIM) which conform to Shariah principles particularly non-real estate firms which are listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (NASDAQ) and their corporate real estate ownership characteristics from 1996 to 2009. In our analysis we investigate over 1,000 US Shariah compliant companies and their corporate real estate ownership structure from 1996 to 2009.We find a strong correlation with Shariah restricted variables and corporate real estate ownership of Shariah compliant firms. Leverage is significantly positively correlated with corporate real estate ownership (CREO) while Cash + interesting bearing securities are negatively correlated with CREO. We do not find any significant correlation with accounts receivables and CREO. Furthermore we attempt to understand the role of corporate real estate ownership in firm performance particularly systematic risk and idiosyncratic component of return. We find in line with previous studies that a negative relationship between systematic risk and CREO in Shariah compliant firms, however this result is inconsistent when we examine our results based on industry classification. In addition, we find that the CREO of Shariah compliant firms do no explain the idiosyncratic return of Shariah compliant firms as we find a flat relationship between the idiosyncratic component of return (alpha) and corporate real estate ownership. Our results that CREO do not play any role in explaining the firm returns in Shariah compliant firms are robust even when we control for Shariah restrictive variables.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the service quality, to represent what factors of housekeeping-service quality make the greatest contribution to customer satisfaction in housekeeping services of luxury hotels in Bangkok. The items of these four dimensions were adapted and reworded based on the LQI model for investigating the specific context.Design/methodology/approach – Data are collected from 200 Thai and foreign respondents who stayed in the luxury hotel located at CBD of Bangkok within six months. The housekeeping-service quality was measured using four LQI dimensions of Tangibility, Reliability, Responsiveness and Communication as a predictor toward customer satisfaction. Hypothesizing these four dimensions has direct effect on the customer satisfaction in housekeeping services. Data are examined by using exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression analysis.Findings – The resulted indicated that two out of four original constructs had direct effects on customer satisfaction. However, this study found two new constructs, which are Understanding and Competency that had direct effect on customer satisfaction. The final model consisted of four constructs, namely Reliability, Responsiveness, Understanding, and Competency which had an influence on customer satisfaction directly. The final model has relatively good explanatory power with R2 = 40.6%. The Competency was the most significant in the final model.Implications – The hotel managers of luxury class hotels should recognize the important of “Competency” and “Understanding” in performing the housekeeping services in order to enhance customer satisfaction by training the housekeeping to work efficiently and have friendly manner and effort to anticipating customer’s need.Originality/value – This study particularly identified the important factors of housekeeping-services quality, which helped the hotelier to improve the housekeeping services in the right point, thus this helps minimizing cost and time investment. This paper is one of rare study that attentively focused on the context of housekeeping services that has not been developed or operationalized.

The practice of Real Estate in Brazil has gone to several changes in recent past that have resulted in an enormous development of the industry. It has implied in increasing demand for manpower training and development a local knowledge of this emerging field. Because of a virtual lack of a “Real Estate school” in Brazil, Real Estate has been approached by different educational traditions, such as construction planning and management, Real Estate business, Real Estate finance. The purpose of this communication is to present the case of MBA in Real Estate development, an educational program that seeks a more comprehensive view of Real Estate Development in Brazil, stresses the need of Real Estate interplay with regulatory city planning, and seeks also more balance between theoretic and applied teaching.

Managers of public housing companies are confronted with multiple demands, like e.g. providing affordable housing, improving energy-efficiency of their building stock and distributing profit to the municipality. Strategies to balance these different interests are required for optimizing performance.Integrated Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategies build on stakeholder engagement to ensure that economic, social and environmental criteria from different perspectives are included in decision-making. Several studies indicate that stakeholder management improves performance. However, stakeholder integration efforts can be costly and time-consuming. Thus, managers need to know how to integrate stakeholders in an efficient and effective way. The purpose of this research is to develop stakeholder integration strategies for housing companies depending on stakeholder types and context.We use a single case study design and select a German municipal housing company which has a pioneering status in CSR activities. Qualitative and quantitative methods are applied including stakeholder interviews, a stakeholder survey and document analyses. The environment of the housing company is described including stakeholder types, issues, and heterogeneity of demands. By combining the gained insights, we develop hypotheses on stakeholder typologies and on strategies for their suitable integration.Due to the single case design, further empirical testing of the developed hypotheses is needed before our findings can be generalized. Managers of housing companies find ideas on how to integrate specific stakeholder types adequately. By integrating multiple stakeholder perspectives in decision-making, companies might develop more sustainable solutions and increase public value creation.Despite extensive research on stakeholder management, there is still a lack of practical approaches for deciding on stakeholder integration strategies. Our study contributes to further close this gap by developing strategies which rely on structured stakeholder analyses.

Despite the global financial crises, Australia has experienced continuous high-speed growth in housing prices in recent years. Its housing market can be separated into two major segments: single-detached houses and medium-density apartments. This study seeks to examine the price trends of these two segments and explain their differential movements. Based on the Real Estate Institute Victoria (REIV) member agencies survey since the early 1990s, we found that house prices grew faster than apartment prices in Melbourne. In particular, the price gap between houses and apartments was much larger in central Melbourne than in the outer areas. To explain this, we borrow Clapp et al.'s (2012) real option idea and postulate that the gap reflects the redevelopment potential of the houses. We verify this by testing if the gap is smaller for suburbs with stronger redevelopment restrictions (e.g. due to zoning constraints). As far as applicable, other factors such as socio-economic characteristics are also considered. While this study contributes to a better understanding of differential housing price movements, we are aware that the test is delimited by the use of median price indices, which may not hold quality constant. Further study based on constant-quality prices, such as hedonic or repeat-sales indices, are needed.

The policy of European Union is focused mostly on green growth, therefore there is an increasing number of regulations concerning sustainable development. The situation is the same in the matter of life cycle of buildings, where pressure is put on eco-friendly solutions. The purpose of the paper is to describe the green residential real estate market in Wroclaw's county and to characterize its main attributes.The paper closely examines put to use, 'green' residential properties. The research studies statistical and real estate data from government agencies, such as District Inspector of Building Control for Wroclaw's county and Cadastre office of Wroclaw's county. The information gathered allows marking out energy efficient residential buildings and determining their value. The research shows that 'green' residential buildings have just a small share in the real estate market of new buildings. The result of the study indicates that just a few of those buildings were sold by the end of the year 2012. Furthermore almost all of 'green' houses were constructed by their owners. An interest in energy efficiency can be the result of the increased willingness to reduce the operating costs of the property. By analyzing the information gathered, the most popular eco-friendly solutions used in buildings (such as: solar panels, heat pumps, biomass boilers) were identified. The research estimates the actual value of 'green' buildings. One of the research limitations was the quality of Energy Performance Certificates (EPC). Even if the EPC was done according to the national approach it may give misleading information about energy efficiency of the building. In the future a further research on the effectiveness and correctness of EPC is necessary. The paper is unique in the field of real estate in Poland as it concentrates on the residential real estate in regards to sustainable development. The results of the research can be useful to valuers and investors since it gives genuine data on the green residential buildings market in Wroclaw's county.

We use sector level REIT and transaction-based direct real estate data for the period 1994-2010 to provide a clearer understanding of the dynamic relations between public and private real estate returns. We add leverage to private returns to make the private data more comparable with the REIT data. We also include economic fundamentals in the analysis to take account of the influence of fundamentals on real estate market dynamics. Moreover, we consider the influence of the 'escrow lag' in the recording of private market prices. The estimated vector error-correction and vector autoregressive models, Granger causality tests, impulse response functions and variance decompositions all provide evidence of REIT returns leading private returns in the office, retail, and apartment sectors. These lead-lag relations appear to be due to the slow reaction of private market returns to shocks in REIT returns and in some economic fundamentals. In the industrial sector, such lead-lag relation cannot be observed, however.

This study looks at the return and risk characteristics of the Diversified and Specialised REITs in the UK over the last four and half years commencing January 2007.The methodologies used in this study incorporate some simple statistic tools, multiple factor Sharpe ratio regression, and portfolio construction and use of efficient frontier models.In summary, the hypothesis that the Specialised REITs can perform better than the Diversified counterpart during recessions can be supported. The Diversified REITs show a moderate return with lower level of volatility. However, the Specialised REITs track the market more closely. The Office REITs and Retail REITs produce significant impact on the risk-adjusted performance.The Specialised REITs portfolio under the equal-weighted portfolio construction produces a better mean return at a similar level of the volatility, than the Diversified REITs portfolio.

The paper discusses the results emerging from a research carried out on a social housing intervention currently in progress in Turin, Northern Italy. The aim of the research relays in defining a model useful to control the building integrated sustainability, especially regarding some designing and operative variables such as plants typology, building technologies or inhabitants income burdens, all affecting housing cost components as well as the operating margin of the building manager.The methodological approach is based on the application of a financial-economic and dynamic tool finalized to simulate cash flows scenarios depending on variations to be applied to different variables such as energetic performances of the building, average rents per type of dwelling, etc.The emerging results evidence that it is effectively possible to balance the housing costs components (rent rates and operating expenses) with the energetic performances of the building, reducing up to 60% the energetic expenses and up to10% the 'housing cost' as a whole. The results highlight the added value acquirable by real estate promoters and developers in testing ex-ante technical, designing and managerial choices by means of flexible scenarios.The value of the analysis lies in showing how to take into account architecture, plants and relative impacts on housing costs, in order to define the best mix of technical and operating inputs, to foresee and adjust the economic and social variables, also in relation to a specific urban location and a peculiar mixitè of inhabitants.

The objective of the research project LEKOECOS is to quantify the environmental and economic resources consumed by a building during planning, construction and in the utilisation and operation stage. The complexity of the utilisation process over the long life span requires a calculation model with well-orchestrated normative definitions and idealisations. The presented environmental-economical model is based on the life cycle costs model LEKOS, developed by the Danube University Krems, and the environmental assessment software ECOSOFT by IBO. A new consistent model architecture was built up in order to synchronise the different characters of the environmental and economic resources of the building along its life cycle. This new architecture enabled a holistic consideration of the consumption of the environmental resources from elements as well as from services over the whole life span.Purpose of the system integration is a combined economic and ecological life cycle model for buildings, realised in an easy-to-use tool for the evaluation of life span resource consumptions at different stages of the design process. In addition specific life cycle resource consumption parameters are defined. This allows to compare the environmental and economic impact of different building types of different sizes and of different planning variants.

Residential buildings account for a significant proportion of all emissions of greenhouse gases. It is the aim of EU policy to reduce emissions by up to 95% by 2050. This means that the energy efficiency of the stock of residential property will need to improve dramatically. But will such improvements be rewarded in the property market?Using a dataset of Belgian property listings from 2012, this research explores the extent to which energy efficiency is rewarded in the various sales and lettings segments of the Belgian property market. The study further investigates whether the premium to energy efficiency varies across Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels. Lastly, the detailed natured of the CPEB energy efficiency rating and large dataset allow an investigation of non-linearities in the energy efficiency premium, a heretofore unexplored aspect of the relationship between energy efficiency and accommodation costs.

Following the EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive requiring all buildings at construction, sale or rent (or every ten years) to have certificates providing information about their energy performance through a rating of CO2 emissions, Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) and the Display Energy Certificates (DECs) were introduced in the UK in 2008. An EPC consists of an asset rating which is intended to inform potential buyers or occupiers about the intrinsic energy performance of a building. In the same vein as consumer products, buildings are rated on a scale A to G with A being the most efficient. This paper outlines the results of the first large-scale empirical analysis of their effects on residential property prices in England and Wales. It draws upon a sample of approximately 400,000 dwellings in England and Wales that had sold in the period from 1995 to 2011. To enable repeat-sales analysis, the sample included a large proportion of dwellings that had sold more than once. The hedonic model specifications reveal that compared to dwellings EPC rated G, dwellings with better EPC ratings have sold at a significant price premium. This willingness to pay for superior EPC ratings are robust and consistent across several model specifications and samples.

Energy labels have proven to be an effective means for nudging households to make sustainable choices. The label information regarding future energy use has inspired consumers around the world to opt for more energy efficient cars to commute to work and to select more efficient appliances at home. But regarding the home itself, energy labels have been less successful, or so it seems. In order to have an effect on consumer choice, energy labels need to meet three conditions, they need to be available, understandable, and reliable. In this paper, we examine the extent to which these criteria are met using a unique, detailed microeconomic dataset that contains information regarding the home, utility bills and energy labels for 779,383 addresses in the Dutch housing market. Since 2008, energy labels are available in this market, since 2010 these energy labels are understandable to consumers, and our results show that these labels are 81% reliable when compared to subsequent energy bills.

A large volume of literature discussion focuses on the weakness of sub-Saharan Africa land use planning systems to the exclusion of their benefits. The starting point to any effort at assessing the extent of benefit of these land use planning systems is to devise a suitable benefit estimation methodology. This study based on a review of the literature interrogates the conventional quantitative methodologies usually employed in the developed world to calibrate benefits of planning policies. It is established that conventional methodologies used in the developed world are associated with complexities and require huge volumes of organised data, which are hardly encountered in sub-Saharan Africa. This signifies that a bespoke methodology is required to estimate the benefits of planning regimes in the sub-region. The study, therefore, prescribes a methodology based on the nature of planning regimes and organised data peculiarities in the sub-region.

The 2008 economic crisis can be analysed as a demand-side shock to the Hungarian residential real estate market. Post-crisis adjustment in prices and transaction volumes is different in smaller settlements than in larger ones. According to income data, the crisis hit smaller settlements harder. In a static framework, this would imply that transaction volumes decreased more (relatively) in smaller settlements than in larger ones. A first glance at empirical data in Hungary, however, shows the opposite: there appears to be a smaller relative decrease in transaction volumes in smaller settlements. We measure settlement size by the number of properties in the settlement in 2009, and the change in transaction volume as the number of transactions before and after the crisis, divided by settlement size (that is, the change in relative transaction volume). The unexpected negative relationship between size and the change in volume is robust to the inclusion of controls (eg. for NUTS2 region, or the distance from the nearest larger town). A more dynamic approach is warranted to address this puzzle. A possible explanation is the following. The fact that transaction volumes fall after a crisis means that sellers will receive fewer offers over a given space of time. In smaller settlements, offers are generally less frequent than in larger settlements. Therefore, in a post-crisis smaller settlement, if an offer does come along, sellers will be likely to accept it even if it is low – since they anticipate that this offer will be the only one they receive for some time. Sellers in larger settlements, however, may still find it worth their while to hold out and wait for a better offer. This means that while post-crisis adjustment in smaller settlements happens less in volume than in price, the converse is true of larger settlements. The above argument fits into an optimal stopping framework, in which sellers receive differing offers at various intervals (each offer only being available for a limited amount of time), and must decide which offer to accept. We therefore address our puzzle using an optimal stopping model.

Entertainment business is one of a profitable business in Thailand. Many shopping centers in Thailand especially in “Bangkok Metropolitan” have entertaining sections to attract customers to visit the centers more often. Though customers of entertaining business are not restricted to a particular gender, male customer is known to be more interested in using entertaining services comparing to female customer. The framework of this study adopted Hart (2007) model of shopping experience enjoyment, together with the model of entertaining shopping experience by Ibrahim & Wee (2002). This paper studies male entertaining experience on repatronage intentions to visit entertaining department within shopping centers. The total of 264 samples was drawn from single male customer aged between 20-32 years old, living in Bangkok, who had ever used entertaining services in the shopping centers. 145 samples are collected from personal interview and 119 samples are collected from on line survey.

German funds increased their ownership levels in The City of London Office market from 0.7% of the sector to 18% between 1985 - 2006. This period of concentrated growth of ownership coincided with several peak-to-trough cycles in The City of London Office market.The paper aims is to assess the impact of the GOEFs in the passage of that cycle and determine what role, if any, they play in the movement of cyclic patterns in the UK's most prominent and diverse office market. Key theory points are assessed as part of a literature review focusing on the GOEF's sector's vulnerability to liquidity crises and legislation changes. The findings of a combined quantitative and qualitative survey suggest that GOEF liquidity has a positive correlation with the development cycle, capital value and rental value of The City of London Office market, with liquidity of the funds partly explained by movements in City Office cycle indicators. The paper argues however that liquidity alone does not play a central factor in the investment and divestment decisions of the GOEFs in The City of London.

The budget hotels in Thailand are likely to grow by the growth of low cost airline. Since cheaper airline ticket, middle management employees and their families including tourists travel more and more. Other than that, budget hotel business requires low investment but good return. Not surprisingly, the giant public company in Thailand hotel business, CENTEL, has been planned to expand new brand of 2 star hotel chain to serve the number of increasing travelers for AEC in 2015. However, IBIS Bangkok, there still wonders that ecotangible is the factor which significantly impact on customer satisfaction or not.Consequently, This paper proposes and tests a framework explaining the factors influencing customer satisfaction (SAT) with chain budget hotel in Bangkok especially the factor, ecotangible.Data was collected from both customers who were staying at the time we collected and customers were recently experienced within 6 months. Five hypotheses are :H1 : hotel image has a positive and direct effect on SAT.H2 : Ecotangible has a positive and direct effect on SAT.H3 : Physical quality has a positive and direct effect on SAT.H4 : Service quality has a positive and direct effect on SAT.H5 : Value for money has a positive and direct effect on SAT.The reliability and dimensionality of customer satisfaction are assessed by using exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression analysis which is employed to test aboved hypothesized relationships. The result shows that there are six factors which directly positive impact on customer satisfaction. The six factors are hotel image, ecotangible, room quality, room facility, service quality and value for money. The results of this study will provide developers in chain budget hotel to increase customer satisfaction and indeed, overall performance. Moreover, developers effectively allocate limited resources on appropriate factors to meet the customer satisfaction.

Urban regeneration has always been seen as an expansive and pervasive measure-s to policy making decisions. Despite the challenges in this period of economic uncertainty and financial constraint, urban regeneration is viewed as a key driver of economic, physical and social growth. However sustainable economic growth demands considerable investment to finance the development and associated infrastructure. The traditional practice to finance the development is by way of public investment. This places a huge burden on governments in terms of raising sufficient investment. One possible alternative financing tool is value capture. Large public investment in infrastructure can substantially increase the value of land in close proximity to the development. Capturing the value of this benefit through land use policy and alternative financing instruments is increasingly important to urban regeneration projects. This study explores an alternative financing mechanism designed to capture the uplift in land value due to development activity. This paper examines how the concept of “value capture” in terms of its prospect and challenges can be applicable to stakeholders in urban regeneration decision making in Kuala Lumpur city centre. Here the particular interest is to explore the arguments for value capture as a tool for funding and how this does relates to land management and land markets in urban regeneration context. A case study in Kuala Lumpur demonstrates the potential for application and effectiveness of a land value capture model as an alternative financing vehicle in promoting urban regeneration. Initially a literature review is conducted on the subject matter as well as in depth interviews with the property players and discusses various aspects of its applicability in the context of Malaysia. The outcome of this paper comprises recommendations for more viable strategies and policies that land value capture offers to finance urban regeneration and make a significance contribution to research which is currently on going.

In Finnish context the housing and related services are well established industries where both the tenants and the service providers are accustomed to certain ways of behaving and being part of the service processes. There are, however, weak signals suggesting that the housing related services are going to change a lo t in the near future. In urban development it is important to know what are the major changes that are likely to appear. This paper outlines some of these changes in Finnish context. The most potential changes are first outlined with 2 workshops with the Finnish academic experts on the issue. The material from the workshops is augmented with a small-scale survey. The 78 respondents in the survey were professionals in housing services. In this way it was possible to combine both academic and practical views. The results suggest that the building information modeling (BIM) will affect the future housing markets a lot. Also the ways the services are provided are changing. One possible change could be appearance of a new actor in the service business - namely a service mediator - a mediator who seek for optimized services for customers. Also new services might be essential in order to reach the societal goals of sustainability. The practitioners have many times so much to do that they do not have time to stop to think about the future. This paper allows the practitioner to have a short glimpse to the possible future directions of their businesses. From academic perspective this article adds understanding of housing and input into researching the service design in the field of housing services.

The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of the Christchurch earthquakes on building owners and tenants in an area of the CBD that was undergoing revitalisation and gentrification prior to the earthquakes. The methodology encompasses a comprehensive, long term case study of the area involving observation, interviews and document analysis. This paper reports preliminary findings based on observation of public meetings, newspaper reports and a small number of interviews. Findings include early commitment by owners and tenants to rebuild the area in the same style, but over time this has declined as delay, demolition, insurance problems, public safety and engineering concerns, political and planning changes and other emerging issues have made participation by the original owners and tenants impossible or uneconomic. It is early days in a long term rebuild process and this study focuses on only one area of the city, but it appears similar problems have arisen in other parts of the city and may well apply to other locations and other types of disasters. No other examples of such a complete and total interruption of a CBD revitalisation or gentrification process in a modern economy have yet been identified, but as the research progresses it will seek to uncover any such examples, should they exist, and draw comparisons. In any case this case study will represent a unique and important contribution as to what may happen in such circumstances.

The liquidity crisis in the German Open-Ended Real Estate Funds (GOEREFs) industry was characterized by large outflows of money in several funds. Large and ongoing redemptions of fund shares held by both institutional and private/retail investors led to suspensions of redemptions, termination of funds and, ultimately, a new law. This study provides the most comprehensive overview of how the funds performed and how pronounced the differences between classes of funds in the €80bn+ industry are. Using not only the net asset values of the funds as reported by the fund management companies, but the prices obtained at the secondary market when redemptions are suspended, indexes are constructed in order to provide a clear view of the performance of GOEREFs when the most relevant prices are used - those that may be achieved directly, rather than using book values. In this sense, the indexes provide a liquidity-corrected picture of fund returns.

Purpose - The objective of the study is to examine the structure, growth, risk adjusted returns and future of the global real estate securities funds sector. Historically these funds have been straightforward actively managed funds benchmarked against an Index such as the EPRA Global Index. Recently there has been increasing specialisation, on, inter alia, emerging markets, income, and passive exchange traded funds. This study looks at the performance of these different fund types across the cycle, and examines how they can be incorporated into a modern asset allocation strategy. Design/methodology/approach - We have used the proprietary database of funds provided by Consilia Capital for this study. Initially we have split the funds into their different mandate sub sectors (global/global REIT) then by structure (open ended / close end) followed by style (active/multi manager/ETF) and finally specialisation (income fund/emerging market, fundamental/standard index/no benchmark benchmark) and size.We have then examined how these different Funds have performed across the cycle, both in absolute terms as well as tracking error against a benchmark. In addition we look at which strategies have been most successful in growing Assets under Management. Findings - The number of styles within this category increased in 2006/7 with the growth of the listed sector and launch of a number of absolute return funds and hedge funds. These imploded in 2008/9 and we are now seeing the next wave of refinements to the structure, which are focussed on low cost passive funds (ETFs), income funds emerging market funds and non-benchmarked funds. With liquidity an increasingly important element of asset allocation decision making we believe that these funds will attract greater levels of capital, and suggest further refinements to the existing models, based on existing categories of general equity mutual funds. Originality/value - It is believed that this is the first study of this nature which looks at the universe of global real estate securities funds.

We introduce a methodology to estimate the households' marginal willingness to pay for housing characteristics in regulated housing markets, where houses and households are matched using queueing time. For the Amsterdam Metropolitan area, the households' marginal willingness to pay for the market value of public housing, so the value when sold in the private market, is estimated. We find that the annual marginal willingness to pay for the market value is close to the annual capitalisation rate applicable to investments in housing. We provide evidence of random, and therefore inefficient, matching between households and public houses with long queueing times.

This paper develops an analysis of housing supply elasticity by physical characteristics. Housing supply is demonstrated to be a driver of economic growth through different channels (Case, Quigley and Shiller, 2001) and reacts to market incentives with different intensities in the responses to changes on prices. The strong of such responses depends on a bundle of variables related to local house market features. Most of the studies estimate the elasticity values by region or by time but none of them have calculated such difference regarding the physical characteristics. The literature regarding the supply analysis by physical features is weak due to strong requirements of data: micro-data, detailed at local level and including a large number of characteristics and observations. This paper analyses the housing supply model segmenting the market by physical characteristics. It uses a database of micro-data with almost 40 different usable characteristic by observation, with around 1.5 x106 of houses collected from 1995 to 2012 (first semester). The dataset refers to main Spanish regions and it is representative of the eight more active regions in house-building during that period.

Purpose - One way of detecting departures from equilibrium is by comparing house prices and rents. Here I assess the viability of this approach.Design/methodology - Error-correction models (ECMs) based on price and rent indexes can be used to forecast movements in house prices. The short-term forecasting ability of ECMs is limited though due to the long persistence of departures from equilibrium. ECMs also suffer from the limitation that they do not tell us whether the price-rent ratio is above or below its equilibrium level at any given point in time. To answer this question it is necessary to make cross-section comparisons of prices, rents and user cost (i.e., the cost incurred by owning a house).Findings - A meaningful cross-section comparison requires that prices and rents are quality adjusted. This may require the use of hedonic methods. The equilibrium price-rent ratio (which is derived from the user cost) is difficult to compute since it depends on the expected capital gain. Also, both the actual and equilibrium price-rent ratios differ depending on which segment of the housing market is considered. Originality/value - The housing market, which is prone to booms and busts, can very significantly affect the rest of the economy. Hence it is important that central banks and governments can detect when the housing market is out of equilibrium. I show here how difficult it is to detect such departures.

Purpose - In present day society, focused on innovation, knowledge sharing (KS) is essential. CREM needs to provide accommodation designed for people to meet more often and share both tacit and explicit knowledge. Most workplace descriptions do not provide quantitative information on how the design actually stimulates KS. They cannot be implemented straight into a design nor convince general management in budget discussions. This paper tests the suitability of spatial network methodologies to provide this proof.Design/methodology/approach - After developing a conceptual model from literature, the model is tested with a case-study of one large research driven organisation in the Netherlands. For each possible dyad between 138 employees (= 9453 dyads), several KS indicators and workplace aspects are studied with statistical analyses.Findings - KS is clearly related to the allocation of people to the rooms and workplaces in a research building. Bumping into each other does not appear the reason for this relation. Up to distances of 22 meters dyads share average or higher amounts of knowledge. It is ambiguous whether the spatial network analysis methodology is relevant for measuring added value of the workplace for KS. Originality/value - This paper provides empirical evidence on a 'softer' added value of the workplace, which is scarce. Previous studies relied mainly on qualitative descriptions of the workplace, while this paper tests a methodology to quantify the workplace in measurable aspects and correlate them statistically to organisational outcome measures.

The duration of the lease may be different, depending on the country. In Thailand, the maximum duration of the long-term lease for residential is 30 years. Even though the term of long lease are very restrictive, 30-years leasehold luxury residential properties in the prime area of Central Bangkok are well-received in the market. The purpose of this study is to propose a conceptual framework to explore the influences of multidimensional roles of customer perceived value (CPV) and perceived risk toward both purchase intention and willingness to pay (WTP) for 30 years luxury leasehold residences in Bangkok. The components of CPV are developed based on PERVAL model including function, price, emotion and social value. While the components of perceived risk include performance risk, financial risk, psychological risk and time risk. To complete the purpose of this research, quantitative research approach with the use of questionnaire is employed. The main target respondent is Bangkok residents (both Thais and foreigners) who have heard about or visited 30 years luxury leasehold residences. Three hypotheses are developed: H1: CPV positively influences the purchase intention; H2: Perceived risk negatively influences the purchase intention and H3: Purchase intention positively influences WTP on 30-year leasehold luxury residences. Cronbach's alpha is used to determine the reliability and regression analysis is employed to test hypothesizes. The results will provide an important source of information for luxury leasehold marketers to develop effective marketing strategies that meet customer needs.

This paper presents a case study from Hungary on the effect of greater energy efficiency on residential housing prices, using a dataset on real estate transactions. The sample consists of all transactions from 2003 to mid-2012 in a treatment and a control group in Budapest's third district.The paper uses a difference-in-differences framework to test whether prices in a large block of flats - the largest in Hungary - which underwent major energy-efficiency related renovation developed differently following the renovation than prices in comparable, neighbouring blocks. Our results show that the renovation resulted in prices 9.42% higher than they would have been absent the renovation, which amounts to over 1 million Hungarian forints on the average flat. This can be contrasted with around 70 thousand forints in yearly energy savings and the 1.3 million forint cost of the renovation per flat. The latter implies that outside funding may also be required to make investment into energy-efficient renovation worthwhile.

Purpose - To examine whether current decision-making approaches and tools are effective for investors seeking risk-adjusted returns in private equity real estate. Two problems in particular are examined: first, over-reliance on geographic, sector and style labels; second, excessive emphasis on volatility of total returns (which is problematic because total return data mask the marked difference between the volatility of income returns and capital returns). Long term and short term improvements are suggested. Design/methodology/approach - Analysis of historic sources of risk and return at multiple levels and over different time periods, with focus on difference between income and capital returns. Findings - For investors whose priority is maximising risk-adjusted returns, better results are obtainable by looking through sector, geographic and style labels at the underlying cash flows. Long term diversification is more likely to be achieved through a combination of complementary income sources and lease structures than through naive geographical or sector diversification. The difference in volatility of income returns and capital returns merits greater attention. Research limitations/implications - Historic data is scarce outside the most mature markets. Practical implications - May help develop clearer understanding of real estate risk and improved decision-making for sell-side and buy-side market participants.

With the growing strains on public resources, many governments in recent years have turned to the private sector for infrastructure project financing. The special purpose vehicles (SPVs) taking such project usually has a 2 stage business model: a construction stage followed by an operating stage. However, the project risk in stage 1 is very high, and in most cases, the impacts of specific construction events on project risk and capital cost are unobservable due to lack of informational transparency. Eurotunnel (the Channel Tunnel project) is unique in that the share price data for the entire construction period is publicly available. The goal of this paper is to contribute to the measurement and assessment of project risk by providing empirical data on the impact of various events that occur during the construction phase of the project finance company's life. Using the event study methodology, our study shows that: (1) during the construction stage, efforts to better manage the interests and incentives of contractors produce more significant positive impact from investors than efforts for cost containment; (2) during the construction stage, meeting the project deadline is a higher investor priority than containing construction cost; and (3) once the construction phase is complete, the investors' priority then becomes the overall cost and the impact of construction events on the expected returns from investment. Finally, the level of risk and the potential conflicts of interest that arise during the construction phase of a mega infrastructure project are such that turning to IPOs to provide equity capital may not be appropriate.

The widespread international acceptance of green buildings has led to rapid awareness of green building features and initiatives (GBFIs) in the South African property and construction industry, however among valuers it seems the awareness is still in its infancy. It is essential to be able to establish the effects of these GBFIs on the market value of commercial property.Three research methods were implemented in order to gather data; semi-structured interviews were conducted with valuers of varying degrees of experience in Cape Town, on-line surveys were completed by a sample of South African valuers, and a valuation simulation was conducted to determine the quantitative impact of GBFIs.The findings present evidence that even though South African valuers have limited knowledge of green buildings, they recognise the importance of incorporating the GBFIs in the valuation process. Energy efficiency was highlighted as the most important GBFI to take into account in South Africa, due to the volatility associated with increasing energy costs. The inclusion of GBFIs in valuations in practice was seen to be hindered by the lack of sufficient transactional data in the market. Furthermore, valuers experienced difficulty in quantifying and justifying the impact of GBFIs on the value of commercial green property.

Purpose - The article discusses the issues involved in reconciling the development of natural resources with traditional uses of land, such as nomadic reindeer herding and fishing. Whilst it is in the national interest to exploit the oil-gas reserves the indigenous population cannot be protected by usual methods of compensation. It raises complex questions of whether the destruction of indigenous livelihoods and cultures can be avoided and whether and what ways the traditional users of the land can protect their interests through sharing in the benefits from natural resource development. Design/methodology/approach - The article uses a case study of Yamal-Nenets Autonomic Okrug undertaken by G Ledkov and examples from other Northern regions. Findings - There has been significant disruption of environment quality and indigenous livelihoods.Practical implications - The leading oil-gas companies developing the industry and infrastructure, are aware of the environmental and social impact of their operations and have sought to mitigate these through engineering solutions and by sponsoring cultural event in similar ways to those used by oil and mining companies elsewhere.Social implications - The Nenets' (and similar indigenous peoples') survival as a distinct culture is bound up with their traditional livelihoods and the natural environment. Originality/value - G Ledkov's perspective as the Duma member for the region gives this article a unique insight into the negotiation process in a situation of asymmetrical power. The results can be used for other Northern regions indigenous population.

Because homeownership represents the largest investment many individuals make, and the risks of competing mortgage products are not well understood, we develop a framework to quantify credit risks of mortgage products. We use simulations to examine the default rates of five types of mortgage products under both a normal and stressed economy to examine risk differences among the competing mortgage products. Results suggest that significant default risk differences exist between mortgage products. As a result, in addition to considering characteristics such as differential interest rates, points and fees, and the term of a mortgage, homebuyers should consider the risk differential of competing mortgage products before selecting a mortgage.

Purpose - Real estate conveyances are accomplished in different ways and by different players in the EU member states. In Sweden, the key player is the broker, whereas in France and other civil law countries, the notary has that role. The purpose of the paper is to examine the scope and nature of the non-litigious legal counsel buyers and sellers of residential real estate can expect to receive from the broker under the Swedish regime, compared to the notary under the French regime. The purpose is also to discuss and evaluate the two regimes, with respect both to the desirability of legal counsel in residential real estate conveyance, and to assigning those tasks to the broker and the notary respectively.Methodology/approach - The paper is based on my doctoral thesis presented in January, 2013. The study is a comparative legal study conducted in two steps: first, the role of the broker is compared to that of the Latin notary in nine civil law countries. After that, the duty to counsel of the broker is juxtaposed with that of the French notary. Being a legal study, it is based on legal sources such as statutes, case law, and jurisprudence.Findings - The Swedish broker and the Latin notary are both held to a duty of impartiality and a duty to counsel. The duty to counsel of the Swedish broker and the French notary consists in four sub-duties: to conduct verifications and ascertain certain facts, to disclose relevant information, to give adequate advice, and to draw up the necessary deeds. The desirability of mandatory legal counsel, as well as the choice of assigning counseling role to the broker or the notary, has clear economic implications. However, it is less than clear whether or not regulation of the examined kind is conducive to economic efficiency. One problem is that the existing models fail to take into account central factors such as one's ideological view on consumers' rights and state intervention in the marketplace. Therefore, it seems a more fruitful enterprise to evaluate the regimes' institutional robustness; that is, their ability to fulfill their intended purpose. For instance, the incentives of the key players may be detrimental to the proper functioning of the regime. Future research should focus on institutional robustness.Originality/value - The paper highlights an important, though often neglected, factor for evaluating the regimes for conveyances, namely impartial legal counsel to consumers.

There is a gap between investment and maintenance of public school buildings in the Netherlands. This gap is caused by separated responsibility for the financing of the accommodation for the primary and secondary schools. Municipalities finance the construction of these schools and school boards are responsible for the operation costs of the school building. According to In 't Veld (2010) this split-up results in higher costs during the lifetime. The purpose of this article is to show the integral approach captured in life cycle cost (LCC) in order to achieve to a better balanced system. The research conducted nine case studies of secondary school buildings, which are newly build between 2005 and 2008. The schools were examined in terms of buildings characteristics, building costs and operations costs. With the aid of the Dutch sustainability measurement tool 'GPR-Gebouw' the sustainability score of the schools is determined.For the construction sector in the Netherlands can be concluded that it is generally acknowledged that sustainability is more expensive, however, studies indicate this is not unequivocally. An elaborated research of Davis Langdon reveals within a given spread of building costs an equal spread of certified buildings (Morris & Matthiessen, 2007). Our study found at least no clear relationship that sustainable schools have higher investment needs and shows a positive effect of sustainable measurements on the life cycle costs of secondary schools.There is an on-going discussion on ratios in this matter. Evans (1998) stated that there is a ratio of 1:5:200 between the construction costs, operating expenses and corporate operating costs. This ratio has already been further defined and reduced by Hughes (2004) and Ive (2007). The scenario analysis of our study shows that the operating costs still have a larger share in the life cycle costs than the investment costs. The difference between the investment and operating according to this study is by far not as impressive as stated by Evans, but still worthwhile to keep focus on LCC in policies for school development.

The minimal investment cost, flexibility and expandability of the built structure were the highest priority planning aims in the development and planning of industrial facilities and production halls. With the sharpening of the building codes and upcoming of European polices on climate protection and energy efficiency – such as the plus-energy buildings, the life cycle optimization is starting to gain importance with industrial investors. Optimized, highly efficient building hull and building services play crucial role in the realization of over-all energy-concept of modern industrial facility.In the case study of energy efficient industrial facility within the research project INFO (Interdisciplinary Research for Energy efficient Production) a tool for calculation of life cycle costs and emissions of the building hull was developed. For the proposed building model of industrial facility three different façade-typologies (metal sheets, metal-sandwich panels, wood panels) were simulated and calculated by the tool. In terms of ecology (CO2 emissions) the wood-based façade features the best performance, however is most costly in the initial costs, which would have been a knock-out criterion when planning an industrial facility in the past. However, the life-cycle cost related findings imply that even though the examined typologies feature large differences in the initial cost, after a period of 50 years of life-time all three façade-types sum up to the same amount of life-cycle costs. We argue that for achievement of sustainability aims therefore a long term view is necessary, as well as further development of planning tools which support decision-making process in the early design phases.

A Cultural or Creative Economy is said to be on the rise. This claim for changes in contemporary society is not new and the terminology can differ. Linkages to the cultural and experience based is however a joining feature. The question raised in this paper is the implications of this development for the real estate sector and its research agenda. Drawing on the establishment of an art gallery in the north of Sweden, as part of the transformation of an old regimental area, the potential and problems of linking the real estate sector and the cultural economy is discussed.Transitions in society are often described in terms of labels. History can give numerous illustrations. Nomads wandering transferred to the more permanent agriculture, is one such example. Much later follows the breakthrough of Industrial society and a variety of proposals for succession: Information society, Knowledge economy, or perhaps Creative economy. These transitions could be expressions of an over-emphasis of the new. The old way of living and economic exchange remains, after all, to a lesser extent. Similarly, what is described as new have often been around for some time. Following this, cultural activities have been essential part of societies for many years and often in ways that also made it possible to earn a living out of it. One decisive difference is however how the emergence of a Cultural or Creative industry today is described as a driving force for the entire society, making the approach appealing to policy makers. The researcher most of all associated with this line of thinking is Richard Florida and his discussion on the Creative Class. These creative professionals are attracted to urban centers and one link to real estate sector is hereby established. The importance is often examplified with how spectacular buildings such as the Opera House in Sydney or the Guggenheim Mueum in Bilbao have become icons for a new form of economy in these cities. But there is also a more down to earth connection where regions strive for cultural activities and property prices are driven by cultural values.

The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence of the ability of liquidity to serve as a systematic risk factor in real estate asset pricing models in Europe. Using general equity data of 8.500 listed European firms, we construct 18 portfolios by a three-sequential, independent sorting procedure (Size, B/M and Liquidity) to compute the common risk factors SMB and HML as proposed by Fama and French (1993) as well as a liquidity risk factor. Our empirical findings suggest that liquidity is a significant pricing factor in real estate stock returns after accounting for the established asset pricing factors. These results are robust to conditional market tests and possible country effects. Furthermore, we run a comparative analysis with alternative multifactor models and prove that the liquidity-augmented pricing model is most appropriate for explaining real estate stock returns.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to quantify the changes in the liquidity premium for the real estate equities markets of the United States, Europe and Asia during the period of 2002 – 2012. The liquidity crisis of 2007-8 had a dramatic impact on returns, valuations and capital raising abilities of the listed real estate sector globally, and the paper focuses on understanding and explaining relative liquidity premiums under dynamic market conditions.Design/methodology/approach - Market liquidity is measured in each market, U.S, Europe and Asia by analysing liquidity in three different dimensions of tightness, depth and resilience. We calculate percentage bid-ask spread as a measure of market tightness, market depth is given by the Hui-Heubel (HH) liquidity ratio (Hui and Heubel, 1984), while resilience refers to the speed at which the price fluctuations resulting from trades are dissipated using a Market-efficient coefficient (MEC) (Hasbrouck and Schwartz, 1988). The company data sample groups securities into large, medium and small market capitalisations across each of the three regions.Finally the dependency of real estate firm liquidity with other securities market indicators is measured in each market, U.S, Europe, Asia by constructing the Hui-Heubel liquidity ratio on a selection of key companies and correlating this with the VIX index. A higher HH ratio indicates higher price to volume sensitivity. Findings - In all three markets bid-ask spreads reduced significantly, and market liquidity and efficiency increased during the period of 2002 – 2007. Since that date the results have a more regional bias, and we examine the reasons behind this. The MEC confirms that European companies exhibit lower levels of liquidity than their US counterparts, and this a contributing factor behind periods of relative underperformance. We discovered a high correlation between market correlation and the VIX Index.Originality/value - The results provide important clues for investors and real estate companies in pricing liquidity throughout the cycle and illustrates the regional differences over the period. This has important implications for investors regarding the pricing of risk, and absolute and relative returns, and for companies, in terms of capital raising ability. In addition the finding of the close relationship between RE stocks liquidity and the VIX index confirms the importance of equity market influences on public real estate valuations.

Notions of housing affordability concept are at the heart of debates about access to home ownership, housing finance and social policies globally. The existing housing affordability literature mostly focuses mainly on developed countries. Housing affordability problem in emerging countries are starting to attract increasing attention. This paper seeks to contribute to this emergent literature by analysing housing affordability in Turkey. The paper explores market trends, the nature of the affordability problem and makes some tentative policy suggestions. The paper develops a theoretically informed model to assess affordability using data from 2005 to 2012 on house price to income ratios, the housing affordability index of Turkey (HAIT), and a variety of social and economic indicators. The Turkish results are contrasted with similar measures for other countries.

Purpose - The objective of the study is to assess the extent to which the hypothetical attractions of listed real estate products as part of a real estate allocation are being over-ridden by the lack of integrated solutions to managing public and private real estate in the same portfolio. Design/Methodology/Approach - To assess this, we undertook a pilot survey of 20 investors and fund managers. Following this, we target two interviewee groups: 'pure' investors (investors who manage mainly in-house capital); and the investment consultants who advise them. The method used is semi-structured interviews, and we have targeted a minimum response of 25 investors and 10 consultants.Findings - The pilot survey found that for some European investors and managers listed real estate is clearly part of the equity allocation. For others, there is some evidence that pension funds and consultants regard (or would like to regard) listed real estate as part of the real estate allocation. Within the sub-set of those for whom listed real estate forms part of the real estate allocation, some have an integrated approach to public and private real estate; but more (80% of 20 interviewees) do not, sub-contracting public real estate to a dedicated team, the equity desk, or even to an external manager. It appears that this goes some way to defeating the object of a combined mandateOriginality/Value - With liquidity an increasingly key criterion in the asset allocation process, and the increasing introduction of compulsory defined contribution pension schemes in Europe we believe that understanding how listed real estate can be managed effectively alongside private real estate . We believe that this is the first survey to be undertaken with this specific objective.

According to the INSEE database on second-hand apartment sales, overall apartment prices in Paris have been steadily growing from the first quarter of 1998 until the first half of 2009, when they dropped by an overall 7 percent, before resuming their ascent. Between the beginning of 2010 till the end of 2011, Paris apartment prices experienced a stunning growth of roughly 30% and have stabilized since. But some Paris 'arrondissements' have been doing better than others and are still expected to experience value rises in the near future. In the presence of market heterogeneity, the ability of traditional appraisal methods to capture the true property market value may be questioned and emerges as a major issue for local authorities that collect property tax as well as for mortgage lenders confined to tight lending provisions in a crisis context. Assessing such differences in a reliable way is a step forward towards improving mortgage lending risk management.In this paper, the heterogeneity of the Paris apartment market is addressed through assessing the differences in the hedonic price of housing attributes over the 2000-2006 period for various price, hence income, segments of the housing market. For that purpose, quantile regression is applied to the 20 Paris 'arrondissements' as well as to the 80 neighbourhoods, or 'quartiers' (each 'arrondissement' is composed of 4 'quartiers'), with market segmentation being based on price deciles (deciles 1 to 9). The database includes some 159,000 sales spread over a seven year period (2000 – 2006). Housing descriptors include in particular, a price index, building age, apartment size, number of rooms and bathrooms, unit storey, the presence of a lift and of a garage, the type of street and access to building (boulevard, square, alley, etc.) as well as a series of location dummy variables standing for the 'arrondissements' and 'quartiers'.Findings clearly suggest that hedonic 'relative' prices of most housing attributes significantly differ among deciles, although discrepancies tend to vary greatly in magnitude depending on the attribute. Among other findings, the elasticity coefficient of the size variable, which stands at 1.070 for the first price decile (cheapest units), is down to 1.026 for units belonging to the ninth one (dearest units). The floor where the apartment is located, the number of rooms and the building period are significant attributes as well and their impact differ depending on the unit price.

Purpose - This paper aims to determine the maturity of real estate markets in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with focus on the United Republic of Tanzania and the Republic of South Africa. These individual markets are investigated on the basis of market maturity features such as market transparency, connectivity with international capital markets, commercial building offer, domestic and international corporate base.Design/methodology/approach - The present study is placed on an empirical investigation of the assessments of local real estate experts concerning the Tanzanian and South African real estate market. The survey is based on self-administrated questionnaires regarding the countries characteristics and their real estate markets within categorical rating scales.Findings - The comparison between nascent Tanzania and emerging or even mature South Africa represents the diversity of the real estate market characteristics in the SSA region. Potential foreign real estate investors are provided with objective information concerning the real estate market activity in order to identify the opportunities and risks in comparison to global investment alternatives.Research limitations/implications - As Sub-Saharan Africa represents all African countries located south of the Sahara the region is characterized by diverse geographical, socio-cultural and historical conditions. Given that the real estate market maturity indicators cannot be generalized and adapted to any other African country without analyzing the real estate market efficiency the need to enrich future studies was noted.Originality/value - Benchmarking tools such as the Market Maturity could close the gap between investment opportunities and the absence of foreign real estate investments activity in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Fragmented land ownership is widely believed to be responsible for the difficulties in assembling the contiguous land parcels for a more dense development. In order to acquire a large number of small land parcels, an often excessively-high price needs to be paid, if and only if all the owners finally agree to the price. Even if all parcels are assembled, the soaring land price is to a large extent responsible for a high housing price. It has been therefore in many studies concluded that the fragmentation of land ownership tends to lead to an inert supply of land, and given a strong demand, will subsequently contribute to an elevated housing price.The above arguments seem to fit well into the scenario of Taipei City. Taipei is the capital and largest city in Taiwan, with a density of 9,593 inhabitants per km2 and a growing, though steadily, number of households. In addition, the housing price in Taipei has been overvalued by 38% and 27% compared to the fundamental prices derived from price/income and price/rent relationship, respectively. In order to accommodate the expanding demand for housing, fragmented land has to be assembled to pave way for the later development. In other words, developers will constantly purchase and consolidate small parcels into a larger one in a single ownership prior to the construction of new houses. Despite the theoretical and practical significance, little research has looked into the measurement of land fragmentation and the changes in the degree of fragmentation in the course of building activities. Understanding of land fragmentation is crucial for a comprehension of how land is priced, and how land is assembled and developed. This study examines in-depth the area of Wan-Hwa train station where was developed earliest in Taipei. We analyse the changes in land titles of every single parcel from 1970s through 1990s that cover at least two property cycles. Developers over the course of two property cycles must have engaged in land assembly for their building projects. Borrowed from other research fields such as agricultural productivity and income inequity, we apply Gini Coefficient, Simpson Index and Januszewski Index respectively to measure the distribution of land titles (shares) in this area over time. We will also examine the changes in the degree of land fragmentation within the context of property cycles. It is hoped that through observation of changes in the distribution of ownership on land, how land is assembled and buildings supplied in a city where housing affordability is a daunting problem can be better understood.

Consensus signifies that the cost of compliance with land use planning requirements is a major link to the weakness of sub-Saharan Africa urban land use planning systems. Yet scanty knowledge exists on the extent and magnitude of the cost of the sub-region's urban land use planning systems. This is compounded by the complexities associated with conventional quantitative methodologies usually used in the developed world to estimate the cost of land use planning policies and their huge volumes of organised data requirements. This study initially examines these conventional methodologies and nature of sub-Saharan Africa urban land use planning systems based on evaluation of the extant literature. Subsequently, a customised methodology(ies) is proposed taking cognisance of insights from the conventional methodologies, nature of the sub-region's planning systems and its organised data constraints.

The recovery of brownfield sites has been in the past and still is today at the center of urban policies that have started, set up and, in some cases, completed the main projects of urban transformation. In this regard it should be noted that large transformation areas often require a preliminary remediation before that the urban functions are established. The recovery of these areas has, among other things, the character of public interest in relation to the environmental protection and public health goals. Basically, the investment decision, concerning the development of brownfields is affected by two critical variables: the remediation costs and the market value of the area after completion of the environmental recovery. This last is in fact a complex process, which cannot be estimated with certainty, influenced by many variables, such as, for example, the cost of the single operations, the timing, the technology and the uncertainty of achieving the remediation goals (Weber et al., 2008). In the past and in many countries, the public resources were preferred to encourage the development of urban transformation projects of contaminated lands. On the contrary, the current economic scenario requires a new insight that includes the possibility of involving the private developers from the early stages of the transformation. In this regard, given the uncertainty surrounding the remediation costs, some authors (Espinoza & Luccioni, 2007) have aimed to the definition of the optimal size of the investments, able to make feasible the land transformation from the financial and economic point of view, through the Real Options Theory (ROT). In this light, the work attempts to argue and support the application of the ROT, considering a contaminated area where the plan allows the change from industrial to residential and commercial use, but where the remediation costs are unavoidable. The numerical example, that is solved using the Black & Scholes formula, shows that, the higher is the volatility – the uncertainty – of the transformation value of the land, more the deferral option value is increasing . After a year, the landlord will proceed with the remediation, only if the market value of the land is greater than the cost of its recovery; otherwise it will not. As a result, the payoff for the landlord is obtained from the maximization of the value added and from the sales price of the land, that, in turn, will result from the transformation value.

The elderly suffered the uncertainty of health, losing spouse or wealth accumulation as they aged. In aging and low fertility society, how to increase elderly financial resources and satisfy their needs for everyday lives so that they can age with dignity is a very important issue. The homeownership rate is almost 85% or more in Taiwan. Some elderly households are housing rich but cash poor, the housing wealth could be converted to the living expense if they want. This study would like to explore the relationships between the housing tenure decisions after moving and economic status for the elderly. Both the economic financial needs and bequest behavior would have impacts on the housing decisions for the elderly. This study employs the multinomial choice models and the Survey of Health and Living Status of the Middle Aged and Elderly in Taiwan.

Purpose - Sustainability in Corporate Real Estate has lately become a concurrent part of almost every enterprise. However the extent of activity may extremely differ in various industries. Sustainable Real Estate Practices have been broadly analyzed in the recent studies, but the holistic approach to the issue is missing. The purpose of this paper is to summarize and systematize the current activities and propose a generic Sustainability Maturity Model in Corporate Real Estate. Methodology - The theoretical model is created based on findings from literature review. It consists of Sustainable Real Estate Practices which are divided into 6 dimensions: resources, processes, governance, communication, finance and strategy. Throughout the practices the role of Real Estate at each of the five Sustainability Maturity levels is explained. It is assumed that the highest proficiency of Sustainability is mastered by the most sustainable companies and enterprises. Therefore, the reliability of the model is tested in interview sessions with the field leaders in Finland. The results are analyzed using qualitative research methods.Findings - Over 10 interviews with Finnish companies were conducted to find out what Sustainable Practices are possessed at different maturity levels. Based on these results, the theoretical model is tested and developed further and as a result generic Sustainability Maturity Model for Corporate Real Estate is suggested. Originality/value - This model provides a holistic and systematic approach to the present Sustainable Practices and demonstrates how Corporate Real Estate contributes to Company’s Sustainability.

The relatively small equity of mortgage banks that has been created in Poland for the past twelwe years does not allow refinancing of housing real estate credits with the use of mortgage bonds. Nonetheless, there is more and more imminent threat of liquidity problems amongst the universal banks that have granted mortgage loans for financing housing real estate. Thus, it is expected to see the emergence of a system of issuing bonds to improve financial standing of those banks. The process of development of mortgage banking raising funds on capital markets through the issue of bonds has been already commenced in Poland. The paper presents the essence and the legal groundwork for that process, as well as the volume and structure of bonds issue on the background of refinancing mortgage loans with bonds in the selected countries of the European Union. The paper includes a discussion of security principles, and presents the main issuers of bonds. Due to the attractiveness of that financial instrument the discussion includes a presentation of the bond market in Poland, and its main investors. In conclusion, the author presents prerequisites to encouraging and accelerating that type of financing which will also increase credibility of that security on the financial market.

This study provides some insight into space per worker trends that are critical to any model forecasting future office space demand. A framework of analysis is provided that tries to bring goals and aspirations of cost conscience space planners into reality by considering lease terms, employee churn or turnover, time to fill positions, the growth rate of the firm, and other uncertainties that affect space utilization rates, for example, policies towards standardized space or sharing non-dedicated space or the types of space utilized by the firm including the need for collaboration. Culture, cost, firm size and industry type considerations are compared but the focus is upon the space per worker trends that affect the ability of a firm to use space efficiently as well as affect all future forecasters of office demand based on employment projections. Some consideration is given to alternative workplace strategies as well as the effect of natural light, better ventilation and better temperature control on productivity.

We employ an original dataset of primary fund information to examine the performance of 162 global private equity real estate investment funds across the core, value-add and opportunistic investment style categories over the most recent property cycle (2001-2011). We employ a multi-factor asset pricing model to measure the impact on the funds' total excess returns of the underlying real estate market, broad managerial skill captured by 'alpha', overall financial leverage and, for the first time, specific managerial skill as it relates to timing leverage decisions to anticipated market and economic trends.We find evidence consistent with the hypotheses that i) fund performance is almost directly proportional to the return on the underlying real estate market, ii) managerial skill as measured by 'alpha' can be virtually fully explained by fund style, leverage, sector and geography, iii) leverage cannot be viewed as a long-term strategy to enhance performance, and iii) even in the short term, managers do not seem to add value by timing leverage choices to the market and economic environment.

Purpose - This paper examines the performance of UK listed infrastructure over a unique investment period covering the global financial crisis and investigates the significance of UK infrastructure in a multi-asset portfolio. The analysis reveals the level of correlation of UK infrastructure with other major assets classes and substantiates the potential diversification benefits of including UK infrastructure within a mixed asset portfolio. Research Design and Data - The study uses monthly investment return indices obtained from Thomson Reuters DataStream over a ten year period (2001-2010). The paper analysed the UK listed infrastructure investment return characteristics including average annual return, annual risk, Sharpe indices, mean variance portfolio and maximum return portfolio and computes the efficient portfolio frontiers using the risk solver optimization tool. Research Findings - The performance results show that UK infrastructure produced better risk-return trade-offs than those of UK property, private equity, hedge funds and UK stocks over the period 2001-2010. Overall, for the ten year period, UK Water was the best performing asset class outperforming all other asset classes having the highest Sharpe ratio of 0.75. Research Implication - Using the monthly return indices over the ten year period, UK listed infrastructure investment was found to play a consistently significant role in the optimality of mixed-asset portfolios. However, the diversification benefits were more return enhancing than risk reducing, offering investors a platform for matching investment objectives with expectations resulting from a better understanding of the characteristics of UK listed infrastructure investments. Originality - As investors seek better understanding of the performance of infrastructure across the globe, with most previous studies focusing on Australia, US and China, the paper makes significant contribution to the body of knowledge by focusing on UK, a promising investment space for infrastructure industry. Also, given the debate surrounding the emergence of infrastructure as a separate asset class, the paper particularly projects the potential benefits of investing in UK listed infrastructure, offering investors a distinctive platform to launch into a vibrant asset class.

The goal of this paper is to improve the understanding of what drives the performance of non-listed real estate funds, adding to the limited literature on this topic. We performed a panel regression analysis on the basis of an extensive sample from Investment Property Databank (IPD) covering returns and selected characteristics of German Spezialfonds over a period of five years from 2006 until 2010. The analysis was performed for the whole sample as well as separately for three distinctively different subperiods: the boom of 2006-2007, the downturn of 2008-2009 and the recovery of 2010. The analysis uncovered significant differences in the drivers across the cyclical phases. During the boom phase, leverage and global portfolio allocation positively affected returns, while allocation to Germany had a negative effect. In contrast, fund volume, management costs and allocation to offices led to underperformance. Finally, in the recovery of 2010, leverage, allocation to Germany and diversification across property types improved performance, while higher liquidity and focus on retail had a negative impact. In addition to providing extensive and unique insights into the determinants of performance of the German Spezialfonds, the results should be of interest to fund managers looking for advice on the optimal positioning of their funds in response to changing economic environments.

An unlisted real estate fund is a private investment vehicle, which aims to provide direct real estate total returns and may also employ financial leverage which will accentuate performance. They have become a more prevalent institutional real estate investment conduit since the early 2000’s. Investors have been primarily attracted to them due to the ease of executing a real estate exposure, both domestically and internationally, and for their diversification benefits given the capital intensive nature of constructing a well diversified commercial real estate investment portfolio. However, despite their greater prominence there has been little academic research conducted on the performance and risks of unlisted real estate fund investments. This can be attributed to a paucity of available data and limited time series where it exists. In this study we have made use of a dataset of institutional UK unlisted non-listed real estate funds over the period 2003Q4 to 2011Q4, using a panel modelling framework in order to determine the key factors which impact on fund performance. The sample provided a rich set of fund factors including market exposures, direct real estate characteristics and the level of financial leverage employed. The findings from the panel regression analysis show that a small number of variables are able to account for a significant proportion of the performance of unlisted real estate funds. These variables should be considered by investors when assessing the risk and return of these vehicles. The impact of financial leverage upon the performance of these vehicles through the recent global financial crisis and subsequent UK commercial real estate market downturn was also studied. The findings indicate a significant asymmetric effect of employing debt finance within unlisted real estate funds.

The paper develops a Bayesian skew factor model to measure the return-risk performance of publicly traded equity real estate investment trusts (REITs). We show that the skew factor contributes in all REITs' returns. The skew factor significantly impacts the performance measurement of REITs portfolio and this factor is different from the market return factors (REITs index and stock market index) and Fama-French three factors. We compare the skewness-aware asset allocations (Low, Pachamanova and Sim 2012) using typical non-parametric method and our skew factor model. We find that the skew factor model provides better out-of-sample performance comparing to its non-parametric counterpart.

Housing private finance initiative (PFI) schemes are used for cooperation of local authorities with private partners to build, improve, manage and maintain social housing stock in UK. They can be seen as competitive solution for privatization of public stock. These schemes should enable a transfer of risk from public sector to the private sector and give good value for money. After some years of British experience with housing PFI there is possible to evaluate results and analyse where there are some bottlenecks. The author would like to outline British experience and consider the possibility of transferring housing PFI into Polish conditions. In Poland the picture of housing structure is very patchy: after waves of privatization of public housing stock the current housing structure is very blurry, mostly in big cities. Very high bonuses for tenants – buyers created the mixture of owners: local governments and individuals (due to different levels of income, some of them have problems with housing maintenance). Their aims and level of interest and understanding of housing technical and functional problems are very various. The very important housing supply side actor in socialist time - housing cooperatives are mostly inactive, focused only on survival, currently. Thinking about housing as a very important factor for national economy and social life, there is an important question of new solutions implementation in these circumstances, remembering also about great needs in area of regeneration confronted with cuts in public spending.

The objective of this paper is to look at the performance of Property and Asset Management (PAM) in the UK over the past five years. This part of the property industry suffers from extreme cost pressure to the point where profitability is in question. The paper discusses different business models for PAM and uses a detail process model to pull out the key metrics for the industry. Using the REMark survey of property managers and funds it reports upon the performance of property and asset managers with respect to efficiency and collection performance over a five year period, drawing out key trends.

The PIGS countries stand in the spotlight of the current financial crisis in Europe. The boom and bust of the real estate sector was one of the major sources putting these countries into an economic downturn. This paper determines the extent to which these countries experienced property bubbles and sheds light on the role of monetary policy in the formation of bubbles. We draw from Stiglitz’s (1990) theory on asset bubbles and apply the direct capitalization approach through weighted average cost of capital (WACC) to identify real estate bubbles in the period from 1999 to 2012. In the next step we apply VAR and VECM models to investigate short- and long-run dynamics between the monetary policy of the ECB and property bubbles in the PIGS countries. Our findings indicate that Spain and Ireland experienced the largest positive bubble formation, followed by Portugal with a small bubble. In contrast to that, Greece experienced a strong negative bubble. While we find only a very weak short-run relationship between monetary policy and bubble formation in Portugal, we find both, evidence for a long- and short run relationship in the case of Ireland, Greece and Spain. The varying extent of the bubble formation and the differing impact of the monetary policy on the bubble across the PIGS countries can be mainly attributed to characteristics in the domestic financial-, fiscal- and macroprudential-system. This paper provides strong evidence that countries with very low interest rates and low to moderate tax rate as well as high loan-to-value ratios have the potential to experience large property bubbles. Central bank’s policies are crucial to trigger the boom and burst of property bubbles by manipulating the interest rate and availability of lending for house purchase. As this research only covers aggregate data for entire countries, diverging developments within each country are not captured. Future research could contribute to the literature by focusing on property market developments in specific cities or regions.

The paper investigates whether complex property market forecasting techniques are better at forecasting than simple specifications. As the research and initial modelling results suggest, simple models outperform the more complex structures. It therefore calls analysts to make forecasts more user-friendly, and for researchers to pay greater attention to the development and improvement of simpler forecasting techniques or simplification of more complex structures. Further planned research will present an alternative simple modelling approach, which was successfully employed by economists, helping to achieve greater predictive outcomes.

Estonian government, having started to adopt the ideas of the theory of New Public Management, has decided to apply private sector best practices also in it´s public sector real estate asset management (PREAM). In order to evaluate the possible performance of the reforms, outlined to implement on the state level of real estate portfolio, a general theoretical concept of PREAM and also four basic PREAM models have been developed. According to these models, two basic views of Estonian state buildings portfolio are empirically analyzed: 1) the portfolio of general-purpose property and 2) the portfolio of special-purpose property. The results of the research is given, based on the two main analysis methods - fiscal impact analysis (FIA) and benefit-cost analysis (BCA), where the discussion about the appropriate level of discount rate application to long-term cash-flow forecast plays a significant role. Implications made out of the research should give some broader enlightment about the problems arising from the similar kind of model-based analysis of the performance of public sector real estate asset management in other countries. The results and conclusions of the paper may be useful to countries still considering the application of improving reforms of real estate management in their public sector.

Firms can choose a capital structure that maximises real risk-adjusted performance by matching nominal liabilities with nominal assets. In doing so, firms minimise the sensitivity of real risk-adjusted returns to unexpected inflationary shocks. We develop a model of real risk-adjusted performance as a function of nominal and real assets and liabilities and demonstrate the solution to the maximisation problem. We explore the empirical support for our theoretical prediction using a sample of US Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), as their regulated business model allows for a straight-forward distinction between real and nominal assets and liabilities. We find evidence that firms observe the predicted linear relationship between nominal assets and liabilities, and that real risk-adjusted returns to firm equity are inversely relate to deviations from the optimal nominal liability holdings, as are inflation hedging qualities of investments into the firms' equity. Lastly, firms' holdings of nominal debt appear to increase in times of higher inflation uncertainty, supporting the notion of nominal liabilities as a buffer against unexpected inflationary shocks.

One way to make land use more sustainable is to re-use vacant buildings. These building can be renovated and used again or converted to another use type. It would even more sustainable if these buildings never became vacant, which means that firms stay longer in their building. The literature suggest that the main reason why firms relocate is to expand rather than rationalise their operations. The same literature also suggest that firms hardly relocate because of characteristics of their location but foremost due to factors related to their premises. The hypothesis is therefor that renovation and/or expansion of buildings on site (together called rebuilding) may prevent firms from moving to new greenfield sites.To investigate this hypothesis we use a survey among 17,000 firms in two regions in het Netherlands which was conducted by the Chamber of Commerce. The response rate was 31%. The results of the survey show that 7% of the firm had plans to renovate their premises, whereas 9% had plans to relocate.The analysis of the survey confirms previous research on factors influencing relocations, but also show that firm with can expand their premises on site, more often have rebuilding plans than firms which cannot expand on site. On the other hand firms with relocation plans have significantly less possibilities to expand on site. About half of the firms with rebuilding plans prefer rebuilding over relocation because it is cheaper or quicker to realise than a relocation.Overall the results of the analysis show that rebuilding can be seen as an alternative to relocation if certain conditions are met. Two important planning related conditions are the physical possibilities to expand on site and land use plans that allow rebuilding. Another conditions is the type of industry; retail and manufacturing firms are more inclined to rebuild their premises than firms in other sectors.

Purpose - This paper discusses the most recent and future developments in corporate real estate management (CREM) for multinational corporates - focussing on organization structures and role definitions. The main purpose of the analysis is to show best practice business models based on business cases. Varying degrees of vertical integration of real estate management functions (portfolio, asset, property and facility management)are presented and analysed with regard to the generated value added and leverage opportunities.Approach - The presented CREM business models are based on ICME Management Consultants' project experience and on acknowledged business standards. The most important trends in international CREM were deduced from a recent survey among CREM executives conducted by ICME. Findings - The challenge of an increasing internationalization of core businesses will be the main driver for the future trends in CREM and corporate FM. CREM will mainly be organized as a global center of excellence providing a global strategic network of CREM entities. Pressure on companies and on efficiency of real estate management increases further in the course of globalization of core business activities and increasing user reuirements. For this reason, the separation of owner functions (CREM) and operation functions (FM) cannot longer be maintained. It is expected that CREM and corporate FM in globally operating companies will increasingly merge together in future. The main challenges in managing corporate real estate are increasing quality demands and space requirements of users, indicating a need for focusing on corporate FM services. The most important leverage in CREM activities will be the divestment of company sites in order to enhance core business yields by releasing real estate capital. Value of research - It is anticipated that the outcomes of the paper will assist senior executives and CREM responsibles in the definition of appropriate CREM strategies. Further, optimization potentials with regard to CREM business models can be identified.

This paper shows how the real estate market is influenced by the new Energy Performance Certificate Template-law 2012, focused on condominium market in Vienna. The purpose of the following study was to analyze the changed role of real estate agents and to show their reactions towards the new market situation. Therefore it was decided to observe the advertisement market carefully. The observation concentrated on the following two questions: 1. Changed role of the real estate agent 2. Changes on the condominium advertisement market until December, 1st, 2012?Since November 17th, 2012 until December 22nd 2012, 1474 advertisements of the Viennese condominium market, listed in the IMMO Kurier were analyzed. The IMMO Kurier is a supplement of a well-known Austrian daily newspaper, which appears every Saturday. Due to the investigations it could be identified, that the total amount of advertisements decreased whereas the quantity of advertisements including the calculated heating demand increased. Therefore real estate agents are fulfilling the legal requirements of EAVG 2012 and do not risk penal provisions. In conclusion the real estate market was redesigned by EAVG 2012 and the impacts have to be observed and analyzed.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the extent to which the use of YP[Dual rate] model for leasehold valuation actually reflects market conditions in practice in England. The qualitative research methodology is adopted where interviews have been conducted via face-to-face and phone with 105 purchasers of leasehold interests in the residential Cressington Heath neighbourhood of Liverpool in 2012. The analysis of the data has been facilitated by the use QSR NVIVO 10 to code the data. It has been established that purchasers of leasehold interests rarely make provision for an ASF in practice. Indeed, what actually happens is the direct opposite of what the model posits - purchasers borrow from banks to procure the property after which they commence paying back by instalments periodically. Also, there are other methods that can be used to make provision for future expenses but the use of the YP[Dual rate] model implicitly assumes that ASF is the only approach, which is unsustainable.Using the model for every leasehold valuation leads to undervaluation of such interests where investors do not actually use the ASF method in practice and the undervaluation is even more pronounced when taxation is introduced. The model should only be considered when a valuer is confronted with a practical situation where the ASF method is used or will be used by a leasehold investor. This study is based on empirical evidence and it is the first of its kind in the UK - arguments against or in favour of the use of the model tend to be theoretical or based on personal opinions uncorroborated with any empirical evidence.

Purpose - Given age-related dwindling of competencies and eventual necessity of home-based nursing care in the home of elderly people, this study shows the spatial and social implications with reference to the person-environment fit. Design/methodology/approach - A qualitative approach has been chosen in order to conduct a penetrative single case analysis whose multiplicity permits a socially realistic description of the specific research context. Eleven members of staff from six different care organisations based in Austria were asked about these circumstances within the framework of expert interviews, supported by interview guidelines and recorded with an electronic device. The transcribed interviews were analysed using Qualitative Content Analysis according to Mayring (2008).Findings - The results emphasise the special significance of the person-environment fit for the context of home-based nursing care for the elderly and the particular demands made on their homes. Facing decreased personal competencies, especially missing barrier-free elements in the dwelling have been criticised. The recommendation of home adaption measures, improvisation and the refusal of the assignment of home-based care belong to the strategies the research group undergoes. Furthermore, the results show an enhancement of the person-environment fit. Besides proving room for living, the dwelling has to fulfil further functions because it is now the epicentre for the provision of home-based care. The results illustrate that attention should be directed on the private and individual context of the person.Originality/value - The study at hand, building on existing research results, adds the perspective of health care workers with regard to home-based care of the elderly.

This paper examines the regime-switching behaviour of the six major international securitised real estate markets by utilizing the Dynamic Markov-Switching methodology. Using crises-rich sample period of 1993-2010, we find that international securitised real estate returns can be sufficiently characterised by two distinct domestic regimes of high return-low volatility and low-return high-volatility that are substantially different from the underlying stock markets in terms of the duration and risk-return characteristics of the regimes in each market. The presence of two distinct regimes provides new international evidence on the sector’s relationship with interest rates and the fact that securitised real estate reaction to unexpected market interest rate changes is of the asymmetric nature.We also analyse each countries securitised real estate volatility reaction to the state-dependent measures of the interest rates uncertainty using GARCH models. GARCH models are augmented with conditional volatilities of the interest rate variables and are estimated with the maximum likelihood functions suggested in Bollerslev & Wooldridge (1992). We find that the volatility of securitised real estate markets is affected by the interest rates uncertainty across our sample. Moreover, we find consistently that higher variance in securitised real estate is associated with either the absolute change or increased conditional volatility of domestic interest rates. The asymmetry in the variance sensitivity to interest rates is dominated during regimes shifts within the listed real estate sector and not the overall stock market. In the latter case, the evidence of asymmetries in variance is much weaker. A potentially mistaken assumption that securitised real estate markets are driven by the underlying stock markets explains a lack of significant findings in Chen et al. (2012). One the last two findings reveal a counter-cyclical behaviour of the securitised real estate sector when compared to the stock market. Therefore, the real estate sector yet again can be viewed as a separate market from the general equities. This can be potentially useful from the portfolio management point of view since we find that the impact of the potential risk proxies is weaker during the periods of the general market instability.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the Swedish real estate industries shift towards a service focus. The focus is on how service companies (such as commercial real estate companies) consider their business, if they see themselves as deliverers of a product or service. Design/methodology/approach – The paper discusses the characteristics of the Swedish real estate industry and the relation to the theory of Service dominant logic. The study consist of both an inventory of annual reports, during the last 5 years, and an interview study with top-level managers within the firms studied in the annual report inventory. Findings – The industry has traditionally been focused on technics and the buildings. From the mid 1990s there has been an increased interest in service and customers. It is argued that although the Swedish real estate industry today has a more service and customer orientation it has not made a definite shift from a product focus towards a service focus.Research limitations – The study only considers the Swedish real estate industry. Furthermore it is limited to the outspoken words of the companies. The customer perspective in words of the customers perceived degree of service orientation is not included. Practical implications – This approach enables the real estate industry to relate their work to the Service dominant logic. Furthermore it enables the industry to see improvements in their service offer. Originality/value - The paper presents an empirical test of the Service dominant logic framework within the real estate industry.

Spatial complexity is not only one of the crucial sources of wayfinding problem within a shopping facility; it is also a significant determinant for space usage efficiency. The distribution of total floor area for a shopping mall is basically finding the optimum solution for tenant location/allocation and pedestrian flow plans. Normally, with higher spatial complexity, shoppers are easier to get lost and generate higher shopping costs; however, space usage flexibility could also be increased. Therefore, a good measurement for spatial complexity for shopping areas is needed. This paper compares several measurements for spatial complexity. The intention is to tackle the spatial complexity issue through three dimensions: horizontal complexity, vertical movements and multiple-purposive users in mixed use environment. And the data is collected from the US, UK, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Shanghai with more than 100 floorplans to explore the influential factors for spatial complexity within shopping centres. Using GIS, space syntax and other non-spatial techniques, this research suggests some interesting management issues and enhances the understanding of spatial complexity within a shopping environment.

Through economic booms and slumps, the supply of housing has failed to keep pace with demand. The political solution to this problem has consistently focused on the supply side of the equation. The speed of the economic downturn in 2007/8 left many developers with extant planning permissions for residential developments across the country. The Government believes that if it can persuade developers to 'get Britain building' this will provide a Keynesian kick to the economy and go some way to addressing the supply and demand mismatch. But as moribund economic conditions continue, it is clear that sites are not being developed in significant numbers; they are "stalled". But why are they stalled, how many dwellings do they represent, where are they and what sort of housing schemes are involved? Organisations such as the Local Government Association and the Campaign for the Protection for Rural England have argued that the supply of housing sites is adequate with planning permission for over 400,000 housing plots unimplemented. The typical opposing view from the House Building Federation is that "Too many sites are now 'under water' due to charges levied on them by central and local government.

This article aims to analyze different types of Social Networks, its purpose, success and evolution, and also its advantages for people and businesses in particular in Real Estate mediation in Portugal. This article includes some research related to the use of Social Networks and its relationships with Real Estate. First the social networks and issues related to investment and Marketing relations are analysed, structured and classified, and it is also analysed the Real Estate business. Then there are presented some statistics based on data according to Social Networking use in Real Estate companies in Portugal and in particular, the use of Facebook. Finally, some conclusions of this study are presented and highlighted the main limitations of this research as well as some recommendations for future studies. According to statistics made by Real Estate companies in Portugal, in a universe of 3231, and given a sample of about 500 companies in the Real Estate business, 15% have their own sites and in these, Facebook subscription is over 12%, 4% on Twitter, 1% on LinkedIn, and no more than 1% on YouTube. By Adding and adapting technologies and new trends like Social Networks and using the Internet, we can expect a better understanding of consumers and new ways of doing business and new business opportunities. There are few articles referring to Social Networks and Real Estate and in Portuguese reality this is even more uncommon. This kind of researches should be more frequent and compared, when possible, with other countries and other situations.

While spillover effects of prices in general, such as those of stock market, have been studied intensively in mainstream economic literature, the same can not be said for housing prices. In this paper, we examine the spatial interactions of different property classes with respect to their prices. In particular, we hypothesize that high (low) housing prices will spatially “flow” to low (high) housing prices. Following Can (1992), several spatiotemporal autoregressive hedonic pricing models that incorporate (i) neighborhood effects, (ii) adjacency effects, and (iii) the process of comparable sales are constructed to empirically test the above hypothesis. With a sample of over 100,000 market-wide transaction data over a period of 10 years of Hong Kong, we find substantial evidence that spatial spillover effects exist among housing prices. More specifically, spatial spillover effects are on average three to five times more pronounced among same-class properties than among different classes. However, the effects are severely depressed once price volatility is taken into consideration. Our findings are of direct importance to the practice of valuation as well as theoretically relevant to the on-going debate over the validity of market segmentation hypothesis.

Although there are several speculations on factors that might be important for the buying decision of private customers when buying a residential building, purchasers of privately owned buildings have not been asked about those factors so far.Therefore, a survey in the rural parts of Hesse (Germany) has been started in which every purchaser of a residential building gets a questionnaire. They are asked which pieces of information on their property, e.g. reference prices, building license, copy of an entry in the cadastral register etc., they had when buying their piece of real estate. Furthermore, there are questions on the impact of several factors on their buying decision like e.g. purchasing price, connection to local trains and buses, living close to schools and shops.The intention of the study is to figure out which information buyers have about their future land property and which factors are important for their buying decision. Moreover, statistical methods will be used to check whether there is a relationship between the known pieces of information or the important factors for the buying decision and the age of the purchasers, their educational background or the size of the district where the property belongs to.Finally, the results will be compared to the findings of other studies.

Purpose - To identify the relative contribution of selected sustainability features to property value risk with the aim of generating a risk-based weighting system for a property sustainability rating.Approach - For a given set of sustainability features, a discounted cash flow (DCF) model is used to derive the weights. The anticipated demand for each sustainability feature is described by three future states of nature. Subjective probability distributions describe the occurrence of the future states of nature. Monte Carlo simulations of the DCF model are then used to estimate the impact of an individual feature on the risk (volatility) of the property value distribution. The weights are deduced by comparing the estimated property value distribution with and without each specific sustainability feature in question.Findings - For Switzerland, the highest single impact on the property value risk of 42 modeled sustainability sub-indicators (features) stems from 'thermal energy' (29.3%), followed by 'public transportation' (16.3%), 'day light' (9.6%) and 'story height' (6.3%). At the level of the five groups of aggregated sustainability features, 'resource consumption and greenhouse gases' has the highest relative weight (32.1%), followed by 'health and comfort' (30.6%), 'location and mobility' (22.5%), 'flexibility' (13.5%), as well as 'safety and security' (1.3%). Practical implications - The resulting rating serves as a basis for real estate investment decisions by illustrating how sustainability features affect the risk of specific properties. Value - An effort is made to rigorously found sustainability ratings in financial theory.

Sustainability assessments of buildings are well known to result in certificates, which are mainly used for marketing purposes. This conference contribution does not tackle the marketing perspective but focuses on the sustainability assessment of buildings as a risk management tool for corporate real estate management. Buildings have a long life span, and it is important to ensure a stable performance of the property during several decades. Regarding market demand, the building location is undoubtedly a very high ranked criterion when it comes to making the decision to buy or rent a building or building unit or not. Nevertheless, building specific quality characteristics such as energy efficiency characteristics related with the building envelope and the HVAC system, characteristics related with the indoor air quality, and quality characteristics from the facility management perspective to reduce running cost have been gaining in importance, due to the following exemplary reasons: (1) Energy: Even if clients seldom demand for energy efficiency, this topic is definitely on the rise due the legal framework conditions such as the EPBD (Energy Performance of Buildings Directive) and the EED (Energy Efficiency Directive); if a building is not fit to be able to comply with the requirements to come, upgrading might be more expensive than taking energy efficiency into account from the beginning. (2) Indoor climate: Productivity depends on social aspects, but also on building related aspects such as air quality, summer and winter comfort, quality of light, and noise level; this area is more a subject of competition on the market than energy, because of the impact on people's health and productivity. (3) Materials: The type of façade and choice of materials in general has a strong influence on running costs; a wise choice results in a reduction of cleaning costs. All these aspects are finally cost-related factors, which might affect the saleability of a property. Building assessment schemes provide a full range of decision-making criteria to consider all building related aspects, which are already on the rise or might become important in the near future. However, it is the responsibility of the informed expert to decide between options. This conference contribution uses the Austrian sustainable building assessment scheme (ÖGNB – ASBC) to demonstrate the relation between building assessment criteria and risk factors.

Retrofit and adaptation of the existing building stock is an essential factor in man-kinds attempts to mitigate the effects of climate change and global warming. Pointedly most of the global stock was constructed with no consideration of sustainability. In Australia environmental sustainability for commercial buildings was legislated in the Building Code of Australia in 2006, with minimum standards for energy efficiency applied to new build and some retrofit projects. The City of Melbourne launched the 1200 Buildings Program in 2008 as a key strategy to deliver carbon neutrality by 2020 after Arup (2008) concluded that CBD 1200 commercial office retrofits, some two thirds of the total stock, would deliver a 38% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. This research examined what has been undertaken in respect of the commercial retrofits undertaken as part of the 1200 Buildings Program. This study had two aims which were firstly; to gain a deeper understanding of the improvements made to existing office buildings in the 1200 Buildings Program and secondly, to undertake a comparison of current practice to identify similarities and differences in approach to retrofit within the 1200 Buildings Program. The case studies showed the sustainability measures undertaken were largely focussed on building services and energy efficiency. There was less work undertaken to address water economy measures, to the building fabric and little work, which addressed social sustainability aspects.

The existing literature has shown that increases in housing wealth, driven by unexpected house price shocks, have a positive effect on birth rates of homeowners. According the canonical model, a decrease in housing wealth has a symmetric negative impact on fertility behavior of households. That is, housing gains and losses of the same size should have identical quantitative effects (in an absolute sense) on fertility. In comparison, the theory of reference-dependent preferences suggests that people care more about housing losses than about equivalent gains, leading to an asymmetric housing wealth effect on a fertility decision. In our model, a utility from having a baby is weighted by a utility from house price where reference levels based on the house price at the time of purchase. The theoretical model suggests that the probability of giving birth is kinked at a reference housing wealth level and the wealth effects are discontinuously larger below the kink than above the kink. This theoretical prediction is tested using the recent survey data of Japanese households (Keio Household Panel Survey, KHPS). The KHPS is a nationally-representative, large-scale panel data started in 2004 with initial sample of approximately 4,000 households. Our empirical results suggest that, consistent with the theoretical prediction, homeowners' fertility responses are substantially larger when their housing wealth is below its reference level than when housing wealth is above reference level. Specifically, while estimated marginal effect is significantly positive when housing wealth is below its reference level, it is still positive but insignificant when housing wealth is above reference level. Furthermore, we also find that asymmetric wealth effects are robust to a number of alternative specifications, including controlling for possible measurement errors and unobserved heterogeneity of households.

Purpose - This research provides an analysis of the disparate notions and ideas, to form an overview of the possible trends in residential property for the Victorian coastal areas of the Surf Coast and the Bellarine Peninsula. Design/methodology: Whilst examining the patterns of urban development in these areas of coastal Victoria over the last 20 years, the research also investigates possible reasons for the changes that have occurred. The data used in this research comes from both primary and secondary sources. The primary data was developed on the basis of responses to a mail out questionnaire to residents from seven towns on the Bellarine Peninsula and the Surf Coast. The secondary data comes primarily from the Australian census results, which occurs every five years, the most recent being in 2011.Findings - These coastal communities and their environment are at serious risk from the increased growth of both population and tourism. It is only with the support of all three tiers of government that the future requirements of coastal communities will be met. Social implications - There needs to be a policy framework of sustainable growth and a funding approach to enable the local councils, not only on the Bellarine Peninsula and the Surf Coast, but on all Australian coastal areas, to embark on an extensive program to provide the necessary services and infrastructure for these changing environments.Originality - This research brings into question the need to control residential development to protect the fragile environment in the Australian coastal areas.

We examine the decision to start a new mutual fund with particular emphasis on how this decision differences for the case of real estate funds. Our sample includes 1016 fund openings within the German mutual fund industry for the period 1992 to 2010. Within a logistic regression framework, the fund opening decision is related to explanatory variables at the level of (i) the investment objective, (ii) the fund family and (iii) the investment objective within the fund family. To test whether the decision is different for real estate fund openings, we interact the explanatory variables with a dichotomous variable. The results are consistent with the different considerations associated with the decision to open or start a fund which invests in direct real estate as opposed to the opening of indirect investment vehicles such as equity and fixed income mutual funds. We find that all fund opening decisions are positively related to past inflows into the investment objective – an indicator for the growth potential of the industry. Interestingly, this effect is even more pronounced for real estate funds. At the family level, we find that larger fund families and those with more fund openings in the prior period are more likely to open new funds. For real estate fund openings, the size of the fund family is not as important, whereas the total number of fund openings of the family does not increase the real estate fund opening likelihood. As is the case for all other funds, the larger the fraction of the family assets invested in real estate, the higher the probability of another real estate fund opening. This suggests that fund families tend to specialize rather than diversify their product portfolio. At the family-objective level, only the real estate fund opening decision is positively related to past inflows into existing funds. This real estate specific result highlights the importance of existing fund liquidity. Additional analysis, unique to this study, examines the associated own-product cannibalization caused by new real estate funds starts and the impact on liquidity. Overall, these results aim to enhance the decision-making of fund managers and investors.

As the real estate industry is responsible for about 40% of the economy's end energy consumption, its potential to contribute to a sustainable development is accordingly high. In terms of climate change mitigation, the response of the property sector is apparent by the diffusion of green buildings. Considering green buildings as a new product in the real estate market, it is necessary to analyze its diffusion pattern in order to conclude from aggregated data to the actors' behavior behind several stages of adoption. By now, the focus of the green building diffusion literature lies more on the temporal than on the spatial dimension. However, the popular quotation 'labeled properties = prime properties', as one might assume a CSR and image driven demand of international institutional investors, has never been analyzed in detail. The question is what leads the players of the real estate industry to adopt the green innovation in their investment decisions in terms of constructing, renting or investing in certain locations. This paper provides evidence of the factors determining the spatial diffusion of green buildings in the US market by gathering real estate and macroeconomic data. Our contribution to research literature is to identify barriers for a politically intended innovation and delivers a basis for future decisions by policy-makers and investors.

Houses are expensive illiquid long-lived assets traded in an imperfect market. The imperfect nature of the market is a result of several factors, including the heterogeneous nature of the houses, asymmetric information among buyers and sellers, search costs, and transaction costs. These aspects of housing markets make the selling transaction a process rather than an event and, therefore, we observe two outcomes of this process: selling price and liquidity. There is evidence that the degree of liquidity of housing assets changes over time. That is, adjustments in the housing market seem to take place not only through prices and quantities but also through the degree of liquidity; i.e., how easy or difficult it is to sell a property as of a specific date. While much analysis has been done on how various attributes influence the selling price of a house, less work has been done on the factors influencing liquidity. This paper uses quantile regression for duration analysis allowing for a flexible specification of the functional relationship and of the error distribution. Censored quantile regression addresses the issue of right censoring of the response variable that is common in duration analysis. We apply this method to a large sample of housing transactions in Finland as well as to different subgroups of housing sales and sales during different housing market cycles. This way we examine how the effect of attributes on marketing duration may differ along the distribution of marketing times.

The 'Green Arbitrage Pricing Game' is a behavioral approach to the dynamics of property pricing under changing environmental regulation, social responsibility and economic expectations. Investors, asset managers, developers and occupiers of buildings find themselves in a situation, where each has a dominant strategy with the negative side effect to increase greenhouse gas emissions. But the resulting economic outcome for all is worse than using their dominated strategies to incorporate environmental externalities.A real world business case is simulating this dilemma based on the economic and social concepts of game theory. The laboratory setting in the structure of an extensive collective-action game with imperfect information is delivering experimental evidence of practical management solutions. In their roles of property investors and fund managers the players learn to understand the dynamics of the green property dilemma and to make viable strategic choices for resolving it. The game is facilitated by the strategy training toolkit 'RealInvestor' developed at the EURO Institute of Real Estate Management (www.realinvestor.net). The real world business case tackles institutional investments in the Australian office market. The simulation data is based on current input from the Green Building Council of Australia. First sets of the 'Green Arbitrage Pricing Game' were played at University of Reading, Henley Business School, School of Real Estate & Planning (United Kingdom), at Danube University Krems, Department of Building and Environment, Center of Real Estate Economics (Austria), and at Bauhaus University Weimar, Faculty of Civil Engineering (Germany). The outcome of these game sets has delivered workable strategic solutions to responsible real estate investment management.

The importance of lowering the ecological footprint of human kind to a sustainable level is meanwhile unquestionable. The number of green products is increasing, but the product itself is not sufficient to reduce the ecological imbalance. Since life-cycle-assessments and life-cycle-cost approaches in real estate investments became common, it is known that not just the construction but the sustainable operation of a building leads to the most ecological benefit. Therefore, consumer behaviour is the key to enable and push a sustainable development. By now, the real estate industry focused mainly on the property side rather than on the user and his behaviour. Addressing this issue, the research idea of the study is to introduce experimental and behavioural economics as well as aspects of game theory within sustainable real estate in order to reveal the triggers of individual user behaviour. The paper combines subsequently three disciplines: Game theory/ experimental economics, real estate and sustainability. Theoretical and practical findings of this study should enable companies to address the 'right' issues and to develop adequate incentive schemes for their employees in order to trigger 'green behaviour' and finally limit resource use to reduce operating expenses. Furthermore, efficient strategies to increase personal involvement for climate protection are developed and detailed insights regarding user behaviour are given.

Housing subsidies are often justified by claims that high quality housing improves households’ economic and social outcomes. The goal of our research is to undertake a comprehensive empirical study of the causal impact of housing characteristics on the cognitive, behavioral, and health outcomes of children and young adults. The primary hypothesis is that the quality of a child’s dwelling has a positive effect on child outcomes in both the short and the long run, holding other factors constant. Other key hypotheses are that the effects of housing differ by race, ethnicity, and income. In particular, we expect that there are diminishing returns to housing quality, so housing effects will be more important for low income children. We study this issue using child production function models. There are few studies of the impact of the attributes of dwellings on child and young adult outcomes. Most existing studies have focused on the impact of homeownership compared with renting. Using mostly U.S. data they suggest there is a small positive impact on selected child and young adult outcomes of being a homeowner. But very few studies have measured the impact of crowding or building type on child outcomes.We merge rich longitudinal data on child outcomes (National Longitudinal Study of Youth and Child Supplements) with information on the respondents’ house characteristics (Zillow data). We then analyze both the short and long term effects of house characteristics experienced during childhood. Examples of child outcomes include math and reading cognition, health, and behavioral problems. Examples of young adult outcomes studied include graduation from high school, wages, employment, and criminal convictions. Examples of dwelling characteristics include the square footage of the dwelling and lot, number of bedrooms, type of structure (single or multifamily), location, whether owned or rented, persons per room, and interviewer observations of the home environment. The study will clarify whether housing policies should be directed towards encouraging homeownership, toward dwellings’ quality, or if there is no measureable effect on child outcomes. A particular focus will be on the outcomes experienced by the children of low income parents.

This paper provides cross-country evidence of the linkage between real estate market transparency and the dynamics between direct and indirect real estate, which is seldom examined in the previous literature. First, by adopting a variance decomposition procedure, the proportion of indirect real estate volatility that is attributable to 'pure' direct real estate, stock and bond factors in 18 countries over 1998-2012 is assessed. Second, the correlation between real estate market transparency and dynamics between these two real estate markets is examined. This paper concludes that real estate market transparency is significantly associated with the linkage between direct and indirect real estate, especially on the transaction aspects. These results have significant implications for international investment fund managers to consider the possibility of real estate securities as substitution for global property investment whilst enjoying the liquidity benefits.

This study used the 2000Q1 to 2010Q3 panel data of Taipei City, New Taipei City, and the Tao-Chu area in Taiwan to examine the stationary of the turnover ratio and the lead-lag relation of the turnover ratio and housing price. The fixed effect models showed that the turnover ratio can explain the 12.81 % of the next period price variance, and the model with lower AIC and SBC value than price-volume model. This signifies that the turnover ratio and price model are superior fits for the panel data. The results of the Fisher cointegration test showed that more than one cointegration relation exists in the proposed models. The results of the Granger causality test showed that a strong interaction exists between Taipei City and New Taipei City, which the (t-1) period turnover ratio led the t period price variance. But only the price variance in New Taipei City increased in conjunction with the price variance in the Tao-Chu area.

Equity market timing theory suggests the practice of issuing stocks at high prices and repurchasing at low prices. According to the equity market timing theory, the sharp decline in REIT shares creates a unique buying opportunity as many high-quality REITs may trade well below their liquidation values. It basically suggests a positive price change for REIT announcing going-private decision. Research in intra-industry information transfers studies whether unexpected shocks from a particular firm are propagated to the other firms in the same sector. The proposition of contagion predicts that the information about one particular firm suggests the same problem for the other firms (Lang and Stulz(1992)). The rational is that due to the similarity between firms within the same industry, other firms could be affected in the same direction (i.e. the same direction of price changes) by the same information. REIT sector provides an interesting setting to examine contagion effect. In real estate market, properties are not frequently traded. Thus the portfolio value is not mark-to-market. Thus, we expect contagion effect exists in REIT market. Specifically, we expect a positive price change for other REITs. Besides contagion effect, competitive effect may also exist in the market. Relevant to this study, the proposition of competitive effect theory predicts that the exit of public market of one particular firm will increase the relative competitive position for the other firms in the same industry. Thus in association with contagion effect, we expect the price change magnitude might be even bigger for REITs focus on the same property type as REITs announcing privatization. The majority of the literature in this field is the study on contagion effect of financial institutions, within nation and among nations (Forbes and Rigobon(2002)). However, it has been argued that information transfer effect may be different due to various characteristics of different industry (Erwin and Miller(1998)). Lang and Stulz(1992) examine contagion effect from bankruptcy announcement. They find that bankruptcy announcement brings out a statistically negative impact on the portfolio value of competitors with the same Standard Industry Code (SIC). The negative impact is even significantly greater for highly-leveraged industries and for industries with highly correlated stock returns. Further, their study indicates that industries with high concentration, the effect tends to be positive.

This paper aims to extend the existing evidence on the investment value of green buildings to international markets, specifically the residential real estate market in Japan. Using a unique transaction database of condominiums in the Tokyo metropolitan area and a hedonic analytical framework, we find that green buildings command a small but significant premium on both asking and transaction prices. The magnitude of this premium is found to fluctuate depending on market conditions. This finding is consistent with findings from other countries. As far as we are aware, this is also the first hedonic study of green value that incorporates detailed buyer characteristics.

Being different from past research of regional housing prices, this paper employs smooth transition regression model, derived in Teräsvirta (1998), to investigate ripple effects among four regional house prices in Taiwan. The aim of this paper is to test whether a smooth transition regression model, which is capable of capturing this non-linear behaviour, can show a better characterisation of regional housing prices than a linear model. This empirical analysis applies the four regional house prices of Taiwan, including the capital in Taiwan, Taipei City, and its suburban area, New Taipei City, and the other two mega cities of Taichung City and Kaohsiung City, from the first quarter of 1998 to the second quarter of 2011. Using the changing rate of housing price of Taipei City to be the threshold variable, the empirical results of the smooth transition regression model show that the ripple effect exists between housing prices of New Taipei City and Taipei City, while there is no ripple effect between housing prices of New Taipei City, Taichung City and Kaohsiung City. Besides, this paper has presented evidence of a non-linear relationship between housing prices of New Taipei City and Taipei City. When the changing rate of housing price in Taipei City is lower than 15.02, increasing housing price of Taipei City will make the hosing price of New Taipei City rise. Inversely, if it is higher than 15.02, increasing housing price of Taipei City will make the hosing price of New Taipei City decrease.

The objective of the paper is to study the changes in the real estate financing in the post crisis period in Slovakia. Slovak transition to market economy enabled to create the booming real estate markets in the 21st century. The FDI inflows and the integration processes, inclusion to Euro zone, were the important catalysts of such progress. Yet the global financial crisis substantially decelerated existing development and revealed the vulnerabilities of the economic growth model, the institutions, public finance and banking systems. The changing macroeconomic fundamentals negatively influenced the real estate vacancies, returns, and investments. The global financial crisis had revealed the serious problems of financial markets, such as the inadequate oversight, and banking regulations. Three new important regulations: Alternative Investment Fund Manager Directive, Basel III, Solvency II aim to prevent the risky behavior of banks. Based on them, many banks have implemented very restrictive criteria for the provision of the real estate credits. At the same time banks had to resolve the problems of distressed loans. This is the opportunity for the debt companies, private equity groups, the sovereign wealth funds, the insurance companies, mezzanine lenders and other investors with flexible capital to step into the market and to take the larger role in financing the real estate developments. This tendency is well observed in the developed countries with stabilized real estate markets, good returns or low risk return, while they are less obvious in CEE (Central and Eastern Europe) region. The consequence of restrictions on the provisions of banking property credits opens the new business opportunities in real estate sector for insurance companies, debt funds, off shore funds, mezzanine funds, private equity funds, etc. The serious problem is still the high public debt, and its negative impact on Eurozone. Many investors had fled from the European periphery into the EU core also because the competitiveness issues of European periphery, including the CEE countries, are not resolved. Recovery of real estate markets in Slovakia is under the way, yet the attainment of the pre-crisis real estate boom is not very probable. Much will depend on economic growth, important institutional reforms, especially in banking, economics, and in European Union as well.

The continued roll-out of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) around the world offers investors expanded investment horizons as well as increased diversification opportunities. Within Europe, REITs continue to trade at a discount to NAV making equity raising problematic and with banks continuing to show reluctance to lend to the real estate asset class alternative sources of finance (most notably bonds) are being sourced in order to capture investment/development opportunities and to avail of the 'added value' and 'diversification benefits' afforded by mergers and acquisitions. Whilst the European REIT market (most notably in France and the UK) exhibits increasing levels of maturity and sophistication, the contemporaneous relationship and performance attributes of REITs vis-à-vis direct real estate remains a subject of contention. In particular, the extent to which securitised forms of real estate are a 'proxy' for direct holdings and deliver the 'real estate effect' benefits required by investors continues to be contested. In an asset class disaggregated into national and sub national markets, bounded by differing socio-economic, legal and cultural contexts, questions remain regarding substitutability of direct and listed forms, both within and between countries. Concerns also pertain regarding the temporal aspect of the relationship – with considerable implications for interpretation of market activity and trends, multi-asset portfolio construction as well as 'buy-hold-sell' decision making.This research paper explores the rationale for including REITs within a European multi-asset investment portfolio. A diverse spectrum of analytical techniques including lead-lag correlation and Granger Causality measure alignment between REITs and direct real estate performance within Europe. Optimal portfolio analysis will serve to demonstrate the role of listed real estate within a multi-asset investment portfolio in terms of both risk diversification and performance enhancement.

In line with directives from the European Union, member countries have adopted measures aiming to reduce the energy use in the real estate sector. In Sweden, sellers of residential housing have to provide potential buyers with an energy certificate with detailed information on energy performance and consumption. The idea is to make users more aware of their energy consumption and of different ways to reduce it. This paper studies to what extent the energy certificates for single-family house owners in Sweden, introduced in 2009, seem to work in the way expected. More specifically, the following questions are addressed: • What role does preferences and household characteristics play for energy consumption as compared with the energy related attributes of their house? E.g. does energy consumption depend more on technical installations such as heat pumps or is household composition a stronger influencer? • Is there a willingness to pay more for houses with “better” energy performance? How large is this price premium? An econometric approach is used to address the questions. Energy consumption is related to both housing attributes, including energy-related factors, and household characteristics, including income. A hedonic price model is used to analyze implicit prices for the various attributes. A unique feature is the large set of energy-related attributes included in the database (all single-family houses sold in Sweden 2009-2010), which also comprises individual household data. To our knowledge, this is the largest empirical work performed in Sweden on this matter. The results will be compared with those of similar studies. However, the Swedish case is interesting in itself. In Sweden, 3% of the disposable income goes to energy consumption; twice as much as the EU average. Our data represents three different climatic zones. The average annual temperature varies from -5 in the north to 9°C in the south, which is quite unique in an international perspective.Preliminary results show that the energy consumption in a house is partly depending on the building’s characteristics, such as vintage, and partly on the household’s characteristics, such as size and composition. The hedonic model shows that there is a price premium for energy efficient houses.

When it comes to sustainable construction the question of quality comes into the discussion since sustainability can be defined as a quality criterion of a building. The real estate market is complex and shaped by different stakeholders (i.e. developers, investors, etc.) with their individual interests. Building performance assessment depends on those different interests who vary between economic performance as the prime focus of investors and comfort as well as health factors on the side of occupants which can be categorized as potential and actual performance (Cole 1998). Because of the number of actors being involved the sector seems to be fragmented which opens the door for principal–agent problems since decision making and information are dispersed. While the literature maintains that an agent is defined as a third party who acts for, on behalf of, or as representative of the principal will act in the best interest of the principal when the incentive structure is such that the agent is rewarded for outcomes favoring the principal (Arrow 1985) the question of defining the agents in a real estate transaction becomes crucial. This might be specifically important for sustainable constructions since we can found assumptions in the literature that designers and clients are active agents since certification standards are applied during the planning and design phases and decisions regarding green building practices are driven by clients' commitment to sustainability whereas constructors have been seen as passive agents. With new evidence about negative impacts of the construction phase on sustainability a shift towards a more active role of constructors happened. This goes hand in hand with the different actors' perceptions of sustainable construction and the level of knowledge about sustainable construction and its benefits. The argument follows the lines that environmental assessment requires more communication between the stakeholders throughout the whole process. Thus coordination to enhance trust, communication, commitment, and a clear understanding of roles becomes more relevant to manage the transition of the building sector to sustainability. Consequently new modes of governance are needed that take into account the long-term orientation, the uncertainties and complexities and the multitude of actors and interests involved. The paper is designed as a review of the literature including a few cases of green building certification projects.

Global capital flows into property markets accounted for over $800 billion in 2011. Of these capital flows, the UK is an active, major property market in a local, European and global sense. Using the Real Capital Analytics database, a detailed analysis of these capital flows is carried out for a fuller understanding of the dynamics of these capital flows to UK commercial property over 2007-2012. A range of strategic property investment issues are assessed, including the role of cross-border capital flows and investor type to UK commercial property investment. The significance of these UK commercial property capital flows is also assessed in a European and international context.

In a previous paper (Taltavull and White, 2012) we analysed the role of money supply, migration and mortgage finance in house price evolution. Using a VECM framework we examined these variables together with income, inflation, and interest rates for both Spain and the UK. This followed on from research by other authors including Muellbauer (2007), Meen and Andrew (2003), and Mishkin (1995). The results indicated an important role for income, mortgages and migration in UK house price movements, more so than in Spain. In this paper we build upon our previous work and focus on the channels through which liquidity shocks can affect house prices. Lastrapes (2002) argues that money supply affects real house prices. Greiber and Setzer (2007) find that liquidity is important for new supply and hence house prices identifying money demand, asset price and credit channels. In the money demand channel, three different effects are present, wealth, substitution and transactions effects. This permits us to test of changes in house prices lead to changes in money supply. In the asset price channel we test if changes in money supply cause house price change, and in the credit channel, higher housing collateral can increase loan amounts. In this paper we test different channels to identify which is more or less important and whether this varies across countries thus identifying the impact that the housing market has on the macroeconomy and from which source this is derived.

This research paper focuses on the appliance of real estate applications (RE-Apps) concerning apps in the field of shopping malls. For shopping malls apps are used as a marketing instrument and there are several RE-Apps concerning indoor mapping and orientation in the existing building. Apps are small programmes on smartphones or tablets, which are classified by their usage. A sub-classification is made for the ability of Augmented Reality (AR) functions.In the German speaking region only a view shopping malls offer an application for their customers. Our paper gives a market overview of which shopping malls in Austria, Germany and Switzerland have launched an app. Furthermore a comparison of the different app functionalities is given. First results have been shown at the International Jubilee Conference of the University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy (UACEG) conference 2012 in Sofia, Bulgaria.The field of applications for real estate is not yet explored, especially the usage of apps for shopping malls. The work is based on extensive literature research providing a methodical comparison of applications available and qualitative interviews with several shopping mall marketing managers in Austria. Based on the results of the research the paper covers a structural and technological overview and a market potential analysis of apps for shopping malls with a visionary conclusion of expected future developments is given especially in the field of AR.

Purpose - The article examines to what extent there are still transition factors influencing the property markets in the former Communist countries. When transition began over 20 years ago, there were clear differences from market economies as a direct consequence of their history in terms of institutions, property rights, approaches to markets, business organisation, laws, and physical forms of built environment. The article examines the extent of convergence with market economies and whether transition economies can still be regarded as a distinct group in terms of their property markets.Design/methodology/approach - The article takes a wide range of data, including that from the World Bank, World Economic Forum, Bertelsmann, Jones Lang LaSalle, UNDP, European Mortgage Federation, and Transparency International, and compares transition economies with non-transition economies of similar level of development to see if there remain distinct 'transition' differences.Findings - The initial findings indicate convergence under the influence of the EU, World Bank and FAO but also differences from market economies in areas such as property market transparency, strength of property rights and land governance.Research limitations/implications - There is a need for better quality data on transition countries' property markets. Practical implications - The differences suggest that transition economies continue to require specific policies for the development of their property markets.Originality/value - Whilst there have been studies of 'transition' factors generally in economies, there have not been ones that look specifically at property markets.

One of the most important topics for investors in the private investment market is also one of the least researched subjects: Fees. There is hardly any public information and only limited research available and there seems to be no standardisation. On the other hand, the impact of fees on the net performance of investors is substantially. Phalippou showed, for instance, that the average private equity fund charges 7% fee per annum.This research will examine the fee structure and total fee load for private real estate funds on a ex-ante basis. Fee structures as agreed between investors and fund manager and documented in placing documents are used to analyse the total fee load per fund. Based on this fee load, differences between funds (for instance different styles, countries, property types, etc) will be analysed. Finally, also insight will be provided on which fee structures offer better alignment between fund manager and investor.

There are a lot of concern both by public at large and the government on the inflated house price in the housing market, fearing that it could lead to property bubble and raises the issue of affordability. On a closer look at the property transactions data, it was observed that the main increase in the house price is often related to the primary housing market, i.e. new supply in the housing market whereas the sales price of existing supply, or the secondary market, remains stable or increase marginally. What is more baffling is that the two markets are sometimes in the same location, with same accessibility, with units available for sale but the sales price of houses in these market shows a marked difference. It is grounded in theory that price is a function of demand and supply. However, if supply is in abundance in the secondary market, what causes the price differentiation between these two markets. This research attempts to unravel the inflated house price in the primary market. First, the research investigates on market efficiency i.e. the extent of dissemination of sales information of both housing in the primary and secondary market. Second, it explores the level of complexity/ease in purchasing houses in the primary and secondary market. Third, it examines the costs of purchasing houses in the two markets to the purchasers. Fourth, it looks at what the housing in the primary and secondary market has to offer in terms of facilities, amenities, design and technology.This research involves looking at published data in the Annual Property Market report, interview with the Malaysian Association of Estate Agents, Residential Housing Developers Association, Auctioneers as well as survey using questionnaires to purchasers of new housing.At the end of this research, it will give an understanding why purchasers are willing to pay more for houses in the primary market, whilst similar housing in the same locality is available in the secondary housing market. The research will suggest what can be done to reduce the price gap between the primary and secondary market.

In a highly competitive industry as is the current context, accentuated also by growing globalization, the perception of the quality of the building materials in residential use represents an impact on the estimation of the market value and consequently in the behavior of the user. Therefore the satisfaction of the needs and preferences of users should be clear, allowing evaluators to maximize the market value estimate and possibly increase profits in companies aimed at the construction industry.Starting from a critical analysis and reflecting on a previous research study that was designed an indicator of the perceived quality of the building materials used in houses (Alicante, 2009). In this article, we propose the study of the subjective perception by house users and professionals on the suitability of particular building materials in a specific location using the technique of Conjoint Analysis. To achieve this objective, a preliminary survey was designed and carried out in various public places throughout the province of Alicante (Spain) during the months of September and October (2011), and was completed by 36 users and 31 professionals. The obtained information was crucial to acquire scientific data that measures the implicit weight of variable quality for its subsequent application in the calculation of the market value estimate.In the case of paving, the best perceived materials according to users and professionals are parquet and wooden flooring when asked about bedrooms and living rooms and then ceramic or natural stone, for “humid areas” like bathrooms and kitchens. On the other hand, in the case of interior linings users and professionals prefer the marble and ceramics for “humid areas” and the paintings and the papers in “other rooms”.

Purpose - This is a background discussion and literature review relating to the application of methods to measure the impact of a significant earthquake event on house prices. The purpose of this review is to select an appropriate methodology to be applied to the assessment of earthquake impacts on Christchurch house prices. The results of this review will form part of a further research paper.Approach - Previous literature specific to hedonic modelling of earthquake events and their impact on housing is limited. Therefore, a wider review of natural disaster events and types of methodologies used are undertaken in this paper.Findings - The Christchurch earthquake land zoning process combined with government compensation that followed the 2010 earthquake is unique. The literature review suggests that a hedonic pricing modelling using a Difference-in Difference specification may be the most appropriate model for an event of this nature. Value of research - It is anticipated that the outcomes of the proposed further research will assist in the identification of risk management strategies for the insurance industry, central and local governments. This type of research also has relevance for other earthquake prone cities as well and the methodologies could also be applied to other natural disaster risks such as floods, hurricane and storm surge risk zones along coastlines.

The finance literature suggests that the Veblen effect (i.e. luxury consumption behavior) could be translated into consumers' behavior with other goods and assets. This study is the first to examine the role that the Veblen effect plays in housing market dynamics, with a focus on spatial and temporal variation in this role. It uses a unique dataset that matches the consumers' appetite for non-housing luxury goods from Google Insights for Search to the premium that they pay for high-end houses in US Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) during 2004-2011. The results demonstrate that controlling for other MSA demographic and economic characteristics, the Veblen effect has a significant, positive relationship with a premium paid in the housing market. This suggests that high-end houses may have been purchased for the enjoyment of signaling wealth and status and this housing consumption behavior may have partly driven the large deviation of high-end house prices from the median. Housing consumption tends to be motivated more by the Veblen effect in the areas where people pay a steady, higher premium than in other areas with a more volatile, lower premium. In fact, the higher Veblen effect substantially contributes to maintaining the higher level of the premium in these areas even during the bust period.

Purpose - We explore the growth patterns and development trends of vertical mixed use (VMU) developments in a variety of cities. VMUs are defined as structures with two or more revenue producing uses or land use activities on a single site. One view is that sustainable city development requires densification via VMU construction on brown field sites (within the existing inner city footprint). Design/methodology/approach - After a systematic review of the notion of VMU buildings, we conduct a macro- analytical review of across an, albeit limited, selection of European and Asian cities (Helsinki and Manila). In the micro-urban phase, we investigate VMUs within the main study location (Brisbane CBD). Specifically, we audit VMUs number, location and relative financial and non-financial performance. To evaluate VMU planning merits in the light of local codes and regulations, we adapt and apply Hoppenbrouwer and Louw's model.Findings - We found urban sustainability a complex notion without simplistic solutions. Certainly, VMU is not a 'silver bullet'. The mixed-use notion though has gained ground in some urban regeneration circles. Developers concurred that VMU communities now appeal to an emerging demographic who values accessibility and entertainment. However, developers articulated some concerns about escalating VMU construction cost caused by - Design, staging and funding complexity, and;- Unfavourable regulatory and development controls Research limitations/implications - Further operation research needed on VMU buildings in range of cities.Practical implications - Need for collaboration between developers and planners to facilitate elegant and inexpensive VMU design for streamlined planning.Social implications - If poorly conceptualised and regulated, VMU rollout will detract from not enhance sustainability and reduce not increase housing affordability.Originality/value - The project is the first systematic study of VMU in a growing Sunbelt metropolis.

The capitalization rate used in real estate literature is the ratio of net operating income to property value. This paper has investigated the capitalization rate movements in Hong Kong from 1987 to 2012. In Hong Kong, capitalization rates for residential and commercial properties were closely intertwined during 1984-1997. However, after 1997, diverging patterns were observed: commercial properties' cap rates became higher than residential properties'; cap rates for lower-end properties increased relative to higher-end properties. What are the factors that determine the cap rates in Hong Kong?What are the causes that generate such gap between different properties types' cap rates in Hong Kong? Based on the basic Gordon model, WACC and CAPM, the study seeks to explain the cap rate movements in Hong Kong by modelling it as a function of the risk-free rate, risk premium, and expected long-run rental growth. Our preliminary results show that the cost of debt, stock market performance, unemployment, CPI inflation, and price growth are significant determinants of cap rates. At the same time, the LIBOR/HIBOR ratio and price growth are significant determinants of cap rate gaps. Additionally, the cap rates would also adjust to its lagged term due to autocorrelation.

This contribution presents findings from a qualitative and qualitative user survey carried out in residential and office buildings in 2012 and early 2013. Focus is on user behaviour and consumer aspects in highly energy efficient buildings taking into account societal, social, ethnical, and especially gender-related aspects, and analysing the building design concept in comparison with the actual energy consumption during building operation. The survey tackles the day-to-day life of occupants living or working in highly energy efficient buildings. It reveals the attitude of building users concerning energy efficiency standards and innovative HVAC systems, and serves to analyse the impact of occupants' behaviour on building operation and energy consumption. The development towards plus-energy-buildings (buildings which produce more energy than what occupants consume) causes a change in the role of consumers: consumers turn to active stakeholders, because their way of using the building will be decisive whether the building actually achieves plus-energy status, or not. Therefore there is the need to fully understand the motivations and options for actions of building users, in order to make the new concepts work, such as the concept of plus-energy-building and the concept of smart city as a whole. The user survey is part of the research project 'GINGER – gender aspects in using building, energy and resources' funded by FFG. The study started in July 2012 and will be completed in June 2014. It is based on the deep analysis of new and existing buildings which comply with ambitious energy-related criteria and belong to a broad range of building typologies (multi-unit residential buildings, office buildings, schools and kindergartens, educational campus). The results of the extensive user survey will contribute to improving communication measures, design process and product development in order to meet users needs in a better way. As a consequence, this will improve the energy performance of buildings during operation.

Preliminary studies on green multi-tenanted office buildings in the United States, Europe and Australia have widely reported the presence of price premiums for certified green or energy-efficient buildings. When researchers look at sales and rental premiums, it is generally concluded that both are present relative to uncertified office buildings. The scale employed in the vast majority of these studies is the building scale, not individual tenancies. Because of this, an alternative explanation for energy efficiency rental premiums is that they originate in the methodology used to calculate a single rental rate that represents the heterogeneous mix of rents within a single building. To test the robustness of rent premiums in Australia, we self-construct a dataset of lease transaction data covering all NABERS Energy-certified buildings in central Sydney directly from lease contracts. The characteristics of each transaction are placed in a hedonic regression model to explain annual base rent per square metre. We find neither significant premiums for highly rated buildings nor significant discounts for poorly rated buildings, implying that the alternative explanation of green rental premiums arising from the process of calculating a single rent for an entire building has merit. Incentives and net effective rent are also considered, to test if Sydney rents are shadow prices. We conclude that green building price premiums in Sydney are paid by owners, not tenants.

Over the last couple of years, there has been a growing interest in the financial performance of green buildings. Past research results indicate that green buildings are able to realise higher rents and sustain higher occupancy rates compared to other (non-green) buildings. It is argued that these findings are explained by the (supposed) additional occupier benefits of green buildings, such as lower operating costs, improved employee productivity and image benefits. However, in many studies it remains unclear which motive primary drives office users to prefer green buildings. Furthermore, the reported results -- the percentage rent increase and occupancy rates -- deviate to a large extent, while comparable methods and data sets are used.The aim of this research is two-folded. First, it strives to formulate a model of corporate real estate ecological responsiveness. What are the main motives of firms to lease or buy green buildings? Second, different hedonic model specifications and estimation techniques are compared to achieve insight in which hedonic model technique provides the most credible results regarding the price effects of green buildings. The relative large deviations, and sometimes implausible signs, in the reported results of the various hedonic price studies, might indicate that in some cases the models suffer from misspecification. Possibly resulting in an over- or underestimation of the rent price and occupancy effects related to green buildings.This research combines various research methods to achieve both research aims. First, a meta-analysis of published green hedonic office price is performed. Whereby special attention is given to the model specification and estimation methods. Second, an hedonic office price study is performed for the Randstad agglomeration -- Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and The Hague -- that compares different plausible model specifications. Finally, the hedonic study is followed up by interviewing office tenants to derive their motivation for choosing green buildings.

It has been identified in Nie and Wong (2012) that substantial rental value losses can be induced by excessive land exploitation in urban villages in the mainland of China. It has also been suggested that incomplete and unclearly delineated property rights, transaction cost, and consequently the absence of effective building regulations have played an important role leading to such tragic results. Through a comparison of 96 pairs of cases collected from three major Chinese cities (Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Xi'an), it has been found that compare to non-village estates, an average of 72% of urban villages have been overbuilt, which leads to a problem of 'more construction but less rental values'. The overdevelopment problem can be viewed as, according to institution theories, a production change (a distortion of resource combination), given the constraint of defective institutional environment. It is natural then a different timing of contract change may follow, since certain conditions for renewal projects can be met differently. Throughout the lifetime of a building community, natural rent dissipation happens due to outdated design, changing market condition, or simply building aging. As a result, a building community has an economic life (a type of economic selection), which may be shorter than its physical life. An empirical test conducted in this study on 16 demolished non-village estates in Shenzhen, 14 in Guangzhou, and 10 in Xi'an in the recent years shows that the average economic lifetimes for non-village residential estates in the three cities are respectively 19.8, 22.5, and 28.9 years. However, urban villages have shortened life expectancies. An empirical study of 1054 online samples in Shenzhen, 138 samples in Guangzhou, and 134 sample in Xi'an shows a paradox that the average building ages in urban villages in the above three cities are quite new, respectively only 12.1, 12.2, and 13.8 years, but many such villages are already demolished or planned for demolition soon. The data for non-village buildings were collected through a scan of the official renewal documents on the governments' websites. The data for urban villages were collected online from real estate websites, on which landlords post their 'for rent' information. Such a paradox can be explained in connection to the previous pattern identified in Nie and Wong (2012), that in comparison to non-village estates, urban villages suffer a problem of more severe rent dissipation induced by defective initial institutional settings. The problem can make the critical condition for renewal due earlier, thereby shortening the life expectancies for urban villages. Besides, the income transfer effect caused by the state-villager interaction and the possible cost difference for negotiation can also bring forward renewal schedules. The combination of the three reasons then leads to earlier renewals.