As shopping centres evolve, there is considerable emphasis on establishing and promoting a green shopping centre agenda to the local community. This exploratory study attempts to contribute to a more accurate understanding of the consumer’s attitudes towards sustainable retail development practices. Data for this study was collected through a web questionnaire to examine the relationship between distinct categories of personal factors (such as attitudes, desire, concerns) and opinions on sustainability practices in shopping centres. The survey findings from 44 respondents revealed that environment factors and the moral obligation exert a major influence on perceived attractiveness of sustainable shopping premises for consumers. These results show that a green building and green practices in shopping centres are widely encouraged by consumers and so provide an endorsement of shopping centre sustainability credentials.

Energy and climate policy for the building sector is a subject of controversial discussion. Against this background, the paper aims to dissolve the complexity and thus generate expertise for politically sustainable decisions. 

Therefore a. perspectives relevant for policy implementation are elaborated from the literature (i.e. owners, tenants, producers, macroeconomic), b. their specific valuation approaches are exposed and c. regarding the current policy for the building sector discussed. 

On this basis, we can show that ‘efficiency‘ is a term of a wide variation in the political debate, depending on which perspective is taken. We can present a conceptual model, which shows the interdependencies and interactions of the different valuation approaches. In addition, we can present minimum requirements for a sustainable policy that could be worked out from the discussion, which we use in the end to discuss the appropriateness of alternative control indicators (i. we. primary energy, GHG-Emissions or the energetic quality of the shell) to create equality of interests as a foundation for a successful policy.

The work is highly compatible with the interests of the various stakeholders. As a result, it provides a basis for policy implications to enforce energy efficiency and climate protection in the building sector successfully.
 

Energy efficiency in the residential housing market can play an important role in the reduction of global carbon emissions. Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) provide actors with information that can be used to make better-informed decisions and integrate energy efficiency into their decision making process. In addition, the information from EPCs should provide an incentive for actors in this market to invest in energy efficiency, as it can be assumed that improving the energy performance of a building may lead to higher transaction prices and rents on the market. This paper reports the first Norwegian evidence on the economic implication of EPCs on rental market prices. Applying the multilevel estimation approach to investigate the relation between energy labeling and rental prices in Norway for 860 000 observations, we find strong evidence of a positive price premium. Moreover, the premium is higher for bigger cities than in rural areas.

The United Nations define in ‘Human Rights. The Right to Adequate Housing (Fact Sheet No. 21)’ an adequate housing standards as a fundamental human right. Although this doesn’t mean governments are forced to provide their residents with accommodations, nations have a certain responsibility in terms of providing affordable housing. In Europe, the requirement of residential construction increased in recent years. In almost every European country the demand exceeds the supply of subsidized residential properties. Especially, in agglomeration areas it is becoming difficult to provide affordable housing to households with low incomes. Although there is a high demand for housing with rent control, this housing stock has declined in recent years.

All over Europe, a variety exist in the political systems concerning housing provision. Each system has to be regarded in the context of the respective country and region. Within this investigation, the social housing systems of Germany and Switzerland are analyzed and compared. The paper is designed as a binational comparative study. The aim is to examine the relationship between the regional conditions and the political aims and offers. Thus, political objectives, strengths, weaknesses and potentials of the specific systems of the countries are emphasized. 

The investigation is dedicated to the political instruments and their respective impact in Germany and in Switzerland. The main focus of this investigation is on the alignment and the realization of the German and Swiss social housing system.

First, the specific laws, conditions and offers in each country are analyzed. Subsequently, these results are compared and relevant, efficient components are identified. This examination is supplemented by interviews with actors of the regional housing market as well as by case studies.
 

National governments and local authorities worldwide aim at reducing building related energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. To achieve a climate neutral built environment in 2050, the Netherlands must decrease its emissions by 80-95%. This challenge requires an approach that combines governmental means and market approaches. Green building certificates is an instrument that can contribute to accelerate the transition towards a green built environment. An extensive body of knowledge on green building certificates already exists and covers topics varying from research on drivers and barriers to financial implications for building values and rents.

This research builds on prior research on the environmental awareness of corporate real estate organisations, research on drivers for obtaining green building certificates, and financial and reputational effects. There is a lack of insight in the effects of green building certificates on the building value, business performance and capital justification for users, owners and financers of office buildings in use. In comparison with new buildings, certification of buildings in use must comply with the demands of all stakeholders involved. Rents cannot simply be increased after a building is certified because of running contracts between the tenant and building owner. Moreover, it can be questioned if a rent premium is justified as a certificate does not change the physical attributes of the building, neither does it contribute to increase productivity, nor reduce operation costs. This research aims to answer the following question: How do green building certificates affect the building and organisation of tenants, owners and financers of in use office buildings? 

The main goal of this paper is to identify and explain the effects on the building and organisation of tenants, owners and financiers of office buildings that are certified while already in use. Based on a literature review, theory is developed. The research is conducted using a multi-method research approach that combines semi-structured interviews with case studies and a questionnaire. Finally, findings are compared and evaluated by an expert panel.
 

Following the financial crisis, a voluminous literature has developed that aims to shed light on the endogenous relationship between mortgage default risk and house prices. In this paper we contribute to this literature by using measures of mortgage default risk reflecting different stages of the household default decision: from early online searches to actual default, to the resale of the foreclosed home. We use a Panel Vector Autoregressive (PVAR) model to examine the impact of these default risk measures on two segments of residential real estate markets (top and bottom price tiers) from 92 metropolitan areas in 25 US states. We find that the default risk derived from households’ Google searches has the strongest negative impact on high value homes while the percentage of home foreclosed and the foreclosure resales have the strongest negative impact on the prices of low value homes. These results hold for both judicial and non-judicial foreclosure states as well as ‘recourse’ states. In ‘non-recourse’ states the number of homes foreclosed has the strongest negative impact on high value homes, which we interpret as evidence in support of the ”double trigger hypothesis.” That is, households default not only because they are in financial distress but also because they end up with a negative equity in their homes considering current house prices.

This paper studies the optimal leverage strategies for REITs in three major Asian markets - Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore, from 2001 to 2013. REITs are a real-estate-focused investment holding and management companies that are subject to the REIT rules with respect to tax transparency, earning distribution, real estate holding and leverage limit. REITs use relatively less debt than other real estate operating firms, after controlling for agency risks, dividend yields, market risks, and also property sector, country, and year fixed effects. We find that dividend payouts have no effect on the leverage strategies; and the tax ratio increases debt usage of REITs. We also analyse the liquidation costs and business uniqueness effects. We find real estate value to total firm value ratio, as a proxy of liquidation cost, has negative effects on debt ratios for both real estate firms. For the uniqueness reason, REITs with a high concentration of rental revenue stream are more vulnerable to liquidation risks, and thus are more likely to have lower debt ratio.

Background
In recent years, digitalisation has been introduced in the real estate industry and enjoys a growing popularity in the field of real estate valuation in Germany. This trend has already changed the valuation practices of both large real estate service companies and small valuation companies. In addition, new players enter the real estate market with numerous valuation start-ups and online real estate platforms. Given the massive transition, that digitalisation has already brought to other industry sectors, it is clear that the shift in real estate valuation has only just begun. This leads to the question of what the ""future of the valuation"" could look like and what is already available on the market.

Area of research and questions to be addressed
When it comes to digitalisation and valuation, the following questions are currently raised among the key issues by real estate academics and practitioners alike and should be addressed during the meeting:

• In what way might digitalisation change the valuation process in the future?
• How will digitalisation affect the critical value determination of the human appraiser?
• Will digital processes, artificial intelligence and big data completely replace the experience and market knowledge of the appraisers?
• What does the field of work of the surveyor of the future look like, (eg one part technology one part science and one part human?)
• What are limitations of automated real estate valuation and which areas may remain as the “classical” valuation

Prof. Dr. Florian Hackelberg MRICS, Professor for Real Estate Valuation at the HAWK University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Germany, will introduce the outlined topic from an academic perspective, while M.Sc. Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Matthias Kirsten MRICS, valuation expert of Value AG - the valuation group will share his view on the latest trends and developments in the market

As countries worldwide promote the human rights of LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender), the support for LGBT community is steadily grown, reflecting societal shift on views on LGBT. Moreover, the purchasing power of LGBT has continuously increased, and even considered as a “dream market.” However, public attitude toward LGBT remains not welcome in South Korea. Itaewon, where embraces the gay district, has experienced a growing number of bars, restaurants, and clubs. The major objectives of the research is: 1) What is the role of gay and gay space, influencing the nearby business and the neighborhood as a whole? 2) Is gay community losing its space (gay-led gentrification)? Through literature review, archives of historical and current newspapers and publications, visual analysis through GIS, in-depth interviews, and ethnographical observations, it is found that gay bring commercial activities with “hip” atmosphere and inevitably lead local gentrification. In other words, when the gay expand commercial activities, the rent as well as land price rise, but the gay community is displaced, evidencing the gay-led gentrification. This research is meaningful as the study on the role of gay community in commercialized urban area and the gay-led gentrification has not been conducted in South Korea. As the society begins to accept its identity and its economy power increases, it is crucial to acknowledge their influence in the space.

In 2007, the Ministry of Housing and Spatial Planning took the initiative to issue the building blocks for social: real estate for facilities. This has been the first attempt to deal with social real estate professionally as an asset. In 2008 the professorship of public real estate started with its first Barometer Social Real Estate. In 2009, I advocated in Real Estate Magazine that research into social real estate is necessary from the perspective of Corporate Real Estate Management (CREM) through new development models and more (PhD) research.

In anticipation of the municipal elections of 2010, research from the research group Municipal Real Estate showed that social real estate was not a matter for the election programs of the political parties. This was a prelude to the funded RAAK subsidy application towards a marketed municipal real estate for carrying out practice-oriented research. This research in 2011-2012 led to the completely externally funded research group Social Real Estate in 2012. After that, the Social Real Estate professorship profiled itself in different areas. Especially the attention of minister Stef Blok in 2014 when he received the first copy of the book Barometer Maatschappelijk Vastgoed (Social Real Estate): Corporate Social Responsibility at our annual congress, the round table meeting with State Secretary for Health, Welfare and Sport Martin van Rijn in 2015 and the informal conversation with the Minister of Education, Culture and Science Jet Bussemaker in 2015 have given extra publicity in the media alongside the many publications of the lectorate. The debate in 2016 with civil society with the Prime Minister Mark Rutte with the handing over of the book Barometer Maatschappelijk Vastgoed (Social Real Estate) 2016, a round table meeting in 2017 with Minister of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations Stef Blok, aldermen and directors Real Estate of Municipalities in The Netherlands, have contributed to social and economic knowledge utilization for future and existing real estate professionals. At the PROVADA 2017 we co-organized the Shrink: Emptiness and Space for Innovation and Change session, where the Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations Ronald Plasterk gave his vision on this subject.

Housing plays a key role in our quality of life. It is important that countries understand and analyse their housing sectors to evaluate the “effects of national level policies on housing supply at the other and assess the efficiency and equity of housing policies” (Tipple, 2003:2). Ultimately governments put into place policies that assist local councils to plan, build, and manage places where people live. This includes policies that relate to diverse issues such as renting, public housing, and affordability, a concept that has “become a more important issue in housing Policy” in recent years (Bramley, 2012:133).

Saudi Arabia is a developing country with a brief history of less than 90 years. Driven by the discovery of Oil in 1938, the country has gone through massive economic development and population growth in a very brief period. While this rapid urbanization process has affected all sectors in Saudi Arabia, the residential sector specifically has struggled to adapt to the realities of these changes.

From a governmental perspective, support for the housing sector is limited to government budget allocations that lack strong governmental policy. In addition, there is no clear standard system concerning means of supporting housing (GIZ, 2013). Policies to promote the provision of affordable housing have largely failed.

Therefore, this research aims to develop an affordable housing model that is applicable to middle-income households in Saudi Arabia. This is by identifying the critical drivers that influence the development of affordable housing solutions from both a planning policy and socio-cultural perspective in Saudi Arabia. These critical elements have directly contributed to the development and understanding of affordable housing policy as well as in conceptualizing the process for the purpose of this research. So, this paper will review the housing policy context within Saudi Arabia and present some of the initial findings from the analysis conducted.

Our objective is to collect a set of variables able to account for the effects of a multitude of land quality factors. In addition, surrounding plots and the natural and built environment might also influence urban land prices. However, most house price and land price indices do not control for any potentially related spatial effects. The urban land price index detailed here is based on land transaction prices for Luxembourg between 2010 and 2014 recorded in notarial deeds and cadastral data, together with geo-spatial characteristics. The proposed index includes many aspects in an initial hedonic and spatial model specification.

Appraisal-based performance indices are commonly used when considering private investments, including real estate. An important issue with such indices is the smoothing bias which leads to high levels of autocorrelation and dampened volatility estimates. The ability to treat appraisal-based series for smoothing is crucial for agents such as investors who have to correctly assess investment risk. In this research, we propose to improve the commonly used reverse engineering desmoothing model, as well as its regime-switching extension, by incorporating a robust filter into the procedure. We show that in addition to properly treating for smoothing, our improved model prevents the producing of extreme observations often generated through the desmoothing process. Our model is able to generate desmoothed series whose characteristics are akin to those of transaction-based indices. We also compare our results with those produced by alternative desmoothing models as well as those obtained by relying on REIT indices. The empirical analyses are conducted using U.S. data for a period extending over more than 30 years.

This project will build a theoretical model of real estate brokerage using assumptions based upon findings from the extensive brokerage literature. In this model differentiation in services and quality between brokerage firms combined with differentiation in preferences between sellers lead to measurable ranges of operation for brokerage firms. These ranges overlap, leading to the competitive nature of the industry. This theoretical model can be simulated in order to predict when ranges will grow or shrink and when competition within them will increase or decrease.
Using MLS data for Northern Colorado we will measure the range of operation in ArcGIS for each brokerage firm and each agent in the sample by using actual geocoded data for listings and transactions. These ranges of operation will be used to calculate a market share of listings or transactions for the agent or brokerage firm within their own range of operation. For example, while a county might have 1200 listings a certain brokerage firm within that county may compete only within a smaller area of that county in which there are 120 listings. If the brokerage firm has 40 total listings our methodology would give them a market share of 33% within their operating range rather than 3% within the county.

Using panel data techniques we will test whether higher values for our market concentration measure are correlated with higher or lower sales prices. We will examine whether market shares and the size of operating ranges for individual agents and brokerage firms vary predictably with local market conditions. These tests will help to determine what value better measures of brokerage firm market share and market concentration will have to policy makers and real estate practitioners, potentially in identifying desirable locations for new entrants and in predicting future trends.

Improved real estate transparency is fundamental to successful strategic decision-making in the real estate investment sector. Using the JLL global real estate transparency index, countries are classified as high transparency, transparent, semi-transparent, low transparency and opaque. As well as the composite real estate transparency measure, the five real estate transparency sub-indices for investment performance measurement, market fundamentals, governance of listed vehicles, regulatory/legal and the transaction process are also produced. This paper assesses the dynamics, linkages and changes in these real estate market transparency sub-indices for 109 real estate markets over 2004-2016, comprising 88 emerging markets and 21 developed markets. This is also assessed in a regional and global real estate market context. Differences in these real estate transparency sub-indices between the emerging and developed markets are also highlighted. The ongoing real estate investment implications are also identified.

Real estate funds offer diversification for investors with limited investment volumes. German institutional investors can choose between pooled funds according to 
a) German legislation as embodied by the German Capital Investment Code („KAGB“) and with a German valuation approach 
or 
b) international standards of Anglo-Saxon origin with a “Red Book” valuation approach.

Funds according to the German Capital Investment Code have been able to attract more than € 72 billion in committed capital within the last twenty years. The performance of two thirds of the funds’ capital, i.e. € 48 billion are monitored by MSCI and published on a quarterly basis (“SFIX”). Half of the capital invested is in funds with a European mandate.&nbsp

MSCI monitors also the performance of pooled funds according to Anglo-Saxon standards and publishes performance data like the Pan European Pooled Property Funds index (“PEPFI”). The comparison between PEPFI and German funds with a European mandate (“SFIX Europe”) offer insights in considerable difference for the years 2005 until 2017 despite a similar European allocation.

While PEPFI clearly tracks the financial crisis and the subsequent recovery of the markets, SFIX Europe is showing a sideways movement. Over the whole period of 2005 until 2017 the annualized returns have been 3.5% for PEPFI and 2.7% for the SFIX Europe. However, the difference in volatility is far bigger: While the standard deviation of PEPFI is 11.3%, it is only 2.6% for SFIX Europe. 

Thus, according to measures like the Sharpe Ratio the SFIX Europe achieves a superior risk-adjusted return, since the SFIX Europe offers four times less volatility than the PEPFI, with comparable allocations and similar long-term returns.
The paper discusses whether the discrepancy might lie in German valuation practice, which is based on long-term values and could lead to valuation reserves in booming markets. 

The paper also examines consequences of smooth real estate valuation which might reduce liquidity of pooled funds. If it can be assumed that there are reserves in a fund during market phases of high real estate prices, existing investors are not interested in taking in additional investors, since the entrants will not have to pay for reserves as reserves are not reflected in current valuation. During times of low real estate prices, investors will not be interested in allowing others to leave since the last valuation might not reflect yet the complete downturn.

Performing a literature search and acquiring the physical copies was a couple of decades ago connected with noticeable personal efforts. A user had at first to consult the paper-based catalogue of a library (locally!), to make a choice and to invest some time to get the desired pieces of work at hand.

Educators are nowadays facing a steadily growing number of publications and this deployment goes along with a rather easy way of obtaining. In fact one could state a situation of potentially being ""overnewsed"" but in the same moment being ""underinformed"". Nonetheless, the amount of time dedicated to study the outcome of these retrieval activities seems to be rather constant over time. Practically spoken, the matter of relevance is getting more important and narrowing down the number of retrieved search hits seems to ask for adequate attention.

In the framework of this submission, issues from an educator's point of view will be highlighted, such as the collectioning of real estate literature for course work. Furthermore, the extended use and ""manipulation"" of a university library catalogue with be highlighted, as well as issues regarding access to full text entities. In addition, managing and sharing research entities is supported by several software applications. Finally, the interaction with dedicated repositories (e.g. library.eres.org) and databases will be elaborated upon.

The effects of metro system development and urban form on housing prices are highly depend on the spatial temporal conditions of the urban neighborhoods. However, scholars have not yet comprehensively examined these interactions at a neighborhood-scale. This study assesses metro access, urban form, and property value at both district- and neighborhood-levels. The study area is in Pudong, Shanghai where metro system development coincides with rapid urban growth. 279 neighborhoods are systematically and randomly selected for the district-level investigation and 31 neighborhoods are selected from Pudong for neighborhood-level investigation. The analysis of variance shows that metro access is more positively correlated to property price in Pudong. The Pearson correlation, principle component, and ordinary least square regression analyses find that while accessibility attributes have positive influence on housing prices, neighborhood characteristics also exhibit pronounced impact on property price change over time. This study extends our knowledge on how metro system development interacts with land use efficiency, and discusses planning policies corresponding to development stage that produce more sustainable urban form.

The right to adequate standard of living, which includes adequate housing is recognized internationally. Even though this right is central in the global legal system, many people across the globe are not adequately housed, the worst seen in the Africa
In Ghana people desire their own private homes or have access to adequate housing, but the housing sector is plagued with numerous challenges, with the most crucial ones being security of tenure and the huge financial requirement. 

As evidenced by the huge housing deficit and the consequential growth of slums in the urban areas, it seems that Ghanaians do not enjoy adequate housing in good environments. Housing delivery has not kept pace with population growth and the quality continues to deteriorate. It is estimated that the housing deficit is in excess of one Million units with annual supply of one hundred thousand units required. However, the annual house delivery is estimated at about Forty Thousand units. 
The housing finance sector is still in the growing stage, as the mortgage market does not yet meet the breadth of the population who might afford a mortgage. In effect the formal financial institutions have supplied very little mortgages to households in Ghana. As a result, most developers have to finance their housing, with savings or non-mortgage credit, and mostly by incremental building.
In view of the Challenges of the formal mortgage structures, a number of house financing systems are evolving in the country. These include Community Mortgage Systems, Corporate Bodies house ownership schemes, and Institutions/Companies Staff Housing Loan operations.  Some of these schemes are available to workers, especially those in the formal sector. 
The Volta River Authority (VRA) a statutory agency established in 1961 that generates electricity in Ghana, having examined and found the formal mortgage system to be highly priced and unaffordable by its staff, resorted to developing a scheme, the Staff Housing Loan Scheme (SHLS), to help staff acquire their own house.  

The scheme has been in operation for about twenty (20) years and many staff have benefited from it. Given various criteria and the availability of enough funds to cater for the needs of all qualified staff, there is the need to appraise the scheme of operation of the SHLS to underscore its relevance, evaluate the guiding principles and operational policies, accentuate its challenges and make recommendations as to how to improve the scheme. This paper will eventually make suggestions for other corporate institutions to emulate. Discussions at the international forum will undoubtedly bring out best practices to bear. It is believed that if many Corporate bodies implement such improved schemes, housing delivery will expand. 

Information required for this research will be gathered from the VRA Housing Loan Secretariat, staff and staff groups within the Authority. Engagements will be held with other sister institutions which operate similar schemes. 
 

Contrary to many forecasts, some major German cities are currently growing again or still raising. However, this growth confronts the cities with enormous challenges. In addition to growing pressure on infrastructural supply, demand for housing is rising. The result: the prices for housing are increasing rapidly.

This high rental price level in cities makes it difficult for low-income households to afford adequate and sufficient living space on their own. In cities with above-average rent levels middle-income households are increasingly affected, although they do not get financial support like housing allowance. Percentage of housing costs in total monthly income is very high – partly over 30%. So, these households can be counted to so-called threshold households in Germany.

This paper deals with the research question, how much income a household would need in order to afford adequate housing in the examined cities. Therefore, a model is developed which allows a calculation for the most affected household types: single, couple without children, couple with child/children & single parent with child/children. Beneath, some sub-questions should be answered by this model calculation: What is the number of households in the surveyed cities whose monthly expenditure is above the 30% threshold? And what is their spatial distribution over the urban area – are there quarters, which are highly affected? Data on purchasing power and social milieus as well as information on supply and stock rents should serve as a data basis for answering these questions.

In addition, it will be determined how the calculated net household incomes (for the four household types) can be reconciled with the statutory income limits of municipal programs for the promotion of affordable housing. Are the established income limits sufficient or need to be adjusted? 

The results are compared with data from Sweden – in Sweden, more data is available at all. In Swedish cities, such as Stockholm or Gothenburg, rents are also increasing due to rising demand. 

The availability and quality of data on the different administrative levels will be analysed and discussed conclusively. Does a better data basis provide more possibilities for adjusting subsidies?

Results will be a model and a better understanding of threshold households in different cities.
 

Current governmental data on rental housing-only by agencies have to be registered- do not reflect real market activity on the Taipei rental market. This study is trying to use web scraping to collect the big data. By cleaning, analyzing and mapping the data reveal spatial and temporal patterns cross districts housing markets in Taipei City. 

The rental market issue is more important in Taipei with surging housing price. The research will build the rent model to estimate fair rent of different types housing. To assess the rent affordability by the ratio between social housing rent and fair rent. To calculate the rent burdens by the ratio between median household income and median rent across the statistical area. We use two indicators that rent affordability and rent burden to discuss the social housing policy in Taipei. The findings are to capture the real rental market in Taipei and to provide suggestions for social housing policy by using big data.
 

The aging population phenomenon has garnered much attention in recent years, with far reaching implications for the economy, industry and capital markets. This paper focuses on how the aging population affects healthcare REITs in Japan and Singapore by way of a detailed comparative study. Healthcare REITs focus their investments in various medical facilities such as hospitals, medical centers, nursing homes and retirement facilities. Their success is connected to the evolution of the healthcare system and REITs structure. This study focuses on the business model for healthcare REITs, acquisition and distribution implications as well as the stock return performance over time.

In the last decades the themes relative to sustainability have assumed a crucial role in a different context such as social, economic and financial ones; even in Real Estate field, there has been a growing interest towards this issues. 
In this scenario, in particular as regards Real Estate funds, it’s possible to observe that investment strategies tend to be developed toward a diversifying aim, including a “green” component represented by certified green buildings.

In the light of this premise, this research aims at focusing on the specific industry of European Green Reits, defined on the basis of the two European most widespread certifications, LEED and BREEAM, which provide standards for evaluating sustainable buildings from an environmental point of view. 

In addition to “green” parameters, with reference to the ESG criteria (Environmental, Social and Governance), this research aims also to verify if there is a correlation between the financial performances of the abovementioned Green Reits and their Corporate Governance structure. At this purpose it will be implemented an econometric analysis. 

The rationale of this research arises from the ambitious aim to investigate the link between sustainability and corporate governance in the specific field of Real Estate. In the existing literature review there is in fact a lack of researches on how corporate governance affects Green Reits economic and financial performances.

The purpose of the study is to examine differences between green and conventional office buildings in specific nodes in Gauteng province in South Africa. The study employs a multiple regression analysis to examine these differences in net rents and operating costs between green and conventional buildings. With the regression model, the log of net rent is expressed as a function of the building classification, the lettable area and the length of the lease expressed in months. With the second model, the log of operating cost is treated as a function of these same independent variables. The results indicate that conventional buildings enjoys a rental premium over green buildings. However, there is cost savings in favour of green buildings compared to conventional buildings. A number of arguments have been advanced to explain these differences. This appears to be the case that the attraction for green buildings currently may be due to cost savings and positive branding advantages from occupying the green building. The rental premium enjoyed by the conventional buildings may be due to locational advantages since most of the properties are located at premium areas.

Since 2012 Eurostat requires the national statistical institutes (NSIs) in all European Union (EU) countries to compute official House Price Indices (HPIs) at a quarterly frequency. Eurostat recommends computing the HPI using a hedonic method. Most NSIs have followed this advice, although they differ in their choice of method. Some NSIs use stratified medians instead of hedonic methods. We evaluate the theoretical and empirical properties of these methods. Of particular concern is the comparability of the HPIs across countries when computed using different methods. Our empirical comparisons use detailed micro-level data sets for Sydney and Tokyo, containing about 867,000 actual housing transactions. All the hedonic methods perform better than stratified medians. The hedonic methods generate quite similar results, except when applied to new dwellings in Tokyo. This finding shows that the choice of hedonic method can become important for smaller data sets. Also, the widely used hedonic repricing method becomes unreliable when the reference shadow prices are not updated frequently.

This research demonstrates the substantial benefits obtained by modeling housing price using a- repeat sales factorial model. In particular, the model is able to give accurate forecast of housing returns on a short or medium run. The index is built-up by determining the weight of 9 economic and financial indices (rental index, short or long-term rate, inflation, stocks index, REITs index, population, Disposable income, population and CPI) to explain capital returns and then to represent housing prices dynamics. The index is computed on Paris housing market from transactions. Mainly the results provide empirical evidence of the ability of the model to forecast short and mid-term changes of the housing prices and more importantly of the housing returns dynamics. Also, the proposed model makes possible to analyze deeply the basic elements that govern the housing market. The developed model also offers applications to regulation and credit risk

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the effects of a number of broker characteristics – gender, age, previous experience as a real estate broker on the housing market as well as activity on a specific local business market – for different disciplinary sanctions issues by the The Swedish Estate Agents Inspectorate (FMI) between 2000 and 2016.  FMI includes a Disciplinary Board, which consists of members appointed by the Government. The supervision entails ensuring that real estate brokers fulfil their obligations in accordance with the Swedish Estate Agents Act. The FMI's supervision can lead to a decision that the estate broker should be removed from the register or that the estate agent should be issued a disciplinary reminder or a warning. The reasons for the disciplinary sanctions differ and the study investigates factors possibly related to different types of complaints resulting in a disciplinary reminder or a warning.

The study relies on data from FMI consisting of the collected decisions on sanctions issued 2000-2016. The number of registered brokers went from 4,574 to 6,910 during the period, and the complaints from 253 to 453. However, the number of disciplinary reminders, warnings or removal from the register stayed relative stable with an average of 65. Statistical methods are used to investigate the correlation between broker characteristics and the reasons for complaints leading to sanctions.

Property development is a multifaceted, dynamic and risky enterprise. Property development projects are fraught with risks and uncertainties spanning through the stages of the development process. Risk and uncertainty, if not well managed, could have harmful impacts on development project by affecting time, quality, and cost of such project. In Nigeria, evidences abound of property development failures and abandonments with the attendant social, environmental and economic consequences. Development projects are abandoned before completion or completed projects are not disposed over six months. In other cases, completed projects are foreclosed by development lenders due to inability of the developers to service their loans. These problems could be attributed to development companies not employing formal strategic risk management in project evaluation. The aim of this paper is to review literature and previous research on application of risk management techniques in property development industry with a view to identify the possibility for further research in Nigeria. The review used various sources such as textbooks, journal articles, reports, masters’ dissertations and doctoral theses relevant to the study. The review showed that, generally, risk management is still largely handled in a subjective manner. Any notion that developers are now applying a wide range of rigourous and sophisticated risk management techniques is erroneous as this is scarcely manifested in actual practice. In the Nigerian context, there is probably no research on risk management by development companies; few risk management studies were limited to risk analysis/assessment; while others focused on building construction risk which is just one of the stages in the property development process. This paper recommends the development of an advanced risk management framework applicable to the Nigerian property development industry.

The beta coefficient is widely used in company valuation. According to the assumptions of the CAPM, thanks to the beta, you can set the cost of equity and thus the discount rate in income valuation models. Similarly, in the real estate market, if you want to valuate the property by income method, a discount rate should be known. This rate can be estimated by knowing the beta coefficient for property market. Unfortunately, the estimation of this coefficient is difficult, since there is no known index of such a broad market that would contain both industrial investments and all others, such as real estate investment. Therefore, the author decided to develop a method for calculating the beta in the housing market. This is the first step towards the development of the beta calculation methodology in the commercial real estate market.

The aim the article is to estimate the beta coefficient for the residential property market in Poland. The author has set the hypothesis that the mean values of the beta coefficients calculated on the hedonic index on the secondary housing market are statistically significant equal to the average values of the beta coefficient for the WIG index, the broad Stock market Index on the Polish stock market. To verify the hypothesis and consequently achieve the goal of the work, the author used the data analysis followed by the use of one-way ANOVA.

The development of a beta counting methodology is the original contributor's contribution to science. In the Polish market there is no adequate method and asset appraisers apply the beta directly taken from the stock market. In addition, this work is the first phase of research that will lead to the development of a methodology to calculate the beta coefficient in the commercial real estate market.
 

The development of new office buildings with green certification created the premises for better understanding of the impact on employees' productivity. The purpose of this paper is to analyze through a questionnaire the productivity perception of employees that work in such buildings. Moreover, the results will be compared with a control group from non-green certified buildings. We are focusing understanding whether the lighting, office furniture, temperature or air quality, which are significant better in green certified buildings, have an effect on the productivity perception.

Large real estate portfolios generate such high data volumes that computer systems have become essential tools for successful portfolio management. Among other things, they should be able to provide portfolio analyses, reports, and scenarios to support portfolio managers in their daily work. Furthermore, portfolio management systems should support the decision-making of portfolio managers and their superiors. This is a requirement we deduce from the fact that important decisions are required in the portfolio management processes, such as the property sales and purchases. 

It is not known whether the systems used in practice meet the latter requirement because there are no relevant studies available. There is also a lack of research into the details of decision-making in portfolio management and into measuring the effectiveness of decision support systems (DSS) in general.

Our paper aims to help close these three knowledge gaps. First we deal with decision support systems in general and derive from the literature and our preliminary studies specific criteria to assess the quality of a DSS. Then we present an ideal portfolio management process, which we also derive from the literature and other studies. Unlike previous investigations, we elaborate on the decisions made during the process. Finally, in the empirical part of the paper, we use our assessment scheme to examine five portfolio management systems applied by major European real estate companies. The results indicate that while the systems offer good support for day-to-day management, they are hardly suitable to support decision-making. More research is needed to validate the assessment instrument and to obtain a complete picture of decision-making in real estate portfolio management.
 

Two approaches are widely used when estimating how long it takes to sell a property: one approach uses least squares and the other is based on a hazard model.  Despite many years of study, the field does not seem to have reached a consensus on the “typical” effect of important variables.  This paper uses numerical simulations and some simple reasoning to study the power of tests to reject hypotheses which are false.   

The numerical simulations offer three key insights.  First, they quantify the effect of a difference in the hypothesis.  Small differences are hard to detect while the power to reject a big difference varies with the characteristics of the data.  Second, since the simulation can impose a true distribution, it is possible to study the effect of using a knowingly misspecified model with less statistical theory and more focus on practical implications.  I show that analysis based on estimating a hazard model seems to be more robust.  Third, the simulations are used to explore the conceptual difference between testing the hypothesis that an effect exists vs. tests aimed at measuring the magnitude of an effect.  This difference is very important when the different approaches use different parameters which affect the estimates without being studied directly.  I discuss the implications for practitioners and for researchers.  
 

Numerous studies in recent years have focused on assessing the performance of sustainable vs. non-sustainable buildings. This study is a departure, by exploring well-being characteristics of office building occupants while accounting for office building (CoStar) characteristics and their sustainable labeling (Energy Star and LEED/USGBC) in the Seattle area. Utilizing detailed health and physical activity profiles of individuals, which include office workers’ daily physical activity, work-to-home distance and Body Mass Index (BMI) - a proxy for well-being, we are exploring possible relationships between them and office characteristics. Our preliminary results suggest - as expected - that increased number of parking spots is associated with higher occupant BMIs. In contrast, buildings with fitness centers are associated with a lower occupant BMI. Additionally, even though there is no relationship between LEED certification and BMI, BMI is higher for those in energy star label buildings. Building on these results we are exploring additional relationships, however we cannot imply at this stage that office building characteristics have a causal relationship with BMI or health.

The world is ageing and so does Asia countries, which ageing even faster including Malaysia. Malaysia is predicted to become an aging nation by the year of 2030. Most of the elderly prefer to age in place. Besides, less elderly lives with their children thus placing them in an independent living. The death of the spouse could also put the elderly in the same situation. Housing is a basic human need. It is believed that human must have a home before they can think about anything else. Furthermore, housing can be a major indicator of well-being for persons of all ages from all backgrounds including the elderly. However, homes sometimes can be a death trap for the elderly. They tend to trip, slip and fall in their home as they are becoming frail and fragile as time goes by. Meantime, the elderly tends to feel isolated from the community and lead them to loneliness.

In the context of increasing elderly populations, there is concern that issues relating to provide housing attributes that can assist the elderly to age in place. With respect to that, this research aims to identify the appropriate housing attributes for the elderly to age in place. Together in this research, researcher will be focusing on the apartments and condominiums. Through this research, Malaysian Standard MS1184:2004 and Sri Seronok Retirement Village are the benchmark to other 4 case studies within Klang Valley which are occupied by elderly who wish to age in place.

This paper tests the extent to which credit market shocks affect different quantiles in the housing price distribution. We use the new "recentered influence function" methodology to recover the unconditional distribution of housing prices in response to (1) unexpected monetary policy decisions and (2) changes in credit supply. We find that tight monetary policy leads to an increase in housing prices across most of the distribution, with larger increases for higher-priced homes, resulting in an increase in price dispersion. In contrast, increases in loan volume lead to higher home prices across the entire distribution, with the largest increases for the mid-priced homes. Importantly, we show that the credit supply effect changes during the 2000-2006 "bubble" period, leading to higher prices at the bottom of the distribution. These price effects are large and significant -- and can explain much of the change in wealth inequality over time. More generally, they challenge the common assumption that policies can be properly evaluated by average effects and that housing affordability can be sufficiently summarized by median statistics.

An increasing number of mainstream finance and accounting studies have been devoted to assess the linkage between carbon emissions and firms’ value. However, a majority of these studies focus on direct carbon-intensive firms or firms from all sectors. No empirical study has examined the impact of carbon disclosure on the performance of real estate sector, which is an indirect carbon-intensive sector. This study aims to fill this gap by examining whether there is a carbon-efficiency premium for real estate companies. Specifically, the linkages between the level of carbon emissions and financial return of international real estate companies are scrutinized. The dataset of Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) over 2010-2015 was utilised. The results assert that an enhanced financial return is associated with a lower level of carbon emissions, reflecting that there is a carbon-efficiency premium. Further we also found some empirical evidence to support the notion of asymmetric market valuation of carbon emissions. Specifically, market participants only price direct carbon emissions, whilst no comparable is found for indirect carbon emissions. The practical implications of the findings are also discussed.

Organisations value their employees as one of their key assets and continuously seek for the best potential talent among the declining workforce. In order to attract and retain talented millennials, the office environment also has to support the needs of this generation. The aim of this study was therefore to provide Corporate Real Estate Managers (CREM) with insight in how to support millennials in order to attract and retain them. It identified which physical workplace aspects can support the 3 most important workplace needs of millennials: sociability with colleagues, opportunity to grow and work-life balance. Hypotheses were developed on differences between generations on these needs and the possible support of relevant physical workplace aspects.

Data was collected through a survey of 302 Dutch office employees belonging to the baby boomers, generation X or millennials generation. The hypotheses were tested with Pearson correlation coefficients and ANOVA. Results showed that millennials attach more value to the need for coaching and professional growth than generation x, and less value to the balance between leisure and work. Regarding physical workplace aspects, in total thirteen unique physical workplace aspects have the potential to support the three workplace needs of millennials. They find accessibility of colleagues and informal work areas/break-out zones more important in support of their sociability with colleagues than generation X. For supporting the same need, baby boomers find IT-services for social networking more important than millennials. Regarding the opportunity to grow, baby boomers perceive audio-visual equipment to be more important than millennials. In order to support their need for work-life balance, millennials find the ability to personalise their workstation more important than others. Future studies should further clarify support of needs of different generations and how CREM can create an office environment that accommodates and supports all.

The auction literature finds competition drives price outcomes and has both rational and psychological components. In bubble markets psychological factors are likely to be heightened impacting on the dynamics of competitive behavior (Shiller, 2014). 

We find, in a real estate bubble, guide prices have no influence in generating greater auction competition. In addition, our findings are supportive of the strength of the guide price in acting as an anchor on price outcomes. Thus we find no evidence that auction fever (e.g. Adam et al, 2015) occludes any assimilative role for the guide as an anchor.

Interestingly, however, we find evidence consistent with real estate agents systematically setting low guide prices relative to fundamentals, in an apparent belief in the reversal- of- the- anchoring effect (Ku et al, 2006), suggesting their actions in setting guide prices may have, in fact, paradoxically, dampened the effect of the bubble rather than amplifying it. 

Australian shopping centres have evolved into complex operating businesses rather than just investments in dynamic and valuable physical assets. Investors need to understand this, and establish an operational structure/framework to invest in a substantial and generally illiquid asset class offering historically high returns.  

Australian shopping centres represent an A$127 billion asset class that provides over 50% of institutionally owned property and is generally five to 10% of an Australian mixed asset investment portfolio. The sector has historically delivered strong income streams and total returns with significant diversification benefits. Australian shopping centre income streams and values are heavily dependant on its retailers' performance for the success of the centre and its value.

Based on a review of literature and associated Property Council of Australia data analysis, this paper proposes that an Australian shopping centre should be treated by investors as a business rather than just an investment and suggests a conceptual model for Australian Shopping Centres.  The suggested framework is developed to adequately identify the issues that need to be managed, the mechanisms to manage them and therefore establish the structure required for investment in the Australian retail property asset class so as to optimise long term returns. The key attributes of the model's framework comprise clarifying the ownership from management issues which incorporate the critical property management, leasing and development management functions between the shopping centre ownership, its retailer customers and their customers, the shoppers. 
 

Over the real estate lifecycle numerous documents and data are generated. The majority of building-related data is collected in day-to-day operations, such as maintenance protocols, contracts or energy consumptions. Previous successes in the classification already help to automatically recognize, categorize and name documents as well as to sort them into an individual structure in digital data rooms (Bodenbender/Kurzrock 2018). The actual added value is created in the next step: efficient data analysis with specific utilization of the data.

This paper describes an approach for the automation of Technical Due Diligence (TDD) by information extraction (IE). The aim is to extract relevant information from building-related documents and to automatically gain quick insights into the condition of real estate. A global asset under management (AuM) of US$1.2 trillion (PWC, AWM Report, 2017) and a global real estate transaction volume of around US$650 billion in 2016 (JLL Global Market Perspective, 2017) show that there is a regular need to analyze building data. Transactions are a very dynamic area where current trends focus on a more data-driven approach to improve time and cost.

In addition, the paper focuses on the standardization of information extraction methods for the TDD as well as the prioritization and evaluation of building-related data. The automated evaluation supports value-adding decisions in the real estate lifecycle with a detailed database. TDD audits are a key objective for reducing information asymmetries, especially in large transactions.

Efficient technologies are now available for IE from digital building data. Through machine learning, documents can be read and evaluated automatically. Digital data rooms and operational applications such as ERP systems serve as a source of information for information extraction. Due to the heterogeneity of the documents, rule and learning-based algorithms are used. The IE is based on various technical bases, especially in the field of neural networks and deep learning methods. As the documents are often only available as scans, it requires the integration of OCR methods.

The contribution to the ERES-PhD session presents the current state of information extraction in the real estate industry, the research method used for the automation of TDD and its potential benefits for real estate management.
 

Banking relationships and holding-up are two possible factors that influence the lending decisions by firms. As argued by Diamond (1984), financial intermediaries such as banks, play an important role of costly monitoring of loan contracts due to information asymmetries and moral hazard problems. Using a set of comprehensive cross-country dataset on REIT loan facilities containing past banking relationships, this paper empirically determines the relative importance of REIT-Bank lending relationship on credit supply and the cost of capital. We find that REITs with a stronger lending relationship enjoy the following favourable terms: lower cost loans, higher loan amount, and a less stringent collateral requirement. These terms persist throughout the Great Recession periods and remain even when we control for endogenous relationships.

In 2008, the European Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) facilitated the introduction of two mandatory energy assessment methods in the UK. Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) reveal the modelled energy performance of buildings when they are constructed, sold or let based on their intrinsic energy attributes, whereas Display Energy Certificates (DECs) reveal operational energy performance in a subset of buildings that is operated by the public sector, based on annual energy consumption data.

EPCs were conceived as a marketing mechanism for property market participants and they have been used in studies that have sought to investigate the links between energy performance and financial performance of buildings. Past studies have investigated the relationship between modelled and operational energy performance measurement in buildings and have found mismatches between both. 

This study will investigate the link between the modelled and actual energy performance in office buildings that are occupied by the public sector. The study uses detailed EPC and DEC data from the Department for Communities and Local Government. A comprehensive benchmarking analysis of these ratings establishes the extent to which both align and differ across the same units. The EPC and DEC data is also matched to data on building attributes from CoStar UK to investigate the relationship between energy performance and building features such as age and building quality, which have been commonly used as control variables in past hedonic pricing studies. This study will also look at the magnitude of observed changes in operational energy performance over time, to investigate whether energy performance assessment leads to energy performance improvement.

These findings will provide further insights into the effects and impacts of the introduction of energy certification for buildings. The further aim of this study is to develop a building typology based on commonly shared building and energy performance attributes.

Corporate sales through mergers and acquisitions constitute a large marketss and are, thus, frequently examined in financial research. By the use of micro-level data from deal backgrounds, previous academic work depicted the bidding behavior and further peculiarities of competition and valuation in non-public takeover auction processes for a broad range of operating companies. 

The presented research provides an enhancement on the perspective of the previous contributions by adding the particular scope on real estate operating companies (REOCs) and real estate investment trusts (REITs), as well as an auction theoretic perspective. Specifically, it analyses valuation patterns in auction-like takeover deals and reports similarities and differences to prior evidence in that field. In accordance with earlier contributions, a hand-collected dataset of takeover deal-disclosure filings was used to assess the bidding behavior of potential buyers and the strategic interaction of buyers and sellers. Preliminary evidence suggests that heterogeneous types of buyers value real estate industry members differently when it comes to corporate sales and depicts characteristic patterns in valuation. 

The presented research may help to develop a deeper understanding of the strategic interactions in real estate corporate sales. From a practical perspective, the deal design in corporate sales appears to be of utmost importance. The implications are relevant for both, corporate governance and investment decision making. 

In the past decades, technological advancements have disrupted classical real estate research, stimulating a technology-driven real estate sector strongly affected by computer-aided facility management. One of the major challenges in real estate research is to precisely model the distributed-collaborative efforts of project stakeholders relevant to facility management (FM). Supporting the collaboration, building information modeling (BIM), widely used in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry, has the potential to advance facility management activities and to distributedly allocate FM activities to different stakeholders based on BIM standards. A building information model is a digital representation of geometric and functional characteristics of a facility that may serve as a shared knowledge source for FM. Furthermore, during the life-cycle of a facility, a building information model may form a reliable basis for decision making in facility management relevant to the real estate sector. Despite the apparent interrelation between facility management and building information modeling, BIM applications have not been incorporated into sustainable facility management guidelines. This contribution presents a survey of BIM applications and the potential to be deployed for sustainable facility management. Interfaces between BIM applications and sustainable facility management guidelines are investigated, with strong emphasis on the German GEFMA 160 sustainable facility management guideline. Serving as an illustrative example, GEFMA 160 is compared with real estate-relevant BIM applications commonly used in the AEC industry, showcasing the practicability of BIM applications for implementing sustainable facility management criteria in the real estate sector.

The existence of brownfield areas inside a city has negative effects on the real estate market due to the decrease of the demand for real estate assets nearby for both the prices and rents.

The impact could be different on the basis of the different type of real estate investment considered and normally the impact is expected to be higher for residential assets. The paper evaluates the economic effect of abandoned real estate in the city of Milan for the time period 1993-2016 and shows that the city is characterised by a concentration of abandoned/dismissed assets in some city districts. Using standard hedonic models, the paper shows that the existence of brownfield areas nearby a real estate asset affects negatively its price and the negative contribution on price could be even higher than some district/building features.

The aim of this paper is to test whether Google search volume indices can be used to predict house prices and to identify bubbles in the housing market. We analyse the 06/07 U.S. housing bubble, taking advantage of the hetrogenius house price development in different U.S. states with both bubble and non-bubble states. From 204 housing related keywords, we test both single search terms and indexes with sets of search terms and finds that the several keywords preforms very well as a bubble indicator. Google search for Real Estate Agent displayed the most predictive power for the house prices, of all the keywords and indexes tested, globally in the US. Google searches volume outperforms the well-established Consumer Confidence Index as a leading indicator for the housing market.

In this paper we analyze the liquidity (time on market) of rental dwellings and its determinants for different liquidity quantiles in the largest seven German cities. The determinants are estimated using censored quantile regressions in order to investigate the impact on very liquid to very illiquid dwellings. We use micro data to examine the time on market for about 400,000 observations from the first quarter of 2013 to the second quarter of 2017. Hedonic and socioeconomic characteristics as well as spatial gravity variables and various fixed effects are used as exogenous determinants. For almost all regression coefficients we find consistent signs across all quantiles of the time on market distribution, i.e. the proportional hazard assumption, underlying the Cox model, is not violated. However, we find substantial differences in the magnitude of the regression coefficients over the liquidity quantiles. This is the first paper, to the best of our knowledge, to apply censored quantile regressions to the liquidity analysis on the real estate market.

The existence of cycles in building and property, has grown to have significant importance in the UK and internationally; whereas property markets have been characterised by boom and bust cycles with a negative impact on the national economies. As a result, property cycles became a popular research topic amongst property professionals and scholars, with a greater understanding of the cyclical behaviour of the property market being seen as a major guide to the financial success (failure) of property investments. consequently, considerable literature has accumulated over the years on the subject. This paper provides a review of this literature, mostly written in the UK and US, with international insights on the subject. This paper reviews research on the subject chronologically over a one hundred-year period. The study is designed to provide readers with a historical overview of Property cycles research by emphasising the underlying theme which dominated a particular period of this research, as well as indicating methods, data analysis techniques employed and outcomes of these studies. Its ai is to put more clarity on the subject, as well as help to navigate anyone interested in Property cycles through a considerable amount of research which has accumulated over the last century.

While several countries, G20 and non-G20 alike, have built and are continually expanding their experience in housing price statistics, the availability of data from official institutions – NCBs or government (such as NSIs) – on commercial property is scarce. If available at all, the published information is mostly to be considered of experimental nature and comes at varying frequencies from monthly to annual and with very different length of the time series.

As a result of increasing user demand for commercial property price indicators (CPPIs), the European Commission (Eurostat) and the European Central Bank (ECB) established a joint expert group (JEG) to explore the further development of commercial property price and associated indicators. In order to ascertain which data sources exist both within the EU and internationally, the JEG jointly approached the central bank and administration of each EU Member State and, via the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), selected members of the G20.

The JEG examined nine variables (prices, rents, yields, vacancies, 'building and construction', transactions) related to the physical commercial property market based on the Recommendation on closing real estate data gaps by the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB), which is addressed at macroprudential authorities. It conducted a stocktaking exercise covering all EU Member States plus G20 members Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Saudi Arabia and the United States (with replies from all countries except the US). It had in-depth discussions with user groups (from the ESRB, ECB, Commission as well as external experts) and identified various existing data sources split into NCB / government or private.

This talk would present, and invite to discuss, the work of the JEG on CPPIs. The JEG concludes that since data sources for some of the indicators are absent, international consensus on appropriate methods is lacking, and resources at national level in general, as well as experts in this domain in particular are scarce, the collection of data is technically difficult and in its infancy both in the EU and around the world. The stock-taking exercise also revealed that there are no 'quick wins' that would allow comparable and reliable data to be supplied. Not least because of this, the short to medium-term solution is likely to rely on the already available price and associated indicators from private sources. The report proposes concrete milestones for the way forward.
 

It is difficult to avoid the impact of economic restructuring on the landscape and social and economic life of many cities which were used to grow within certain economic structure and also supported by the state (Healey, 1997). In many post-socialist countries the collapse of the socialist system was followed by a number of economic, social and legal reforms, due to which the land and property ownership in most of the countries has been transferred from public to private sector. However, in most cases the state transferred to private hands not only the ownership to the property but also the problems related to the quality of that property. The issue has a specific importance with regard to multi-unit housing since the latter occupies the largest share of urban fabric worldwide.

While having scarce public resources the promotion of private property-based investment projects becomes a sound solution in qualifying urban residential spaces and overcoming urban decay. Such projects will be successful if applying collaborative approaches and enhancing the value added by the project.

The aim of this study is to discuss the possibilities and constraints for application of certain models of collaborative approach to property-based urban management in post-socialist planning practice. Armenia (Yerevan) shall be considered as a particular case of post-socialist transitional society. The discussion shall be based on surveys conducted within the scope of research project.

The results show that even in societies where the private property rights and respective regulations are relatively recent the collaboration in urban regeneration projects is more successful when the allocation of the global project value added to each participant is evidenced and rationalized, whereas supportive institutional framework and participation of financial institution as a project stakeholder are considered essential preconditions.
 

The research examines office property markets cycles in four Canadian cities - Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Toronto. Each of the four cities has a different economic base and, as a result, have potentially significantly different commercial property development and investment cycles. The analysis examines cycles in annual office building construction in each market on a building by building basis over the past 100 years. The analysis of investment cycles is based on office building sales transactions and quarterly market rent data over the past 20 to 25 years. The four cities are shown to be rarely in the same phase of a development/investment cycle. There are significant differences in the primary office and industrial user groups that shape these markets and affect market cycles. The same major investment firms, pension funds and REITs, seek large office and industrial properties in all four cities as each progress through a complete development and investment cycle. However, each market also has a significant component of regional and local investors. The role of property market cycles in the emergence and changes in office sub-markets is also examined.

In recent times, attacks on crowded places such as Helsinki in August 2017, Las Ramblas, Barcelona in August 2017, London Bridge and Borough Market in June 2017, Manchester Arena in May 2017, Stockholm in April 2017, Westminster Bridge in March 2017, Berlin Christmas Market in December 2016 and Nice in July 2016, have powerfully illustrated the devastating impact terrorism can have on society. The purpose of this research, the first such study of its kind, is concerned with understanding how the real estate development process is used, and could be used, as the foundation of counter terrorism protective security at crowded places of all sizes. It is designed to develop knowledge of the current considerations of counter terrorism protective security across core sectors involved in the real estate development process, the current barriers to adoption of such measures, and the methods which could potentially incentivize counter terrorism protective security. in real estate development. The research is based on 134 interviews carried out in Belfast, London and Manchester in the UK; New York City, Washington DC and Oklahoma City in the US; and Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne in Australia in 2017.

Investor expectations for commercial property returns are formed by a number of exogenous and endogenous factors. These expectations can change rapidly and will reflect pricing, current and predicted, of alternative asset classes and fundamental economic variables including interest rates and inflation. In order to create an estimated figure for expected returns, many investors have adopted a risk premium approach that compares existing and anticipated property prices with the yields available from investing in a pre-defined ‘risk-free’ asset class such as government bonds.

The proposed paper develops a model that that provides a framework for deriving contemporaneous expected returns for a range of investor types and then compares those expected returns with transaction prices achieved in the UK office market between 2000 and 2016.  

The major aim of the paper is to pinpoint mispriced markets, principally by identifying periods where market pricing that is defined by actual transaction prices has not caught up with substantial movements in expected returns. 

The paper utilises transactions based data so the issues surrounding the use of transaction data as opposed to valuation based figures are considered. In addition, a number of concepts that relate to the design and construction of the model are explored.
 

In a globalizing world, real estate investors have great interest in uniform valuation standards to allow comparison of outcomes across countries. Transparency, reliable reports, sound procedures and comparability are core values for investors, valuations and valuers. This is particularly evident during financial crises and in fraud cases. Introduction to and compliance with established valuation standards could improve the reliability of the investments and the consistency and presentation of information and encourage greater transparency in reporting to investors and the market in general. 

As far as (real estate) valuation is concerned over time three major valuation standards have been developed: the International Valuation Standards (IVS by IVS Council), the European Valuation Standards (EVS by TEGoVA) and the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP, USA/Canada by The Appraisal Foundation TAP). Those standards are regularly amended because of expansion, interpretation, changes in regulation or law as well as jurisdiction. There are similarities between the standards, but also important differences. The procedures followed and the reported outcome of valuations may therefore differ. Especially, if investors have a globally diversified portfolio, one should be aware of the valuation differences between regions. For purposes of (financial) reporting, it is important to map these similarities and differences between those standards. 

This research will be carried out in close cooperation with the standard setters as much as possible. 

The objectives of the research are:

• To identify, clarify and explain differences and similarities on a conceptual and practical level between the recently published IVS 2017 and EVS 2016 as well as between IVS2017 and USPAP 2018/2019.
• To formulate topics and recommendations for IVSC and TEGoVA and TAP to be discussed

The aim of the research will be to make stakeholders of valuation standards aware about the consequences of the differences at the moment.
 

Singapore's government imposes demand restrictions in 2011 and 2013 disallowing Singaporean residents to concurrently own a private housing unit and a resale public housing flat. The restrictions, however, do not affect public housing owners, who fulfill the minimum occupation period requirement. This paper uses the policy shocks to set up a quasi-experiment to test if differential housing purchasing behaviors exist between the private housing and the public housing buyers. Using private housing transaction data between 2005 and 2015, we find that prices decline by 2.4% and 1.8% for the private housing owners’ purchases after the policy took effects in 2010 and 2013, respectively, relative to public housing owners' purchases. Public housing owners could be motivated by housing wealth accrued to their existing flats to pay higher prices in their private housing purchases. We also find stronger treatment effects in resale market, core central region, medium to high-end market, and market with large size units.

The conventional approach in evaluating investment risk is to examine time-series volatility across various performance or price measures relating to that investment. The property industry has also adopted a similar approach. While this approach seems appropriate when property portfolio structures are relatively stable and homogeneous over time, such an approach may not be useful when property portfolio structures are changing over time or in the case of star-ups investments where there is insufficient historical information.

This paper proposes an alternative estimator of property risk called the Property Asset Quality Index Score. This index utilises various qualitative property portfolio information (risk factors) which include: asset location; asset quality; asset features; sustainability attributes; and asset amenities. This is essentially modelled within a hedonic framework. Having constructed the index, an empirical analysis is undertaken to evaluate its usefulness.

The sharing economy, also known as collaborative consumption or peer economy, has grown rapidly thanks to technology innovation and supply-side flexibility. The growth of sharing platform of Airbnb, one of the pioneers of the share economy, allows suppliers to supply underutilized short-term accommodation. At the demand side, consumers eagerly welcome these services due to fee sharing benefit. Since its introduction in 2008, more than 50 million guests has utilized its service. Its growth in fact has brought disruption to the hotel industry, particularly those targeting budget customers and non-business travelers. In some cities, Airbnb not only interrupt hotel industry, but also upset its housing market. Some academics argue that Airbnb has triggered the upswing in the accommodation cost for local renters as some landlords has switched from providing long-term housing into short-term housing to non-residents tourists due to higher short-term rental rate they can offer. Others argue that local renters lease up long-term housing from landlord and turn it into short-term housing to generate profit. All these prompts an increase in housing rents.  In this paper, we use Hong Kong as our case to empirically test whether Airbnb is responsible for higher housing rents. We hypothesize that the impact of Airbnb may not be of significance in Hong Kong the result of a small market for short-term rental as opposed to the market for long-term rental. There is an actual strong demand from local residents to occupy the space rather than lease it to non-residents tourists. 

We attempt to examine these hypotheses empirically. Two methodologies appear pertinent to study the likely impact of Airbnb on rental levels. Using time series data it is expected that a model containing fundamental determinants of rents would lose some of its capacity in explaining rent movements if Airbnb is a new significant driver of residential rents not accounted for. Hence such a fundamentals model will lose some of its explanatory power and make larger errors as Airbnb expands. The second approach is a hedonic framework in which rents are examined with reference to key housing characteristics and Airbnb rentals. The latter approach has major data requirements. This analysis provides the initial steps for a fuller treatment of the impact of Airbnb on residential rents in Hong Kong and makes direct contributions to the relevant international literature.
 

CoWorking space is commonly a collaborative space in an office-like environment. The space can be in the form of very short office leases which range anywhere between a day to a week and longer; and the space can be used independently, collaboratively or in nominated teams. The intent of coworking spaces is numerous, which includes a sense of community environment, encouraging greater productivity, provide access for mobile and freelance workers and an affordable solution to start-ups who are on a restricted budget and unable to enter into long term rental commitments. Many landlords are being challenged by this growing demand for flexible, scalable, collaborative spaces with short term leases. A desktop analysis of eighteen (18) coworking locations in Sydney is undertaken. The findings identified three main opportunities for landlords to capture the coworking space – firstly, leasing space to coworking operators, secondly developing their own coworking platforms and thirdly partnering with coworking operators to develop coworking spaces; coupled with two main challenges associated with the implementation of coworking hubs – the reliance on coworking operators and their survival with changing market conditions, and secondly, transforming traditional office spaces into engaging coworking vibrant hubs.

Real estate education is a multi-disciplinary subject that requires students to have an all-round training and knowledge in such core areas as economic and finance, urban planning and urbanization studies, public policy, law as well as construction technology. These subject areas are dynamic in the sense that they keep evolving with changes in socio-economic as well as technological variables in the society. In addition, while real estate development itself is a geographically fixed commodity which implies local knowledge and regulations dominate the outcome, real estate analysis can be a much more global issue when local developers and investors desire to make an oversea investment decision to diversify investment risk. In such case, the ability for students to understand the intertwined relationship between the general principles of real estate development as well as actual market structures in other places becomes imperative. This problem-based learning ability can be enhanced with a pedagogical approach that injects training in self-initiated research, skillful communication technique and the ability to understand and analyse different socio-economic environments. In this paper, we will illustrate how an online discussion platform for students helps create a visual collaborative learning environment that enhances the learning outcomes of real estate education in a studio-discussion format, which transcends the physical constraints of arranging face-to-face meetings among students from different but related programmes. More importantly, real estate education that can prepare students with a more inter-disciplinary and internationalized basis of knowledge will be able to attract good students who aim at increasing their competitiveness in the global job market. By using the discussion forum based on the interactive environment created by Realtimeboard.com, this paper shows that students from different disciplines and cities can carry out real-time discussions on issues pertaining to urban development without the need to physically meet. The outcomes of our experiment shows that online collaborative learning platform can serve to underpin the pedagogical outcomes of real estate education in a cost-effective manner that both students and teaching staff benefit.

This study provides theoretical consideration and empirical estimation of the crowding out effects of subsidized housing supply at the city level. In particular, the aim is to explore the influence of subsidized housing stock on supply and prices in the non-subsidized housing sector. The empirical analysis is based on data for 1995-2015 for a panel of ten largest Finnish cities, all of which have a considerable supply of subsidized housing offering rental dwellings at lower than market rents. The empirical results indicate that, on average, one more subsidized dwelling is associated with 0.4 fewer non-subsidized dwellings. While the influence on non-subsidized housing prices could be either positive or negative in theory, the effect is price decreasing in the Finnish case. The study contributes to the very scarce scientific literature on crowding out effects of subsidized housing and appears to be the first one to distinguish between the crowding out impact that takes place through the influence via demand for non-subsidized housing vs. the supply curve effect.

The assets under management of property fund managers have been increasing over the last decade. The low interest rate environment and stability of property values relative to other asset class values has made property an attractive to wholesale investors. A large number of these investors are superannuation funds, who invest in property indirectly through property fund managers. As the characteristics of property, such as large value, heterogeneity, illiquid and large transaction costs, are so different to other asset classes, decision making by property fund managers is not expected to be the same as decision making on other asset classes. This paper surveys fourteen property fund managers on the factors that influence their decision making. The analytical hierarchical process (AHP) is used to allow pair-wise comparisons of the relative factors to be undertaken. This allows the factors to be ranked in order of importance. The factor strategic decision making is found to be considerably more important than the other factors in the survey. This is very different to the findings of earlier surveys in the United States, the Netherlands and Australia, which found geographical location and property type to be the preferred factors.

In contrast to its European neighbors, Germany’s rental housing market has a long tradition. 54.3 % of all Germans live in rental housing. According to surveys, property acquisitions for rental purposes are on the rise and high purchase prices boost European rental markets. Simultaneously, individuals increasingly value flexibility and tend to minimize terms of commitment, resulting in major changes for the real estate industry. As a consequence, property investors need to consider shortened lease terms and a higher probability of tenants moving out, resulting in longer amortization periods and increased capital expenditure. On the one hand, long leases create stable income flows and require less capital-intensive maintenance strategies, but are confronted with higher legal burdens to increase rents. This is especially relevant to properties where a high margin between market rent and contractual rent is observable. On the other hand, short lease terms enable instantaneous adjustment to equilibrium market rents once the tenant has moved out, but also lead to higher fluctuation and wear of the subject property and directly encompass substantial refurbishment, administration and reletting costs. Therefore, the ability of residential investment properties to generate adequate returns stands or falls with tenant behavior. This obviously creates the need for more and deeper research in this field of study. Thus, the paper at hand aims to contribute to the theory, practice and development trends of residential property leases. The authors analyze a steady panel dataset of 500 residential housing units throughout one of the most overheated metropolitan German areas, namely Munich, from 2007 to 2017. Consequently, the analysis covers periods of boom and bust, making findings extremely robust. Based on a desktop literature review and a Cox proportional hazard model, the authors provide a more in-depth explanation of influence factors for effectively observed lease terms in residential markets. The authors support the hypothesis that main drivers of lease duration are tenant and property attributes, effective rental price increases, geo-referenced location variables and macroeconomic indicators. Due to bounded availability of data, current research in this field is still limited, especially in Germany. Thus, the study at hand should provide deeper insights into the decision making process of tenants and its implications for investors in the German residential market

Over the past five years, the private rented sector (PRS) has become a significant asset class for institutional investors in the UK. One of the main determinants of returns from residential investment property is the income obtained from tenants’ rent. Income return is affected by several factors, including residents’ satisfaction and their loyalty (in renewing their lease). The ease with which a landlord can let vacant property also depends upon their reputation, the desirability of the neighbourhood, the rental terms and the properties themselves.

This paper analyses more than 5000 interviews with PRS tenants in the UK, conducted over a four-year period, to investigate determinants of resident satisfaction, loyalty (lease renewal) and willingness to recommend their landlord. Statistical analysis is performed using respondents’ ratings of satisfaction with many aspects of their occupancy as explanatory variables. Comparisons are made between interviewees who renew their lease and those who do not renew.
  
The research finds that “ease of doing business” with their landlord is a strong predictor of residents’ satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy. Tenants who perceive they receive ‘poor’ or’ very poor’ value for money for their rent at mid-term interview are nearly four times more likely not to renew their lease. Other key indicators for lease renewal include maintenance, rent collection and the moving-in process. Tenants’ willingness to recommend their landlord depends mainly on their relationship with their landlord, how the landlord compares with tenants’ previous landlords, the processes of moving in and moving out, lease renewal terms and the provision of communal services.

This research should help to improve the landlord – tenant relationship in the Private Rented Sector.
 

We examine building height, historical building costs and current rental income for a sample of office buildings in the Netherlands. We address whether urban morphology, like building height and density, reflects the standard economic law of substitution between capital and land. Do we observe high building heights in attractive economic centres in which land is substituted for capital, and low building heights in less attractive centres? This is the central question we address in our research. We use a stratified sample strategy to sample office buildings with varying height and use historical information on development costs and match these to current rental transaction data.

We have learned many practices of how other leading countries develop and implement their housing policies, especially in China and Malaysia. The essential parts of a multi-faceted housing policy is to provide housing for low-income areas and to determine housing policy by assessing supply, demand and mortgage rates. At the initial stage of housing market, the price is unstable, is in turmoil and is not regulated. At the second stage, a price stabilization program and supply of low-income area housing programs are implemented. In UB city of Mongolia, we are in greatest need of housing policy development as the majority of the cities population live in ""ger district"", these ""gers"", a traditional yurt, are not supplied with heating, plumbing or hot water. In order to stay warm in one of the coldest cities in the world, those people have to use coal extensively for home heat and cooking, causing extremely dangerous levels of air pollution in the city. It shows that we are in need of excellent housing policy to be developed and implemented immediately. The first part of the paper will discuss about applying the study of Chinese housing policy in Mongolia and reveal that our housing market is frozen, but has excess supply and is in high need of housing price and regulation. The second part of the paper will discuss about how bench marking from the housing policies of European countries were not suitable for Mongolia

Development Viability Assessment is now a central plank in UK national planning policy and the residual property valuation model is used by landowners, developers and the local authorities to determine the level of planning obligations that can be sought from the developers/landowners in exchange for the grant of permission to develop.  The Government requires that local planning authorities do not ask for contributions that will stifle development and that LPAs should ensure that developers and landowners get a “competitive return”.

There is now a body of academic and other comment that the viability assessment regime has acted to ensure that not only do landowners and developers get a competitive return, the system allows them to receive more than that at the expense of the LPA.  This paper briefly reviews this literature and constructs a hypothetical case study to examine the process; specifically the impact of Planning Practice Guidance (PPG) on two specific inputs into the development appraisal/viability model.

The paper illustrates that the two aspects – ignoring changes in values and costs over the development period coupled with instructions that comparable evidence is proof of policy compliant land prices – are fundamentally flawed and a major cause of the reduction in the delivery of planning obligations.  

At the time of writing the abstract, the UK Government is currently consulting on the need to change the wording of its PPG to remove these and any other flaws. By the time of the conference any proposed changes will have been proposed and the paper will critique any proposals.

We use a rich data set consisting of 123,000 houses sold in Switzerland between 2004 and 2017 to investigate different automated valuation techniques in settings where the models are updated regularly. We apply six methods (linear regression, robust regression, mixed effects regression, gradient boosting, random forests, and neural networks) to both moving window and extending window models. With respect to the criteria of appraisal accuracy and stability, the preferred methods are robust regression using moving windows, gradient boosting using extending windows, or mixed effects regression for either strategy.

When disentangling the real effects of bank credit in the demand-supply dynamics of both the asset market and the real economy, it is disaggregate bank credit, which holds quantitatively important information. This is all the more relevant when persistent economic policy uncertainty dominates the demand-supply equilibrium in these markets. To examine this in the context of the international housing market, we develop an empirically testable framework and perform a panel VAR estimation for a unique quarterly dataset consisting of nine industrialized countries. We find that credit to the real economy and housing prices depict mutually reinforcing relationships. Moreover, we find that there is a negligible negative effect of credit to the asset market on housing prices in the short-run, and such effects are positive over the long-run. Alternatively, the effect of housing prices on credit to the asset market is positive in both the short- and long-run. Moreover, the dynamic interdependent effects of housing prices and credit to the asset market are more pronounced when economic policy uncertainty and the global financial crisis are respectively accounted for in our estimation. Finally, a battery of robustness checks confirms our predictions.

This paper investigates the relationship between office buildings and their tenants. More specifically, we ask the question, whether the tenants of certified green office buildings differ in terms of credit-worthiness from the tenants of non-certified buildings. For the empirical analysis, we use data for Vienna, Austria. With this study, we want to relate two areas, which according to our knowledge are completely separated both in the theoretical discussion and in the current practice of the real estate and finance industry. This is quite surprising taking into account the central role of finance in real estate economics. Nevertheless, establishing a link between characteristics of buildings (certification as Green building) and of building tenants (credit rating) is potentially very important. Tenants with better credit ratings offer a lower risk of rent default and therefore higher property value when viewed from an income approach perspective. For the empirical analysis, we use data on buildings from public sources and ÖGNI (Austrian Green Building Council). Data on credit ratings come from Creditreform AG.

Following the recent developments in the asset pricing literature of geographic diversification, we abandon classic theories based on information asymmetry and explain the short-run performance of REIT IPOs over history though an investor base mechanism. We analyse the US market and find evidence that issuers are less likely to underprice (or more likely to overprice) when the REIT is more diversified and therefore the investor base is bigger. Even if both types of diversification are significant, geographic diversification shows a stronger impact on initial returns than property-type diversification. Our argument and the deadweight cost theory complement each other as lower deadweight cost associated with the IPO weakens the influence of the geographic diversification on the initial returns of IPOs. Our results are robust to different measures of private market returns and time fixed effects. In the end we show that a Herfindahl index should be preferred as a measure of geographic diversification, which is not the case for property-type diversification.

In this article we study the effect of change in the market value of corporate real estate (CRE) assets on firms' stock returns. We show that a positive shock in the value of CRE assets positively affects stock returns of real estate owning firms. We further document - "real estate based stock return comovement" - that is, stock returns of firms which either experience increase in their pledgeable collateral, or own higher proportion of CRE assets, or both comove with each other and this comovement is cyclical in nature. We also show that the degree of comovement is higher in the periods of increasing values of CRE, as well as for firms that are financially constrained and headquartered in the same geographical area.

Discrimination is prevalent in the world. There are many pieces of research literature undertaken that studied the various forms of discrimination in the labour market. Discrimination occurs due to different reasons such as nationalities, skin colours, genders, performances, physically handicapped and looks. We used a unique dataset of over 1600 realtors working in two of the more established real estate agencies in Singapore to study whether beauty premium exists in this labour market. The study used commission data, from 2013 to 2016, the demographics, and photographs of all agents involved. We estimated the real estate agents’ look by applying golden ratio theory and a series of surveys conducted by the reviewers using the Likert scale. The study found that there was a compelling and negative correlation between beauty and commission. We further explore why beauty premium does not apply to this industry; we selected a smaller sample size of realtors, 93, and conducted a series of personality profiling tests to determine the traits that allowed them to perform well in the real estate industry. Our results showed that top realtors tend to display dominance, a little shy, higher educated, self-disciple and were more experience.

We analyze to what extend sales prices for residential housing prices react towards rent-price regulation. We do this exploiting a quasi-natural design in the German federal state of Brandenburg while using actual transaction price data, provided by the committee of evaluation experts. Brandenburg announced and introduced both a capping limit for existing rental contracts as well as a price ceiling for new contracts for municipalities with ”tight housing markets” in 2014. Whether or not a municipality falls under this classification is based upon a region’s housing data that is translated into a specific score that ranges from 0 to 100. The regulations were introduced in municipalities with scores of above the average plus two standard deviations. We exploit this sharp cut-off point in a regression discontinuity design. First, we standardize prices in a hedonic regression model. Then we compare prices in regions that are located marginally above this threshold with prices in those slightly below. The analysis contains 15 municipalities in the treatment and 20 in the control group. An analysis of media citations shows that the public discussion of the two instruments did not start before the year 2013. We therefore compare a time frame before 2013 with one after 2014 to exclude anticipation effects. We expect to find no significant effects when we use a time-frame prior to media coverage of the regulations. When people are generally informed, however, apartment prices should be lower in regulated regions.

The changes in market price levels of residential real estate market may occur due to several reasons. Those reasons may have either positive or negative influence, causing either the rise or fall in the level of real estate market prices. Sometimes it may happen that the same real estate asset may be affected by several different factors at the same time, which normally, in ceteris paribus condition, have detrimental effect on the market price level, but bundled together, may cause a co-effect in a manner, where the overall influence on the direction of the level of real estate market price is difficult to identify.

One of those hardly identifiable co-effects may occur, if to put together sharp changes in the real estate market conditions with the sharp and detrimental changes in the environmental conditions. Changes in real estate market conditions are measured mostly by the changes in macro- and microeconomic indices, such as changes in economic growth, inflation rate, general and bank loan interest rates and demographics, as well as certain specific physical and market features of the certain types of real estate assets. On the other hand, the possible detrimental environmental conditions might be evoked by different weather events, like heavy wind, causing a storm, hurricane, tornado, and tsunami, also snow, droughts, frosts, heavy rainfall, and lightning, but also by fire, flooding, earthquake, avalanches, tidal waves, and landslides. Usually, several of those mentioned environmental events occur also in a bundle, either at the same time or in a particular sequence in a certain time-frame. 

This study aims to explore both short- and long-term effects of one-time major flooding incident on residential real estate market prices in the city of Pärnu, in Estonia. The studied marine-coastal flooding event was induced by a heavy storm, caused by the hurricane called “Erwin/Gudrun” at the 9th of January, 2005. 

The authors offer their own holistic theoretical framework, elaborated further from Tobin and Newton (1986) theory, explaining the phenomenon of flooding on real estate market prices. 

In the empirical part, the authors seek for alternative solutions to mainstream quantitative methods in similar studies, like repeat sales and hedonic regression analysis, to find robust evidences for identifying the effect of flooding on residential real estate market prices in terms of a small sample analysis of flooded versus non-flooded area transactions data.

This study analyses the behaviour of energy consumption in some regions of Spain, as Catalonia, the Valencian Community and La Rioja. Since Spain has different climate areas, we divide the study in three parts, one for each climate area. We make this differentiation because the climate and the local characteristics, are important in the energy consumption (Estiri, 2014). We seek to clarify the effect of energy consumption on housing, from the point of view of efficiency and energy saving.

First, we make an empirical analysis which consists in an observation of energy consumption behaviour according the housing characteristics, like surface, volume, altitude, tier…, and the equipment. The literature indicates that the physical characteristics of the home, such as size (Ewing & Rong, 2008; Shimoda et al., 2012), age (Chong, 2012) and type of housing (Brounen et al, 2012, Estiri, 2014) have a positive and significant impact on energy consumption. However, factors such as climate, location or energy markets do not provide a clear answer and there are discrepancies between the authors (Chong, 2012; Estiri, 2014; Hojjati & Wade, 2012). In addition to this fact, the literature shows that in both climates, improvements in insulation reduce energy consumption (Adan & Fuerst, 2015).

In a second step, we analyse the relation between energy consumption and market prices. Some studies have found that exists a premium in selling prices and rents when houses are more energy efficient (Cajias et al., 2016; Eichholtz et al., 2012; De Ayala et al., 2016).

To obtain this information of Spain, we use the Energy Certificates data, the housing data and the transaction price data. These databases are formed with revealed information extracted from public sources. Since we use three different databases, we need to build the database to implement a model of hedonic prices. We analyse the energy consumption and its relation to the dwelling characteristics with a semi-log model. 

Finally, we answer the question, if in Spain exists a ‘green premium’ in the most efficient houses, using a hedonic model to obtain the relevance of each characteristic and their sign in the final price of a transaction. 
 

The study looked at different energy efficiency practices specifically within the facilities management sector and ascertained barriers to adopting energy efficient strategies, it further explored the factors that promote the employment of energy efficient practices. This data was gathered from a purposive sample of 50 facilities professionals through an online survey. Energy efficient lighting and equipment are mostly used energy efficiency practices. It further uncovered that occupant engagement and education is considered least, amongst current energy efficiency practices. This study revealed that the biggest barrier to the implementation of energy efficient facilities management practices is the cost implication of adopting FM strategies and rated the lowest were policies and regulations of energy efficiency standards.  Cost reduction is the highest rated factor that promotes energy efficiency practices. This study recommends that businesses disregard the initial financial implications of adopting energy efficient strategies in light of the long term benefits and to engage with end users as this could also lead to better facilities management with the information they provide. This study also suggests that awareness of some practices can also improve facilities management practices in the Johannesburg area.

Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) are introduced to give property buyers better information about the energy efficiency of dwellings, and provide incentives to make energy efficient investment. Previous studies on EPCs effect on property value has given divergent results, some studies find that energy label affect property value, while others find that energy labels have low or no effect. The present paper takes it one step further. Indeed, by using data on energy price in combination with transaction data from Oslo, we conclude not only that the energy label – but the energy performance of dwellings in general – has minor or no effect on transaction prices. This result falls in line with what is inferred by several survey studies; at the moment people buy a dwelling, they pay considerably less attention to the energy performance as compared to other factors, like the availability of garden and outdoor space, location, the neighborhood and the size of the property.

Proximity to the central business district (CBD) is considered to be a significant determinant of the real estate price formation as households are willing to pay more for housing that is closer to CBD in order to decrease the commuting costs. There is no consensus on the measure of distance, rather, various measures are used by different authors. Within a city, the opportunity costs of time in transportation represent a major part of the commuting costs. Thus, many authors believe that using travel time represents the accessibility to CBD more accurately than distance variables. An interesting question is how different distance measures influence the overall quality of the hedonic model and the estimated parameters in the model.

This article draws on recent development in GIS techniques for computing travel distance and time between a number of points on a map using different travel modes to examine hedonic price functions for the apartment market in Bratislava. If real estate market is in equilibrium, attractiveness of location is fully capitalised into property prices. Our research is based on information from 1334 internet offers of apartments for sale in year 2016, which includes information about basic characteristics of individual apartments and the building in which the apartment is located. Using Google Maps Distance Matrix API service, we computed travel distance and travel time to the city centre for walking, public transportation (transit) and driving travel mode. In addition to distance to the city centre we also include the district in which the apartment is located. As the hedonic models of apartment prices usually suffer from the presence of spatial autocorrelation leading to biased and/or inefficient OLS estimates, we use both spatial and non-spatial models.

In general, we have confirmed the negative slope of the distance gradient in Bratislava. District specific parameters generally decline with moving away from CBD and all distance measures showed negative coefficients. In addition, we found that the role of district-specific particularities is over-estimated in both spatial and non-spatial models when using crow fly measurement of distance to the city centre compared with other types of distance measurements.
 

Property and property values are increasingly threatened by sea level rise impacts. The implications may not necessarily be immediate, but property stakeholders and property values will be affected on multiple levels. If no action is taken, the effect on property values will be through a variety of direct, indirect, immediate and long-term impacts, which may jeopardise our property markets and broader financial structures with the ultimate cost being paid by owners, occupiers and the community. Limited information, lack of full disclosure and transparency of implications of future effects inhibit property stakeholders to identify risks associated with sea level rise to actively respond to mitigate or adapt to potential risks and for this risk to be adequately reflected in values. 

Albeit sea level rise in many areas won’t necessarily cause full inundation. The sea level rise modelling relied upon at present by Australian governments assumes a ‘flat water’ scenario. Further, with modelling becoming more accurate increases to sea level height expectations grows. Subsequently, current estimates being relied upon grossly underestimates the implications of sea level rise, particularly in the consideration of the impact of new flood levels and storm surges. 

This paper uses a case study area of the City of Port Phillip, a municipality on the bay in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It uses a bathtub approach using GIS modelling to examine a range of sea level heights and then incorporates existing factors like flooding and storm surge. The initial analysis examines the distribution of all properties affected within the municipality and the exponential increase in affected properties. A hedonic model was then used to examine residential sales prices over 5 years to examine whether existing flooding overlays have an effect on prices and also tested to see whether potential ‘sea level rise’ height was having an effect on sales prices. This is an important consideration for the development of policy and regulations in relation to building development and ownership and occupation. The results highlight that property stakeholders are not considering the risk implications of sea level rise into their property based activities and are under prepared for the future challenges and implications sea level rise and the ancillary effects of future flooding, inundation and storm surge.
 

This novel research project draws upon the experience of a small number of experimental research projects in seeking to extend some of the frontiers to the spatial modelling of commercial real estate markets. In so doing, it explores new ways of capturing, integrating, representing, illustrating and modelling commercial real estate data with other spatial variables.There is tacit understanding of the relationship between the distribution of commercial properties, and spatial factors such as proximity to footfall, transport and other infrastructure. However, there has been surprisingly little research that has been able to illustrate these tangled market relationships using spatial analyses, underpinned by empirical quantitative data. This research project has developed a methodology to visualise the distribution of rateable value, used as a proxy for the attractiveness of commercial property, across a pilot study area, in this case, the City of York, in North Yorkshire, England.The project has experimented with the use of grid squares to analyse geo-spatial relations of commercial real estate variables (such as, rental value, stock, vacancy, availability) with other spatial variables (such as, infrastructural facilities, transportation nodes). The project has confirmed that grid squares are more effective at representing data that are unevenly distributed across urban space at city level, than other artificial delineations, such as area postcodes, political boundaries or streets. The grid square approach can be further enhanced using 3D extrusions which facilitate simultaneous representation of an additional data characteristic, for example total stock combined with average rental value by location. Finally, modelling was conducted using hexagonal rather than grid squares, which revealed that hexagonal tiles are potentially more accurate, due to the proximity of data to the centroid of the tile (effectively losing the corners) and more efficacious at representing linear spatial patterns of of commercial property market data due to hexagons having 50% more directions of alignment than square tiles.

Improving the energy efficiency in buildings is an important element of Canada’s federal and provincial energy policy. In Quebec, commercial and institutional property owners and managers are currently going through unprecedented governance, technological and managerial transformation. Many energy management systems and guides are proposed to provide organizations with a framework to improve energy management such that it can increase energy efficiency, reduce costs, improve the building’s energy performance while at the same time reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, many questions persist, such as: how can energy management be integrated into the core organizational management and strategy of an organization? What specific energy management processes can be implemented in an organization? How can the energy function be added into the general building management system?

The aims of this research were: to identify and analyze exemplary energy management practices associated with the implementation of energy management programs by the owners or managers of Quebec’s commercial and institutional buildings; to identify and produce five case studies describing the process of implementing an energy management program in building in Quebec. 

To achieve these aims, we started our research with a review of contemporary approaches for managing energy and a review of published literature. The theoretical framework for this study is the process studies of change in organization and management. We were inspired by the process for explaining development and change in organizations recommended by Van de Ven, A. and Poole S. (1995) and the process for studying organisational change and development recommended by Pettigrew, A., Woodman, R., & Cameron, K. (2001). 

Our paper differs from current studies as we applied the methodology of case studies research (Yin, 2013) with many sources of evidence. It is an opportunity for Quebec’s government as well as for the building owners and managers to learn from case examples, to better understand how to overcome energy management barriers, how to better capture benefits and identify or adopt new energy management practices in order to improve their current energy management system. Finally, this research provides guidelines for building managers in implementing energy management in a context where the improvement of energy efficiency is important but the energy cost is inexpensive and renewable. 
 

Recent tribunal decisions upon the use of hedonic models for assessing the extent of the price impact on dwellings due to the length of unexpired lease term have pushed the topic into the spotlight once again. A major focus of this study will be testing the robustness of the lease dummy approach, as this is the method currently finding itself increasingly adopted/accepted in the industry in explaining relativities. Within this analysis we will examine whether the differing geographical constraints of sample properties that constitute traditional graphs of relativity could lead to the differing levels of relativities produced by those graphs. 

Our study will cover issues that we have found on data quality, model constraints and the impact of factors such as alternate methods of incorporating locational constraints have on the calculation of leasehold enfranchisement relativities within the London residential market.
 

The paper investigates the sentiment-oriented trading behavior of the four types of investors in London office market, i.e. UK institutional investors, UK private investors, UK listed real estate companies/REITs and overseas investors and the factors that influence these types of investor sentiment and trading behavior. Related indices are first calculated to examine whether sentiment change of one investor type leads to changes in the sentiments of other investor types. Factors that drive the investor sentiment and trading activity of different investor types are then tested. We find that UK private investors follow a contrarian strategy to UK institutional investors and UK listed real estate companies/REITs and enter/exit the market at different points of time. UK institutional investors tend to follow the sentiment of UK listed real estate companies/REITs and overseas investors with some lags. There is no evidence that overseas investors rely upon the sentiment of UK specialized property investors in their decision-making. Another main finding is that past return is positively related to UK institutions’ trading activity, but negatively related to overseas investor’s sentiment and trading activity. When breaking down the property return into capital value growth and rental growth, UK institutional investors’ sentiment and trading activity is driven by capital value growth in the previous period and the sentiment of UK listed real estate companies/REITs is driven by rental growth of the previous period. Overseas investors and UK private investors trade against the sentiment of UK institutional investors, increasing their investment when capital value growth is slower.

In this research, we look at the impact that potential landslide hazard has on residential values in La Baie, an arrondissement of the City of Saguenay (formerly Chicoutimi), Quebec, Canada. La Baie was one of the neighbourhoods most affected by the Saguenay flood, the biggest overland flood in 20th-century Canadian history that hit the region on July 19 and 20, 1996. Following that natural disaster, municipal and provincial authorities worked together to improve resident security. More stringent land-use regulations were issued while landslide hazard maps were regularly updated and made public from 2004 onwards, with local authorities making sure that the information on potential landslide exposure was widely accessible to residents. In light of all these events, the question then arises as to whether, and to what extent, known potential exposure to landslide risk has affected the La Baie housing market, which includes some 8,100 housing units, 95% of which are principal residences. Experiencing a drop in one’s property value, being denied a mortgage loan or having to pay a higher insurance premium are all factors that could affect homebuyers’ perceptions and decisions. This study rests on applying hedonic price modelling on a representative sample of 1,078 single-family sales transacted in La Baie between 2009 (Q1) and 2016 (Q4). Out of these sales, 392 are located on land subject to various degrees of landslide hazard and therefore affected by building constraints over the protection buffer at either the top or the bottom of the slope, or both. On average, houses have a living area and lot area of 96 m2 and 839 m2, respectively, while their market value stands at 143,175 $ CAD. For affected properties, the average lot area subject to building constraints stands at 365 m2 for protection buffers and at 150 m2 for slopes. Findings suggest that potential exposure to landslide risk exerts a detrimental impact on values only where the area of the protection buffer and that of the slope exceeds 300 m2 and 320 m2, respectively. Beyond these thresholds, affected properties experience a value loss of roughly 6% when compared with unaffected ones. Finally, homebuyers seem to value house attributes that improve security of the premises: the height of a retaining wall yields a positive, and statistically significant,coefficient, with each additional meter raising house values by 1.4% to 1.7%.

In 1988 the Teaching and Higher Education Act introduced tuition fees in all the countries of the UK. However, as result of the establishment of devolved national administrations for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, different fee arrangements now exist in each country. For example, in England and Wales, tuition fees for UK and EU students are capped at £9,250 p.a., while in Northern Ireland the fees are limited to £4,030 p.a. In Scotland, universities are not allowed to charge fees to Scottish based or EU students, but instead received funding from the Scottish government, which varies by subject, but averages around £5,000 p.a. per student. This funding model has introduced significant differences in the financial strength of the universities both between and within countries and has been subject to considerable criticism from all stakeholders, with alternative funding options being promoted by opposition political parties.

This differential funding model exists at a time when universities are facing a very competitive market to attract both UK and international students in a post Brexit environment. This has resulted in significant capital investment by a number of universities on major building works, to maintain and grow student numbers. While some of the funding has been supported by the rise in tuition fee income, universities have also used a range of funding options from private bond issuance to commercial bank lending, both short term and long term, and loans from the European Investment Bank to finance the expenditure.
 
Adopting a corporate finance theory perspective, this paper considers the appropriate mix of debt and equity which is appropriate for major capital projects in the HE sector. Utilising both HESA data returns and published annual accounts, in-depth analysis using a nested logit structure was carried out on data from the top 63 UK universities over the period 2013 to 2016, to establish the range of funding sources adopted for major capital projects, all set within the context of the UK macro environment and a period of low interest rates. The research also carried out a survey of funders to understand the decision criteria used by lenders active in the HE sector and to understand how the borrowers are monitored ex ante and ex post the lending event. 

The research reveals significant differences in covenant strength across the HE sector with a wide division emerging and differential access to the public markets. 

Real estate is the last major asset class without liquid derivatives markets. The reasons for that are not fully known or understood. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to better understand the main factors that influence the propensity of commercial real estate investors in the U.K. to employ property derivatives.

The research methodology that was chosen for the this research is grounded theory which, in its original form, goes back to Glaser and Strauss (1967). A total of 43 interviews were conducted with real estate professionals in the U.K. from property investment management firms (investing directly or indirectly in real estate), multi-asset management firms, real estate investment trusts (REITs), banks, and brokerage and advisory firms, among others.

The research results show 29 factors that influence the propensity of direct and indirect real estate investors in the U.K to employ property derivatives. Out of the 29 factors there are 12 with high explanatory power, six with a contributing role and 11 with low explanatory power. Moreover, factors previously discussed in the literature are tested and assessed as to their explanatory power. The focus of this paper is on those factors with high explanatory power.

From the research data, three main reasons have been identified as the sources of investor reluctance to trade in property derivatives. The first and main reason is related to a mismatch between motivations of property investment managers and what can be achieved with the instruments. The second reason, which ties in with the first one, is a general misunderstanding as to the right pricing technique of property derivatives. Finally, the third reason is a general lack of hedging demand from the investor base owing to the long investment horizons through market cycles.

The research contributes to the literature on property derivatives in various ways. First, it extends the literature on market hurdles in property derivatives markets by testing and extending the hurdles that were proposed previously. Second, the research shows that the existing price models need to be extended in order to account for the risk perception of practitioners and their concerns with regard to liquidity levels.

For both theory and practice, the research has shown some limitations in using property derivatives for purposes such as creating index exposure or hedging.

We live in an increasingly urbanised world. Currently more than 50 per cent of the world’s population lives in cities, and this is set to grow to 70% by 2050. Recently we have seen an increasing focus on information and communications technology (ICT) to argue the case for ‘smart cities’. This places a strong emphasis on an ICT-led and a ‘data-driven’ future, which also positions the development of new products, processes, organisational methods and markets at the heart of the continued ambition for urban economic growth. 

The interconnected agendas of smart cities and big data and open data, on the face of it, provide bold and exciting opportunities for the built environment professions. But, what in reality will those opportunities be, and what are the challenges? This research, conducted from 2015-2016, seeks to address those questions and focuses on the city level.

The research focuses on a technocratic approach to use of data in smart cities, and how we can make this accessible to built environment stakeholders. We explore the extent to which the built environment sector is engaging with the smart city at ‘programme’ scale (i.e. city-wide) and ‘project’ scale (i.e. urban data platform and other applications). To do this we compare four smart city programmes to pose three primary research questions:

• How have smart city programmes and projects evolved in these cities?
• What has shaped this evolution?
• What is the nature and extent of the built environment sector’s role in such programmes and projects?

The research consisted of interviews in four case studies in Bristol, Milton Keynes, Amsterdam and Taipei and a UK expert workshop."

The aim of this study is to analyze and compare the abnormal earnings announcement returns of «green» and «non-green» U.S. REITs from 2010 to 2017. We focus on the impact of financial analysts’ forecast accuracy, market-level uncertainty, REIT-level uncertainty and synchronicity. First, we document the coverage, the accuracy and the bias of financial analysts’ earnings forecasts (ffo) on «green» and «non-green» REITs. Our results report that the level of accuracy and the level of optimism are statistically different for these two categories. Second, we observe that abnormal stock returns, abnormal trading volume and abnormal volatility may be related to «greenness» and synchronicity.  Our results shed a new light on the link between the concept of «greenness» and the level of information on stock markets.

Science parks as area developments have existed for decades and have captivated the attention of academics and policy-makers for their supposedly positive impact on resident organisations and regions. To date there is mixed empirical evidence to indicate the performance enhancing effects of specific science park features on research & development, economic output or improved collaboration between users. Furthermore, limited attention is given to the demands and perceptions of science park users. This study focuses on one of the main features of science parks, namely the shared facilities and services on-site and how users perceive the benefits of these facilities.

An online survey is distributed to  594 resident organisations on eight science parks in the Netherlands to which 112 participated. Within the questionnaire respondents are inquired on organisational characteristics in order to distinguish tenant types through clustering on aspects, such as R&D activity, organisation size, sector diversity. Then respondents indicate the benefits they perceive for specific presented shared facilities and services retrieved from science park literature based on their importance. Finally, respondents indicated meaningful associations between shared facilities and benefits. 

Results show that among resident organisations three distinguishable clusters emerge; ‘non-R&D organisations’, ‘R&D start-ups’, and ‘R&D small-medium enterprises’ with each cluster mentioning different benefits that they value . In general, knowledge sharing and on-site collaboration are most frequently mentioned as important science park benefits and are mostly associated to training programs and information access. Both ‘R&D start-ups’ and ‘non-R&D organisations’ value the opportunity to be near customers for different reasons, while ‘R&D small medium entrepreneurs’ perceive social events as a means to be close to the university or other higher educational institutions. 

The associations between various types of shared facilities and benefits that residents seek provide insights for practitioners in terms of the design and management of science parks and add to the body of knowledge of science park literature. 
 

A growing body of research uses textual analysis to examine the tone or sentiment of newspaper articles, press releases and investor message boards in order to characterize the relationship between media reports and market movements. However, the applications of textual analysis to real estate markets are rather rarely especially to the German market.

Most of the time, the starting point to conduct textual analysis is a sentiment annotated wordlist. Therefore, in a first step, a survey among more than 1,600 real estate experts is conducted in order to objectively reveal positive-neutral-negative sentiment word classifications. The results form a discipline-specific “German Real Estate Sentiment Dictionary”, which consists of about 2,000 positive and negative words. Hence, in a second step, the German Real Estate Sentiment Dictionary is applied to media data of the most important German real estate newspaper in order to investigate whether there is a potential relationship between the generated sentiment index and the German real estate market.

This research opens up not only a whole new dataset and its application to the German real estate profession, it is a unique example how dictionary-based textual analysis can be transferred to non-English-speaking countries.
 

This paper applied both univariate and multivariate approaches to forecast the volatility of Swedish Real Estate Sector Index (OMX Stockholm Real Estate PI) from January 1st 2000 to January 1st 2018. OMX Stockholm Real Estate PI is an industry stock index, which contains all shares those are classified as a real estate company and listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. This index is constructed based on the guidance of Industry Classification Benchmark (ICB), which is designed to track the performance of real estate industries on NASDAQ OMX Stockholm. 

Firstly, various univariate methods have been applied such as ARIMA, alternative GARCH models to perform the analysis and forecasting. 

Secondly, we analyzed the dynamic correlations of three time-varying indexes: OMX Stockholm Real Estate PI, OMX Stockholm 30 (OMX 30), and Nasdaq OMX Valueguard-KTH Housing Index (HOX Index). OMX30 is one of the Nordic most well-known stock indexes which includes the 30 most traded shares on the Stockholm Stock's Exchange and is considered as the indicator of the performance of the whole Stockholm Stock Exchange. Hox Index is the mostly used housing index in Sweden. Multivariate methods such as GMM, VAR lag model, ARCH models have been applied to investigate the relationship among indexes. 

Finally, we selected OMX Stockholm Real Estate PI, OMX Copenhagen Real Estate PI, OMX Helsinki Real Estate PI, Nordic Real Estate PI and US REITs to study the volatility spillover effects between US and Scandinavian countries and the existence of spillover effects among Nordic countries from period 2000 to 2018. 

As for now, we are working on the model constructions and selections, and the result parts are still in process.     
 

A growing literature on how economic decision making is influenced by firms’ geographic location has emerged. We add to this stream of research by assessing the effects of geography in an asset pricing context from the firm’s perspective. We introduce a new concept of location for asset pricing accounting for the location of firms’ income-producing assets and use the information of the assets’ geographic allocation to provide a trading strategy. We use real estate and mining companies in the US to map the extract location of their income-producing assets – the properties and the mines – and to distinguish between firms with concentrated and dispersed business operations as defined by the Herfindahl index. We find that the dispersion of firms’ income-producing assets has a positive effect on returns yielding an alpha. On the other hand, concentrated firms underperform the market. Those vary with size and specialisation degree of the firms with small and specialised firms being more strongly negatively affected by the concentration effect and large and don-specialised firms more strongly positively affected by the dispersion effect. The research provides new insights into the role of location for asset pricing and shows that asset concentration can be a useful tool for strategic investment. The findings are in line with the information asymmetry theory that investors need to be rewarded for investing in a company for which it is hard to obtain and assess information about the firm’s assets due to its dispersion.

Since the turn of the new millennium, there are positive trends indicating increasing interest in real estate as an asset class, especially by foreign investors. Despite the fall in real estate investment activities during the global financial crisis (Newell, Adair and McGreal, 2010), the momentum picked up shortly after that with renewed interest in cross-border investment activity by a wider range of investors and changing geographies. Also, the entrance of more significant market participants (Sovereign Wealth Funds, Endowment Funds, Investment Banks, etc.), the development of new real estate investment vehicles and the availability of debt financing also implies significant increases in available funds and interest in real estate investments. 

Furthermore, real estate investment especially the cross-border investment is mostly concentrated in prime locations, particularly the office markets, in the major global cities of London, New York, and Tokyo. This investor sentiment towards the prime location is enhanced in periods of crisis and uncertainty, for example, the 2007 global financial crisis. Existing studies argue that this trend results in a reduction in real estate diversification benefits especially in the international context as well as yield compression due to the availability of limited stocks. However, the established global cities continue to attract significant investment flows. This resilience of the global cities in attracting international real estate capital flows, albeit the increasing significance of real estate capital flows into emerging markets, has rekindled interest on the drivers of real estate capital flows and the performance of real estate markets in the global cities particularly the office market. Similarly, the increase in global uncertainties due to socio-economic and political trends, for instance, BREXIT, global conflicts and de-globalisation agendas highlight the need for more insights on the behaviour of international real estate capital flows.

This research aims to identify and evaluate major factors influencing global capital flows and investments in real estate with specific reference to office markets in global cities. There is an extensive body of research pertaining to factors driving global real estate capital flows. However, this body of research mostly focuses on country-specific (pull) factors with little or no consideration for the role and significance of global factors on real estate capital 

In this paper we draw on a proprietary database to analyze if the price premium of green certification in the EU depends on the location of buildings. Specifically, we focus on Finland, France and Germany, countries with extensive information regarding green buildings transactions during the 2010 to 2015 period. Considering the increasing demand for certification, we expect that sale prices for green buildings are higher relative to non-green buildings. We first assess if green certification is associated with a price premium in the analyzed countries. Second, we assess the effect that the location of green buildings has on the price premium. Our findings suggest that (i) buildings with green certification have a 19 percent higher price relative to non-certificated buildings and (ii) in cities of under 500 000 people, the price premium increases with the distance from the city center. Our results are robust to a series of robustness checks. We contribute to the rising literature on green buildings as the only study to assess the price impact of green certification in European countries.

Purpose
Through the use of existing literature and desk research from academia and practice, this paper will outline the degree to which there is a difference between the terms ‘Green Leasing’ and ‘Green Leases’ in academic and practice. Over the past decade, Green Leases have become an increasing recognised and applied method by which to improve the sustainability of building stock. However, a lack of research into the differences in the terms ‘leasing’ and ‘leases’ has the potential to stifle a consistent use of terms. This paper endeavours to better establish this difference in order provide credibility in the usage of both terms.

Methodology
The data for this paper was accumulated through sourcing academic literature (mainly from academic peer reviewed journals) where Green Leasing and Green Leases are of a primary or substantial focus. The paper will establish how each paper uses each term contextually. Practice based literature will be sourced and analyse similarly in order to establish better definitions of Green Leases and Green Leasing.

Key findings
This paper establishes that (with some noted exceptions), that the terms Green Leases and Green Leases are used in both forms of literature in a manner that is relatively close to the dictionary definition terms of ‘Lease’ and ‘Leasing’. With these findings in mind, it is established that a Green Lease is the lease document itself, whilst Green Leasing  is the process of renting and operating a rented sustainable building that may or may not have a Green Lease.

Impact of Study
This study has the potential to impact terminological uses of both terms in order to provide consistence that will benefit both market penetration and academic research and dissemination. This study is also applicable outside the field of real estate, as it also has a relevant to the study and practice of law, CSR, architecture and the study of the built environment more broadly.
 

Poor sanitation and overcrowding have severe impact on the disease environment. This study analyzes the impact of housing prices on physical health, proxied by adult height, during the late 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. Using panel data on 14 advanced economies, the empirical results suggest that improved housing quality significantly contributed to human stature by reducing overcrowding and creating better hygienic standards. To be precise, a one standard deviation increase in real house prices translated to 1--1.2 cm taller adult heights---an amount which at that time was associated with 1.2 to 2.1 years of additional life expectancy on average. Also, 15 percent of the average height increase of 10 cm across all countries can be attributed to housing quality. These findings are robust even when income is controlled for.

Most of the European rental housing units need major refurbishments in upcoming years to achieve EU climate protection goals. Because property owners still find it difficult to assess the profitability of energetic retrofitting investments, current renovation levels are far too low. This study contributes to the situation by forming a standardized framework and a tool for calculating the profitability of energy efficiency investments throughout Europe. Findings are based on conducted target group surveys and on a profound literature review. Several relevant areas for energy efficiency investments have been screened, including technical, legal, institutional and financial conditions. It is found that especially market conditions and information deficits harm energy efficiency investments. In line with inflexible regulations, this reduces market incentives that have originally been introduced to trigger market participants. Built on these findings, an online-based tool has been developed to support the decision-making process of each individual investor, regardless the individual knowledge on energy efficiency. The VoFI (Visualization of Financial Implication) method perfectly includes all important and relevant factors, such as financial and tax-related information. As a special technique of financial modelling, it provides all kinds of users with sound decision support in energetic retrofitting activities. The underlying methodology of the tool is presented and major obstacles are identified. Findings are used to define best practices and to assess the transferability between different European markets. The paper contributes to a better understanding on how to tackle information deficits and on implementing sufficient policies to boost energy efficiency investments.

The fundamental determinants of housing affordability states have been well studied over the years, with insights from both microeconomic and macroeconomic contexts. Microeconomic studies on the subject have focused on the dynamic analyses of households housing ladder transitions or housing consumption choice with numerous research confirming findings with regional and transnational comparisons. There are also a few other studies who have addressed the issue solely from an aggregate perspective focusing on number of transactions, states of housing disequilibrium and role of economic variables. Nonetheless both macro and micro analysis on the states of housing affordability confirm that British young household’s are further delaying home ownership; as there appears to be structural adjustments especially with changes in income distribution. 

Yet Andrew and Meen(2003b) have informed that the role of changing income distribution may not be the whole story as the role of changing demographics, credit markets and consumer attitudes have not been well explored; particularly with the extent to which extremely optimistic expectations about future house prices contributed to the run up of the recent housing boom remains an open question.   

This research  aims to investigate amongst demographic and other socioeconomic factors; the effect of house price dynamics including price volatilities, expectations of capital growth, and wealth constraints, on the speed of initial transition into home ownership for British young households over time. To achieve this, the study applies a hazard cox model to a longitudinal micro data set exploring the dynamic behavior of British young household’s from the years 1991 to 2016.  

Britain provides an interesting case study as it experiences substantial house price volatility with huge spatial and inter-temporal variation; also as this geographical area has undergone several structural adjustments and is undergoing a major restructuring with the privatization of council housing. Thus the way various contending influences interact and shape entry into home ownership makes an important policy problem.
 

This research proposes the measurement of housing-induced poverty in Ecuador for the years 2006 and 2014, as a complement to the poverty measurement criteria used in Ecuador, by quantifying and analyzing the situation of households that fall into poverty due to the payment of housing, in addition to deepening and contributing to the existing academic debate on this issue. To this end, statistical databases have been prepared based on the Living Conditions Surveys, which served as a source of information for estimating the following indicators: housing stress, housing induces porverty, maximum accessibility index and accessibility.

The questions that guided the research were: ¿Is it possible to talk about house-induced poverty in Ecuadorian households?, ¿What has its evolution been over time?, and ¿What are the characteristics of households that fall into housing-induced poverty?.

The research uses Thalmann's Conditions of Affordability (2003), proposed in the peiper 'House poor' or 'simply poor', and the combined index of affordability proposed by Juárez (2015), in the research 'Housing, affordability and poverty'. Two approaches were used to answer the questions: accessibility ratio and residual income, which allow estimating the indicators of: housing stress, housing induce porverty, maximum affordability index and affordability.

The results obtained show that: Housing stress, housing induce poverty, maximum affordability index, present evidence that it is possible to talk about of housing induced poverty in the Ecuadorian households. 

Housing-induced poverty has increased between the years 2006-2014.

Housing stress, housing induce poverty, maximum affordability index agree that single-person households that rent an apartment in the urban area fall in a higher percentage into housing induced poverty. 

Housing stress and housing induces poverty, agree that a household that has a mestizo male as head of household, and classified as an adult household according to the life cycle, falls in a greater percentage into housing induced poverty.

Maximum affordability index shows that a household that has a mestizo  female as head of household, and classified as an adult household according to the life cycle, falls in a greater percentage into  housing induced poverty.

Ten years after housing boom in Estonia the housing market has been restored. Comparing to 1997 the average notarized purchase-sale price has raised 2.3 times by 2016. It is again the question about the price level. One problem in housing market is concern about affordability issues, but there is also another aspect, that has not been paid enough attention. 

The proportion of older people is growing. According to the Statistics Estonia share of persons at pension age (65 years and older) has been grown from 12 % of population in early 90s to 19 % in 2017. People live increasingly longer and it is to be expected that the number and share of older people increases. The availability of comfort characteristics in the dwellings inhabited by households has improved significantly. During the lifetime the living space per person generally increases, but people may lose some of their functional abilities which may create a need for a different type of dwelling.

This article seeks answers how to define the impact of an ageing population to the housing market in Estonia. 

Recorded in history the 2007-2008 crisis is accepted to be the most serious crisis experienced after the 1929 Great Depression. This crisis began in the US. subprime mortgage markets and impacted not only the financial and real sectors in the US, but quickly became a global crisis, especially because of financial liberalization. The financial liberalization lead that the economies are increasingly integrated into international markets. Although it has presented some advantages for the economy (eg. reducing the cost of capital, raising, increasing in credit availability), it has had the role in happening some problems. Starting with the 1990s, many countries experienced an unprecedented increase in current account imbalances. Some countries appear to have current account deficits (eg. Greece, and Portugal), others have current account surplus (eg. Germany and Netherland).
On the other hand, there has been an increase in asset prices, especially in housing prices within the same time period. From 2000 to 2006, house prices rose 50% in real terms in the advanced economy while they went up by almost 30% in the developing country. Again around the same time, the ‘housing boom’ has turned into a ‘bust’ in many countries and most of them have experienced deep crisis. The cost of experiencing both housing price boom-bust cycles and high current deficits concurrently has been more severe for some of them. 

Consequently, it can be suggested that the current account imbalances and housing price boom-bust cycles have become the defining characteristics of the period of pre-global crisis. In addition, it is seen that although the developments in the markets show similar trends in many countries, they have had the distinct characteristics. The institutional features of the economy have potential to contribute to this differentiation. However, based on literature review, there is no study on the role of institutional features in the relationship between house price dynamics and current account imbalances. 

The aim of the study is to examine the relationship between housing price cycles and current account imbalances as well as the role of the institutional characteristics in this relationship. For this aim, we use a simulataneous equation model. The findings show that there is a positive association between both dynamics and that the institutions affect this relationship.

This paper analyses the role of business cycle to determine TOM in Bucharest housing market. It explores the relationship between TOM and the price levels in order to identify whether TOM varies depending on the housing quality (revealed by price level) and with the cyclical moment. The database covers 2013-2016 which includes the economic recovery after financial crisis. Data contains more than 32 thousand of microdata with housing transaction in Bucharest city including information about the energy efficiency level in the building.

Recent projections suggest that despite Brexit, immigration to the UK is expected to increase which may further change the UK housing market trends.

A key housing market dynamic caused by net migration in Britain is the variation in housing tenure trends for natives and non-natives which further influences housing demand. Anecdotal evidence reveals that the proportion of homeowners is much higher for natives than for non-natives, suggesting that an increase in migration may lead to growth in the demand on the rental market at a higher rate than the sales market. Research further suggests that it may be worthy to analyse second-generation migrants as a separate cohort from first-generation migrants, and natives. However, there is an absence of empirical evidence in this regard in Britain. 

Classical models analyse housing tenure choices in the context of the lifecycle position of the family head. We however provide evidence that while the natural lifecycle largely influences the housing tenure choice of natives and second-generation migrants, the migration lifecycle may be a stronger predictor of housing tenure choices for first-generation migrants. Research further reveals that generational factors, life pathways of natives and non-natives, migration-related factors and factors relating to the destination countries (among other factors) may also be responsible for the variation in housing tenure. While similar studies in the UK also account for migration era, racial and ethnic variation in housing tenure, they do not differentiate between natives and non-natives. We therefore posit that the year of entry, as well as racial and ethnic variations, may be an insufficient basis of analysis, and there may be deeper underlying factors, particularly native/non-native dichotomy. 

Our results indicate that the migration lifecycle may be the key predictor of housing tenure choices for first-generation migrants. We also observe that the effects of the natural lifecycle, individual, demographic, household and socioeconomic factors vary for natives, first-generation and second-generation migrants. Our results further reveal that second-generation migrants in Britain appear to have distinct housing tenure patterns, different from natives and first-generation migrants; and natives and non-natives housing tenure patterns differ in London, compared to the general British population. 

Shops are important facilities that provide people with goods and services. Just like many other commercial sectors, shops are inclined to concentrate or agglomerate within a certain area. Retail mix measures the diversity of shop types in a shopping district, which is an important factor that influences the attractivity of a shopping district. A proper retail mix improve the attractivity of a shopping district to consumers and thus improve sales turnover of shops in this shopping district. According to theory, this benefit brought by retail mix is expected to be capitalized into the rents of shops in corresponding shopping districts. However, we know little empirical evidence about how retail mix is going to affect the attractivity of shopping districts and thus rents of retail properties in these districts. We estimate the relationship between retail mix and retail rents by using a dataset containing information about rents of 10,808 retail transactions spreading from 1996 to 2011 in the Netherlands. We construct shopping districts based on the job density of retail sectors year by year and use Herfindahl Index to measure the level of retail mix in a certain shopping district. Our empirical results show that retail mix has a strong positive relationship with retail rent, after controlling for other variables. This result suggests the importance of building a shopping district with more diverse shop types and choices of goods and services.

Despite of a fast-growing number of waterpark development in Thailand, this high capital-intensive business has a very few matured precedent cases in the country. Understanding patron’s behavioral intentions is a very important determinant of long term competitiveness and sustainability in the industry. Thus, this study aims to explore the relationships among the antecedents which are waterpark image, price fairness, and patron’s satisfaction together with their effects on behavioral intentions. The mediating roles of price fairness and satisfaction as well as the moderating role of novelty-seeking are also examined. Regardless of the scant in waterpark literatures, a proposed conceptual framework, applied from literatures in related fields, was empirically tested using a structured questionnaire. All valid respondents rated their opinions on scaled items with five-point Likert scale. A structural equation modeling using SmartPLS3 was performed to verify the proposed hypothetical paths. The analytical results confirm the important of waterpark image and price fairness in predicting satisfaction. While price fairness partially mediates water park image to satisfaction, satisfaction acts as a full mediator for waterpark image and price fairness to behavioral intentions. As anticipated, satisfaction is a strong predictor of behavioral intentions, novelty-seeking on the other hand was not found to have a significant moderating effect on the relationship between satisfaction and behavioral intentions. These findings are beneficial to both existing and future waterpark developers for planning limited resources on most influential factors in proper priority that lead to desired behavioral intentions. This empirical study suggests that water park image, through its direct and indirect effects via satisfaction, is a strongest contributor to behavioral intentions further confirming the necessity for managers to perform a correct combination of marketing mixes that would strengthen the perception of image. In addition, the effect of novelty-seeking on behavioral intentions can be theoretically extended and is recommended for further study to explore in different dimensions other than the moderating role. Further managerial and theoretical implications are discussed in the paper.

Public real estate management (PREM) is a part of corporate real estate management (CREM) literature which deals with real estate management at the disposal of private and public organizations which are not primarily in the real estate business (Bon, 1992, pp. 13).  However the CREM concept is based mostly on research made in the private sector and therefore not always fit for public sector specifics, public regulations and public values. In this context, very valuable and interesting is PREM research which are based not only on CREM theory but also on the public management approach.

The main goal of this paper is to present a role of individual concepts of public management in the process of real estate management in Polish and Dutch municipalities. Special attention is given to New Public Management and Public Governance.
 

In the last decades US non-property companies have opened up increasingly to alternatives to real estate ownership and thus have reduced their holdings. European companies followed this trend in a more cautious way still showing generally higher ownership ratios. Incentives might become stronger in the future though, if owning real estate competes with new business requirements and thus harms firm performance. Despite the great number of articles analyzing the contribution of real estate ownership to non-property company’s performance, the business environment and especially external trends are rarely considered. Therefore, this paper addresses two main questions: Firstly, how real estate ownership affects organizational performance in general and secondly, whether the contribution of ownership changes considering future market trends. Using the example of German non-property companies, the article analyzes whether firms affected by structural change demonstrate a higher willingness to reduce corporate real estate (CRE) ownership holdings. The paper begins with a literature based elaboration of the term structural change followed by a comparison of international ownership holdings. In a next step the relationship between ownership and its impact on organizational performance considering influences of business environment is summarized in a theoretical framework. Hereafter, a multivariate cluster analysis is performed on a dataset taken from the study by Just and Pfnuer (2016). In a last step, the identified firm clusters are tested regarding their tendency to reduce ownership holdings. The article provides diverse explanations of why ownership could harm firm performance if market trends are considered. In accordance with these findings, the results of the multivariate analysis suggest that the higher firms are affected by structural change, the higher is their willingness to reduce ownership by sale-and-rent-back transactions. This article differs from existing literature in two ways. Instead of using balance sheet data, the analysis applied in this article is based on a dataset of surveyed CRE managers. Moreover, the paper takes a broader view on ownership and firm performance by including the business environment. First hints show that structural change and associated new business requirements change the relevance of CRE ownership. In order to avoid competitive disadvantages, especially European firms should scrutinize their high ownership ratios.

Sharing economy has been growing and playing a significant role in the real world. For instance, guesthouses allow people to share their home and provide unique experiences to some travelers. However, it generates unexpected impacts on the neighborhoods.- residents as well as local shops in these cities are at risk of being forced out as property prices and rents rise due to the uncontrollable flow of tourists. This paper examines the impacts of tourism gentrification (touristification) on housing market, using a case study in Seoul. The result shows that guesthouses, including Airbnb, bring tourists, changes types of retails in the neighborhood, increases property values, and eventually kicks out residents. It has changed the land use, ultimately led displacement of local stores to new retail stores and franchises in the community. Analysis of stakeholders indicates that both residents and mom and pop shops are gentrified by new cafes and restaurants for tourists, but then these new stores also become gentrified and turn into franchise in the end. Moreover, it is found that as the real estate bubble bursts, the guesthouse is considered as profitable and the return on investment in guesthouse is higher than that of apartments and officetel in Seoul. The in-depth interviews with residents also reveal that it accelerates the relocation cycle of tenants due to the capital into the real estate market. This change of real estate investment trend demonstrates the importance of consumption-oriented activities in residential space and suggests the role of government and policy recommendations to ease rising rent in tourist areas.

Purpose
This paper examines herding behaviour among investors and traders in UK-listed Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) within three market regimes (low, high and extreme volatility periods) from the period June 2004 to April 2016.

Design/methodology/approach
Observations of investors in 36 REITs that trade on the London Stock Exchange as at April 2016 were used to analyse herding behaviour among investors and traders of shares of UK REITs, employing a Markov regime-switching model.

Findings
Although a static herding model rejects the existence of herding in REITs markets, estimates from the regime-switching model reveal substantial evidence of herding behaviour within the low volatility regime. Most interestingly, we observed a shift from anti-herding behaviour within the high volatility regime to herding behaviour within the low volatility regime, with this having been caused by the FTSE 100 Volatility Index (UK VIX). 

Originality/value
The results have various implications for decisions regarding asset allocation, diversification and value management within UK REITs. Market participants and analysts may consider that collective movements and market sentiment/psychology are determinative factors of risk-return in UK REITs. In addition, general uncertainty in the equity market, proxied by the impact of the UK VIX, may also provide a signal for increasing herding-related risks among UK REITs. 

Urban areas especially cities are now home to slightly more than half of the world’s seven billion people. Current urbanization trends indicate that an additional three billion people will be living in urban areas by 2050, increasing the urban share of the world’s population to two-thirds.  In the Kenyan situation according to available data from KNBS by 2050, about 50 per cent the population in Kenya will be living in the cities and by 2030, Nairobi will have about 6 million people. In 2010 the Constitution created 47 devolved County governments. This has greatly influenced urbanization within the counties.  Urbanization in Kenya comes with its own problems. The current era of rapid urbanization has been marred with inadequacy of capacity and sometimes resources to match urban development needs. In many regions, urbanization is characterized by lack of adequate infrastructure, poor housing, inadequate plans, lack of effective legislations and financing mechanisms, etc., attributes that hinder shared urban prosperity. 

The Habitat III conference in October 2016 gave the UN-Habitat the responsibility to monitor and report on the implementation of the New Urban Agenda (NUA).  This was to be in line with reporting the urban dimensions requirements for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

Kenya fully participated at the above conference through a broad-based representation from the National government, country governments, the civil society, professionals and the academic community among others.  As a result there was resolution by Kenya to implement the New Urban Agenda at all levels in collaboration with all the relevant stakeholders to achieve sustainable urban and human settlements development.  

The Universities in Kenya as stakeholders are now embarking on a strategy to enable them achieve the objectives of the new urban agenda. They also have a bigger role to play because the increasing demand for university education has led to the growth of urban areas in the counties which are now referred to as university towns. This paper will review various efforts undertaken by universities to implement the new urban agenda. 

In its recommendation the paper suggests an implementation framework that fits within the five principles identified by the New Urban Agenda. These principles include: the National Urban Policy, the Rules and Regulations, the Urban Planning and Design, Financing Urbanization and Local Implementation of NUA.  These principles are in line with the SDGs on human settlements. The SDGs that is relevant is SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities. 
 

The abandonment and decay of urban historic areas, including heritage buildings, has been a major challenge in cities. This process is the result of the co-evolution of social, economic and technological developments experienced by industrialised countries, in adopting the knowledge-based economy. Some of these areas have been targeted as urban renewal projects, while others remained vacant and abandoned. For the latter, a focus on innovation in cities has presented an opportunity to shine again in redefined ways. Recently, some historic areas have been brought back to life by accommodating research and entrepreneurial activities. 

Based on these posted novel views, there has been drawn upon also the recommendations by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO 2011) for the management of historic urban landscapes (HULs) (Berg 2017) or areas. In addition, those recommendations have been started to take into account and successfully implement also in several EU-level topical projects (e.g., Horizon 2020) as a leading course of actions.
 
Although implementing regeneration processes has not always been successful, the transformation of historic areas into innovation hubs seems to offer the potential to deal with challenges such as social tension, gentrification, and over-reliance on unpredictable sectors. The presence of creative sectors, students, start-ups, social innovation, and cultural activities are seen as factors to reap the potential of regenerating these areas into innovation hubs. However, more research into these factors is needed. 

This paper aims to identify the critical factors to successfully regenerate historic urban areas and looks at the potential role of universities and other stakeholders facilitating the transformation of these areas into innovation hubs. Thus, this paper asks: What are the critical factors to regenerate historic urban areas and what is the current/future role of universities in it?

Through a systematic literature review and a conceptual analysis, this paper seeks to identify the current state-of-the-art in urban regeneration of historic urban areas, linking various theories and fields of studies explaining the phenomenon. The outcome of this paper is a conceptual model providing an overview of the strong and weak foundations of urban regeneration to set the course of future empirical research into the role of universities. 

It is a new trend in knowledge-based industries to pay attention to the physical and social aspects of their office. Workspaces for new product development (NPD) teams are meant to support creativity and innovation (Coradi et al., 2015). Our research objective is to further explore the relationship between project teams and their workspaces. Indeed ""As leaders consider their workspace needs, they should be informed of workspace fads versus workspace intent"" (Blakey, 2015, p. 107).

Certain characteristics of a space stand out as having significant impact: the modularity of elements that make up meeting rooms and individual workspaces, the possibility of transforming spaces according to needs and work styles, and the connectivity and intelligence of spaces (Vischer, 2008). Employees are also affected by density, the proximity of team colleagues, privacy and control over one's environment. Kristensen (2004) concludes that spaces affect individuals' well-being, impact channels of communication and the availability of knowledge tools, and influence coherence and continuity. 

McElroy and Morrow (2010) argue that changing a workplace layout can have a number of positive impacts. It can nurture lateral relationships among individuals on the same team or different teams, which in turn fosters innovation and creativity. 

To summarize, the literature points to positive effects between the physical and architectural characteristics of the space dedicated to project teams. Part of this influence is supposed to come from the impact on communication and collaboration (aggregated to team integration) between members and sub-teams, which improves their creativity and effectiveness. 

We report here the results of survey of ten teams in the same companie but different locations. The tested model includes two dependent variables: team creativity and effectiveness and a mediating variable: team integration. The independent variables are space variety, interior environment quality, satisfaction with large meeting room, project commitment, IT environment, workstation. Control variable is team size. The Cronbach's alpha are good ranging from 74.1 to 87.6. 

Our main results support the literature: the impact of innovative spaces on the efficiency and creativity of teams go through their effect on integration (measured by collaboration and communication). 
 

Extending award-winning research  prior papers were recognized with best paper awards at the ERES meeting and two ARES meetings - into the key drivers that create and destroy value in real estate development and deal making, this study considers the assessment as of 2016 of research initially conducted a decade ago to examine the commonalities and divergences between different approaches to development and deal-making. Through analyzing the relative contributions that major categories of activities and specific sub tasks make to creating and destroying values in real estate development and deal making, insights emerge that can guide important strategic decisions. In particular, this research isolates those tasks that are of common relative importance and development in deal making in contributing to value being created and value being destroyed. And, the research explores those tasks whose relative importance diverges in the value creation and value destruction process for development and deal making ventures. 

The results of this research can provide guidance for opportunistic strategies to create value and to mitigate against value migration and loss. These findings have powerful applications to entrepreneurial firms engaged in deal making activities, to firms engaged in real estate development, to investment managers committing capital to both deal making initiatives and development ventures, and to investors.
 

In this paper I study the effect of changes in the value of parental housing wealth during children’s teenage years on the parental and children’s financial outcomes and consumption patterns later in life. Increases in the value of home equity when children are teenagers affect the parents’ ability to finance children’s further education as well as other expenditures. In particular, appreciating house prices increase the value of housing equity, which in turn can increase parental investment in their children’s education due to a “wealth” effect, or because the value of their collateral to be used for financing college debt has increased. 

By using parental and their children’s demographic and financial information from the Panel of Income Dynamics (PSID), I investigate how increases in the housing value just before children turn 18, affect their indebtedness levels later in life, their likelihood of purchasing a house and their predominant choice of financing house purchases, as well as their consumption choices. In particular, I study whether these intergenerational wealth transfers operate through relaxation of financing constraints (the collateral channel), or through increases in wealth (the wealth channel).
 

Using the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) as a breakdown, we revisit the risk and return characteristics of publicly traded real estate companies from 14 countries proxied by FTSE EPRA indices over the period 2000 to 2015 in presence of errors-in-variables. We extend the seminal work of Bond, Karolyi and Saunders (2003), and shed a new light on the relative performance of listed real estate before and after the GFC. First, we suggest the use of various asset pricing models including the Fama-French (2015) five-factor asset pricing model with global and country-level factors. Second, we implement unbiased estimators to correct for the econometric bias induced by errors-in-variables (EIV) in asset pricing models. Third, we deal with the impact of illiquidity (measured by serial correlation) on the risk properties of international securitized real estate returns. Our findings show that international listed real estate risk factors changed radically after the GFC, which has resulted in more homogeneous markets internationally and less diversification opportunities for US-based investors.

A decade ago, the authors completed a RICS-funded study (see Jackson & Orr, 2008; 2011) into investor decision-making at the asset acquisition stage and found that the environmental sustainability rating of a property was an insignificant consideration, ranking at 7th place out of eight property attributes. These findings are revisited, again funded by the RICS, to explore how, as the sustainability agenda has advanced generally, the property industry has reacted.

Studies suggest that capital value and rental green premia for sustainability exist, especially in US and Australian markets, indicating that investors and tenants are willing to pay higher prices for properties with sustainability attributes. However, evidence also suggests that the higher values being paid are greater than the pure financial (cost-saving) gains.

Similar research in the UK is beginning to emerge but the findings are less conclusive. Thus, there is a need to investigate the drivers for such policies in the UK and the degree to which they are being implemented. Four key themes guide the study: (1) Strategy setting and policy; (2) Financial drivers; (3) Non-financial drivers; and (4) Implementation and measurement.

The empirical part of the study follows two stages: firstly, a quantitative simulation exercise revealed that the BREEAM rating has risen to be the third most important attribute for investors during asset acquisition. However, conversely, stated preferences revealed it is expected to make virtually no contribution to achieving target returns or to risk mitigation. Here we present the results of the second stage, where focus groups explored drivers for the adoption and implementation of environmental sustainability strategies, and any barriers to change.

The results indicate that:

• The drivers for investing in sustainability features vary and include internal initiatives, external peer pressure and reputational drivers, as well as the requirements of investor-clients and some tenants;
• Crucially, green premia are not felt to exist in the UK. This was seen as a source of conflict between the achievement of financial and sustainability objectives, where there is a lack of hard evidence of added-value coming from expenditure on sustainability initiatives and systems; and
• At the implementation stage, where the achievement of financial and sustainability objectives appear to be mutually exclusive, financial objectives remain the predominant concern of fund managers.

For investors, the time-weighted return only provides a partial picture considering their performance. The money-weighted return or internal rate of return calculation delivers a more precise measurement of how they performed for the time of being invested. The difference between those two types of return calculations is commonly referred to as the performance gap.

Since the money-weighted return and therefore the performance gap is driven by the timing and magnitude of flows into and out of the asset, the behavior of investors plays an important role. Considering different asset classes, that behavior tends to change. Understanding what drives real estate fund flows is of importance for the size of the performance gap of these funds. It is said, that the return chasing behavior of investors is a source of bad timing skill. The convexity of the flow-performance relationship for open-end real estate funds suggests that the best-performing funds tend to be chased less as their risk of becoming illiquid increases. Furthermore, investors are more sensitive to poor performance when fund liquidity is low. Being more sensitive to fund-level underperformance, when there is increased liquidity risk, leads to investors being more likely to sell. Apart from commonly known drivers of the performance gap like volatility, all these vehicle-specific aspects also influence fund flows and therefore the gap between money-weighted and time-weighted returns.

For a sample of German open-end real estate funds over the 1990-2016 period, we analyze the determinants of the performance gap, considering the special conditions of that investment vehicle. In contrast to the academic literature, mainly telling about the performance gap of mutual equity funds, the difference in the two return calculation methods for open-end real estate funds will deliver new implications for investors.

In these days, a single search on Google Scholar using the expression Internet of Things (IoT) brings almost 3 520 000 results. Since 1999, when Kevin Ashton used the expression Internet of Things for the first time as the title of a presentation he made at Procter & Gamble, it has received more and more attention from academics, IT experts, the popular press, and the companies in general. All this attention is due to the fact that the IoT technologies are transforming the way in which companies work and do business. Two of the promising domains of the IoT technology are intelligent building and workplace management. In these days, the workstation became the second companies’ largest expense just after the payroll. Therefore, the development and implementation of IoT technology contribute to the optimization of buildings (energy saving, temperature, and air conditioning control, etc.) and workplaces (occupation rates, etc.), and has the potential to change the major patterns of the corporate real estate. As a result, integrating IoT technology in the workplace management is a strategic challenge in order to create value for the company through supporting strategic decisions, investments and workers’ productivity.  The purpose of this work is to review the literature dedicated to IoT and workplace management, in order to identify relevant issues and knowledge concerning the relationship between the IoT technologies (e.g. RFID, sensor, actuator, smart item) and a building on the optimization of the workplace and the productivity of its occupants. The literature review is the best approach to the appropriation of a subject once it allows using the ideas developed in the literature to justify a particular approach to the topic, the selection of methods and demonstration of the relevance and possible contributions (Hart, 1998). This work will also present a discussion of future research directions and the principal challenges related to the IoT and workplace productivity.

Purpose: A paper review of well-known journals publishing research on the subject “IoT and workspace management” from the last 10 years.

Design/methodology/approach: We will follow the approach proposed by Levy and Ellis (2006) to conduct an effective literature review. We also will lean on the work of Mishra et al. (2016) that identified the most relevant authors on the IoT literature in order to identify those studies/authors relating IoT technology and workspace productivity. 

The transition to tertiary education is typically characterised by fewer structured classes per week and greater reliance on self-regulated learning (SLR). SRL involves a student’s effort to plan and set goals and engage in strategies to achieve those goals (Zimmerman & Schunk, 2011). With the development and integration of online learning technologies, blended learning is quickly growing in popularity in higher education. The blended method adopts a web-based technology for online learning which is used in combination with face-to-face instruction. Technology have brought new opportunities to modern education but also poses many challenges for the student. In particular, deciding what, when, how, and for how long to learn. In this context, self-regulation gains importance. In this study we focus on one aspect of SLR – procrastination. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to evaluate procrastination behaviour in a blended learning property course in relation to student performance through educational data mining. We investigate work intensity to explore temporal patterns of students’ behaviour among low, medium and high performing students. We include a discussion of implications and insights on procrastination in the context of blended learning.

Housing markets are primarily of the local and national character. This is mostly due to the specificity of real estate (mainly its immobility),as well as historical and socio-economic determinants (influencing the structure of housing stock, the purchasing power of households in the housing market, the profitability of housing investment, the cost of financing housing). Among the crucial factors determining the development path of national housing markets one can mention their institutional organisation. Institutions, legal regulations, cultural norms create the framework within which housing markets operate. In the process of integration of the European economies, however, the trend towards the unification of institutional background of national housing markets can be seen.

The aim of the paper is to investigate the scope and dynamics of institutional convergence processes in European housing markets. Three dimensions of institutional environment of housing markets were investigated: the role of public authorities in housing sector, the ownership structure of housing stock and the housing finance system.
 

The residential sector is a crucial segment in Italy, as it represents the most significant component of household wealth, and homeownership greatly prevails (around 73%) in comparison to other European countries. Moreover, the construction sector is an important contributor to domestic economy (about 10% of the GDP), but the last market cycle had a substantial impact on the construction business. The most significant downsizing concerned the constructions, as they have lost more than 10 percent of companies, almost 20 percent of employees and around 30 percent of the gross fixed capital formation. A weak economic prospect hit the property market, dramatically reduced the volume of transactions and bring the house prices down in most cities. This prolonged downturn of the market freeze the capital flow in most of part of the country, but different towns experienced different reactions to the global economic crisis.

This paper aims at analysing the particular condition of the Italian residential market of the last 20 years, clustering the Italian cities into groups according to their behaviour and their characterization. The novelty of the approach proposed here lies in using not only market data and socio-economic covariates for the analysed cities, but also trends and dynamics shown by the adjoining and surrounding territorial units, according to the principles of spatial data analysis. Indeed, following the so-called first law of geography (Tobler, 1970), “everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things”. Therefore, we expect that the real estate market fundamentals in a city are affected, to a certain extent, by what happens in the neighbouring cities.

The method has been implemented using the data of the last two market cycles (expansion: 1999 – 2006; recession: 2007 – 2016), employing a variety of demand-side and supply-side variables, such as the number of transactions, house stock, house prices, building permits, quality of life, index of sustainability. The analysis has been conducted considering data organised at NUTS 3 level (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics), namely, the Provinces. Custer analysis is then used to determine the composition of different submarkets and to characterise them, in order to understand their different conditions and to assess the weakness of the various submarkets during the expansion and the downturn of the market.

Informal housing are housing units without legal title. Despite the lack of legal title, there is a huge black market for informal housing in China. Though it is clearly stated in the law that such transactions are prohibited by the law, in reality, under the pressure of high formal housing prices, the transactions of informal housing have never stopped. Since the informal property rights transferred in those transactions are neither recognized nor protected by the legal institution, disputes arise from these transactions. Different from foreign countries such as the United States, each state of which has its own law and legal system, China practices a unified legislative system. Under the system, various administrative regions may work out local statutes as long as they do not violate the Constitution or the state law or the administrative law. Though the marketization and transactions of informal housing in China is illegal according to the law, there is no criminal conviction on illegal selling or buying. Different from illegal behaviour such as drug selling, disputes over illegal selling of informal housing can always seek legal decisions from courts. Nonetheless, among the disputes over contract validity, ownership, or even will validity where informal housing is involved, different court decisions have been given to similar disputes over the transactions of informal housing though one of the national administrative law has clearly stated the prohibitions of transactions of informal housing in China. Despite under the uniform legal system in China and referring to the same national laws including contract law and relevant administrative law, courts in different cities interpret and practice laws in various manners and even lead to opposite decisions, suggesting certain ambiguity in the legislations. This study aims to explore court decisions and local statutes if there is any, which are relevant to informal housing issues in various cities and provinces in China. Court decisions in a way can reflect where legal institutions stand in the cases of informal housing issues and the variety of decisions given by the courts based on almost the same statues and legislations also imply a certain degree of ambiguity and flexibility in interpretation, which may also contribute to the pricing and transaction volume of informal housing units in real life.

In this century, online education increasingly has become a crucial means to educate a broad public about contemporary issues in any academic field including real estate. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) for instance are free online courses available for anyone to enrol worldwide usually attracting more than 1,000 students. This abstract discusses real estate education lessons and prospects from the MOOC “Managing Building Adaptation: A Sustainable Approach” developed and taught by the author and various department colleagues. This online course ran from September to October 2017, attracted 2,500 students, issued 39 certificates, and involved a complete new course set up in terms of learning objectives, learning activities and assessment methods. As one of the first free online real estate courses valuable lessons might be drawn and prospects can be explored for real estate education. Therefore, first, lessons are drawn on the course itself, covering the course structure, development, and didactics by making use of concrete examples from MOOC online modules and student and staff evaluations. Goal of this lesson-drawing part is to comprehend the difference between MOOC education and ‘traditional’ (real estate) education. One key finding is that massive open online education require teachers to reformulate and reframe education material (e.g. presentations, videos, reading material) in such a way that it grasps the topic’s essence, allowing it to be suitable for an online learning environment. Second, prospects are discussed for the future of real estate education, touching upon some recent topics in ERES education debates including students’ industry-readiness, development of academic skills, etc. Aim of this part is to identify what the role of online real estate courses could be in educating a global audience, and what type of online real estate education could trigger an broader interest in ‘on-site’ real estate education programmes. One prospect is that online courses could appeal to a broad international public once it touches upon global real estate challenges, while simultaneously allowing for practical case assignments which assist students in practising with real estate management, development, finance and investment tools. In general the experiences with and findings from this particular MOOC potentially widen and deepen the debate about the future of real estate education.

So far the main body of the asset pricing literature has computed liquidity risk premia for either markets or single assets. The vast majority of these studies have been focused on fairly liquid assets, but recently a greater attempt to price such an important component of asset pricing factors in markets with high illiquidity (especially in real estate) has also started to take place.

The present paper brings these recent studies together, and estimates the liquidity premium of an illiquid asset (real estate) looking at three main aspects – time on market, liquidation bias and market liquidity – and using three main empirical models and several liquidity measures suggested in the literature. We find strong evidence of a high premium of around 3.0-3.5% that varies across sectors and periods. This estimation is robust to different measures of liquidity and model specifications.

The earthquakes after the natural gas extraction in the Groningen region of the Netherlands have a significant impact on the housing market and sustainability of the communities. Since the strongest earthquake around the community of Huizinge in August 2012,  with an magnitude of 3.6 on the Richter scale, it became clear there is a relation between natural gas extraction and earthquakes. As a consequence houses in the region get damaged and after research it gets obvious housing prices decline and the region will become unattractive to potential buyers of houses, damaged or not. Therefore the Dutch Petroleum Company since April 29th 2014 offers a compensation for the loss of the housing price before and after the earthquake of Huizinge to property owners who want to sell their home. They only get the compensation after a sales deal and only if they agree with the proposed compensation. Since the compensation has been introduced, the number of participants of the regulation is lacking behind the actual sales of houses.  

Our study aims to contribute to the research on the consequences of earthquakes by natural gas mining on the real estate market in the northern part of the Netherlands, especially the Groningen region. First of all we want to declare why relatively a large part of the property owners (about 60% until 2015) don’t request for the compensation regulation. 

Our second question concerns the buyers of the (damaged) houses in the earthquake area. Why would they buy a home in a region full of risks? Who are these buyers? 

We use a mixed-method approach for data collection which leads to an analysis of a unique dataset on notarial deeds of house sales in the Groningen earthquake region according to The Land Registry of the Netherlands during the period 2013 until 2015 as well as discovering common patterns of interview results with residents and experts. 

First results show that the majority of the homebuyers originate from the local area in the Province of Groningen. Reasons why property sellers after the house sale don’t opt for the compensation regulation concerns the complexity of the regulation and the used valuation model.

We conclude that the Groningen earthquake region still has its attractiveness for local residents and buyers. Otherwise the compensation regulation doesn’t reach enough property sellers in the nine municipalities of the Groningen earthquake region. 

Advise to the Dutch government should be to generously compensate the residents of the Groningen earthquake regions for the loss of value of their dwellings, damaged or not. This will help to improve the regional development and attractiveness of areas that are effected by earthquakes.
 

This paper examines whether homebuilders take advantage of their local market power by setting higher prices for new units they are selling in the neighbourhood. By virtue of the size of their new developments, homebuilders can often dominate the supply of housing units available for sale in a vicinity. Based on a sample of 854 new private housing developments launched in Singapore between 2003 and 2012, a new development, on average, supplies 44% of the total stock of new unsold housing units in the district. The regression results further show a positive and significant relationship between the market power and the prices of units in the development, which is robust even after controlling for the reputation of the homebuilders. This is consistent with the notion that homebuilders take advantage of their domineering position in the local housing market by setting higher prices. We also observe that homebuilders with strong market power took a longer time to sell their units. The combined findings suggests that homebuilders with strong market power take their time to sell the new units at higher prices.

As business centers offer shared workspaces and facilities to multiple organizations, it is expected that these organizations interact more frequently with each other. More empirical research is needed on where these interactions take place in business centers and how this behavior is influenced. Therefore, the aim of this study is to analyze the location choice for face-to-face interactions of business center users. Data collected by means of a questionnaire and an Experience Sampling Method (ESM), was analyzed using a Mixed Multinomial Logit Model (MMNL). Results showed that inter-organizational interactions take place less frequently at workspaces or formal meeting spaces and more frequently at shared spaces such as the coffee corner, café/restaurant/canteen or at other informal spaces. These interactions are also more likely to be influenced by features of the physical work environment, as these interactions were found to be mainly coincidental compared to the intra-organizational interactions. These findings could help office designers with regard to stimulating face-to-face interactions among organizations in business centers.

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the role of real estate appraisals/valuations within secured lending has been increasingly scrutinised.  Some countries were very slow to realise that processes within the real estate industry may have some part to play in trying to ensure that the GFC was not replicated in the future.  For example, in the UK, real estate was quickly implicated as a major part of the problem but slow to be included within suggested solutions (Vickers, UK Independent Commission on Banking Chair, 2011).

But during 2012/13 the UK central bank and the UK real estate industry started developing commercial property responses to the financial stability agenda.   This resulted in a 2014 “Vision for Real Estate Finance in the UK” from the Property Debt Group of the Property Industry Alliance with visible support for the process by the Bank of England.  One strand was directly aimed at property valuations underpinning secured lending decisions and subsequent work by this same group was published by the Investment Property Forum in 2017; allied with a further research agenda for 2018 (IPF/CREFC, 2017).  At the same time the Bank of England commenced publication of a series of commercial property market valuation based indicators of over and under-pricing within their Financial Stability Report, commencing in December 2015).

Market valuations have underpinned loan decisions in many countries and only in a few countries such as Germany has there been any substantial attempt to depart from this tried and trusted concept and basis of valuation.   However, the secured lending valuation research agenda within the Vision paper, mimicked elsewhere in Europe and across the world, is investigating whether a long term, more sustainable valuation basis is conceptually and practically possible to either supplant or support the market valuation basis valuation. The latest UK research has identified a number of models and analysed how they might have fared in the past and whether they gave early warning indicators to the market and to regulators.  This paper will summarize this research and the current research agenda.
 

Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are on-going concerns that invest, divest and recycle capital into properties that provide stable long term distributions for shareholders. REIT property portfolios require renewals through divestment of inefficient assets to be replaced by more efficient assets. While most of the previous literature focuses on the effect of acquisition/divestment event on REIT-level performance, little research has been carried out on property-level renewal process of REIT portfolios. 

In particular, this paper focuses on (i) the choice of properties for divestment, (ii) the choice of the timing to divest such properties, and (iii) the management strategy leading up to divestment. To address these questions, we use the unique property-level datasets for Japanese REITs that contain information on property characteristics and their performance with half-year frequency while the properties are in the portfolio, that is, from the initial acquisition to the final divestment.

First, we investigate the determinants of the property designated for divestment using the probit model. We provide a strong evidence that properties requiring relatively large operation cost and/or are less yield accretive with respect to the REIT portfolio, and/or properties that do not match the geographical focus of the REIT, are likely to be divested. These assets are usually replaced with more efficient assets. 

Second, we investigate the timing of such divestments using the probit model. We show that properties may be divested after undergoing relatively large drop in capital value. Third, we investigate whether REITs engage in short-term earnings management post the divestment decision. Our fixed-effect panel estimations show that REITs reduce the size of capital expenditure, which is a long-term investment, just before the divestment so that their final net cash flow, which indicates the short-term property performance, look attractive for potential buyers.

Further subsample analysis on market dynamics reveals that, unlike the entire sample, REITs seek for capital gain and even divest properties which are efficient for their portfolio during the REIT restructuring periods around 2010, suggesting the need for REITs to liquidate those properties during this time period.
 

Non-performing property loans pose a huge threat to any country’s economic stability. This paper examines the effects and relationships of macroeconomic factors in determining the possible outcomes of non-performing real estate loans in Malaysia. It also examines some banking sentiments in their receptivity towards the conditions in terms of number of loans approved, rejected and applied. Using Stepwise Regression Approach, it was shown that Gross National Income responded significantly negative to the number of Non-performing Property Loans in Malaysia relatively close to the study conducted in Greece where GDP growth seems to be the dominant and main determinant in terms of non-performing loans compared to other macroeconomic determinants. At the same time, Unemployment responded significantly positive, where levels of unemployment would cause the inability of private individuals to repay their loans or debts. At the same time, sentiments of consumers shown that Applications for Non-residential Loans decreases as Non-performing Property Loans increases. Surprisingly, this study also shows that as Non-Performing Property Loans increases, the number of Loans Approved for Non-Housing Property Loans increases as well. This shows that Banking Sentiments in loan approvals are not affected by the conditions of economy when it comes to Non-Residential Properties.

Our research investigate the dynamics of European real estate markets from the perspective of the house price index (HPI) in correlation with relevant economic variables, such as: economic growth, household disposable income, residential loans, interest rate on new residential loans, housing stock, and property tax. Thus, we provide a new approach to analyse the real estate market dynamics with practical and direct implications on all three market participants – the debtor, the creditor and the state, in order to ensure financial stability. The results of panel analysis revealed the very strong statistical influence of ratio “nominal house price to disposal income of households” but a weak statistical influence of interest rate and level of property taxes on the price index. This evidences generates discussions about the efficiency of tax and interest rate policies in some countries. Moreover, mortgage credit remains one of the major contributors to real economic growth, accounting for 47% of EU GDP. It facilitates the access of population to real estate properties and, thus, indirectly generates tax revenues in state budgets.

In this paper, using Brexit as an example of a market shock, I will demonstrate how property fund managers can navigate through such market turbulence using MSCI-IPD Property Futures to apply risk on / risk off and risk-adjusted trading strategies to mitigate the effect of falling capital values. In the analysis, a comparison will be made to the effectiveness of using such strategies using REIT's.

During the last few years, several startling mergers have affected the German housing market. This raises the question whether such a concentration process is rational from an economic point of view. A justification of this practice could be the realization of economies of scale, assuming that the average cost for housing companies will reduce perceptibly with the size of the firm. According to Mansley, Ambrose, Fuerst and Wang (2016), economies of scale also exist for European Real Estate Companies. However, they conjecture, that the benefits of increasing scale derive in particular from internal growth, not from M&A activities. Furthermore, they suggest, that the benefits of economies of scale are greater for small companies than for larger companies. We analyze, whether these general across sector findings can be verified in the special case of the German housing industry. Due to eminent data problems, we discuss the possibilities and limits of different methods of measuring economies of scale, such as the cost estimation-approach, the profitability-approach and the survivor-approach.

Institutional real estate investors commonly invest in real estate via investments in publicly traded real estate investment trusts (REITs). Recently, the increasing flow of investment from international investors into REITs sector come from foreign institutional investors. Foreign investors vary in sophistication, business strategy and practices, governance, and capital sources, so the handy information from media news will impact their preferences for REITs instantly. The wave of news from media has largely changed the structure of investors' information, which affect investors investment preferences (Ron and Robert 2017). The information availability and quality are important factors that influence foreign investors’ decisions in building their investment portfolios. Although foreign investors could obtain information through various sources, they face significant information disadvantage compared to domestic investors (Choe et al. 2005; Leuz, 2006; Chan et al.2008). Media from the home country of foreign investors (i.e., home media) could minimize these barriers by broadcasting in its home language and commenting on news from its home perspective. This paper aims to investigate whether foreign investors rely more on home media (than domestic media) to make their foreign investment decisions. Furthermore, institutional investors hold large ownership stakes in European REITs. The traditional view is that institutions are both long-term and passive investors (Devos et al.2013), so the institutional investors tend to find out the more efficient information. Most literature suggests that media coverage reduces the information asymmetry in financial markets (Bushee et al. 2010; Blankespoor et al. 2014) and plays a corporate governance role (Dyck et al. 2010; Dai et al. 2015). However, it is not clear whether the domestic and foreign media play a different role in providing information to foreign investors in European REITs. This paper aims to resolve the puzzle by answering that whether higher media coverage from a particular foreign country is expected to increase European REITs’ foreign ownership from that country or not. I investigate this relationship over the period from 2000 to 2017 by matching the second-rate media news with the yearly European REITs ownership data. This paper highlights the different sources of media news impact on foreign institutional investors’ ownership of European REITs, which provides important implications for European REITs...

Price movements in the residential property market are often small-scale and can lead to regional over- / undervaluations that cannot be reported on an aggregated level. However, the derivation of regionalized price developments demands for appropriate methods and sufficient big data sample sizes. Therefore, the Austrian residential property price Index, which is published quarterly by Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB), has been methodically revised: Instead of the previously used time dummy approach, which only allows for an evaluation at the model region level, the new index is based on double imputation methods, which makes possible an almost arbitrary regionalization. In this study, we describe the impact of the methodical changes on the index developments on an aggregated level. Furthermore, the new models allow a more granular regional breakdown of the index series. The resulting data series can be used for a more detailed monitoring of developments in the residential property market and can serve even as an input for a more granular regionalized fundamental indicator for residential property prices.

Mass valuation methods are used in a number of contexts to estimate the value of land and/or improved property.  One of the major uses is in a statutory valuation setting where property values provide the basis for taxation assessments.  The requirements for statutory valuations are that they are fair and equitable so that these characteristics also pertain to the taxes based on the valuations.  This requirement extends across property zonings and across the region in which the taxes are to be levied.  It is also preferable that statutory valuations are close to market values so that there is a reasonable level of transparency in the valuation process and the general public can have confidence in the statutory valuation outcomes.

In the mass valuation process, it is very important that Quality Assurance (QA) is a major focus and that this is built into the process as a key element of quality improvement over time.  This isn’t easy to achieve against the backdrop of a quite fluid and segmented property market.

This paper will consider mass valuation methods and the development of metrics, appropriate to the particular method, to assure the quality of the mass valuations produced.

Reference will be made to statutory valuation in New South Wales (Australia) where annual land valuations are produced for approximately 2.5 million properties.  The State and Local Government taxes based on these land valuations generate in excess of $A7b ($US5.5) annually so it is critical that all stakeholders are confident in the outcomes.

We build a two-stage competing risk model for pricing four types of early Termination options written on commercial mortgages: default vs restructuring and prepayment vs defeasance as two pairs of competitions. It is the first study to consider restructuring as a “competitor” with default. The key feature of our model is to introduce collateral underlying property market supply constraints into a property Price process which would determine values of early termination options. Our simulations find out greater probability to restructure mortgages by reducing interest and extending maturity and to prepay in cash. We also prove that tightening property supply constraints pushes up values of default, restructuring and prepayment by pricing their analogous options: default (a series of compound European Call on Put options), mortgage restructuring (an exchange option between mortgages with different cash flow structures), prepayment in cash (a series of compound European Call on Call options), and defeasance (an exchange option of more liquid assets with less liquid ones) in different scenarios. Therefore, we suggest controlling property supply constraints as an alternative risk management measure for mortgage markets.

The student-housing sector has experiences a boom as an alternative real estate asset class over the last few years. A large part of the success of this sector is due to the demand from international students for high quality accommodation when studying in the United Kingdom.

The continued success of the student-housing sector in the UK is dependent upon there being large annual inflows of international students. However, despite the importance of international students to the UK economy, and the increased importance of the student-housing sector, there has been very little academic or commercial research examining the current magnitude of international student flows or how these flows can be expected to change over time.

In this paper, we develop a spatial interaction model and demonstrate how it can be employed to illustrate international higher education student flows at the national level. We model existing variations in student flows and, using the UK as an example, show how different economic circumstances and government policies can effect international student inflows and outflows.

After testing our model against UNESCO data, we conclude that spatial interaction modelling is an effective tool for analysing and evaluating existing student flows and how these flows might adjust if the economic fortunes or policy environments of individual countries change.
 

Over the past 50 years the Gold Coast has developed from a quiet holiday destination to an international city of 580,000 residents and over 13 million annual visitors. The G:Link light rail system began operating in July 2014 and has changed the way people move around the city. The light rail is not only transformational piece of infrastructure but it delivers wider benefits to the community. A significant increase in mixed use developments is occurring within a number of centres along the light rail corridor delivering economic benefits to the city. However, concerns have been recently raised that the light rail and associated changes to the transport network are negatively impacting on businesses within Surfers Paradise area. Surfers Paradise Boulevard functioned as a two way access road until the northbound travel lane was removed in 2014 to facilitate construction of stage 1 of the light rail. Southbound traffic volumes along the Boulevard have reduced significantly, from approximately 7,200 vehicles per day before light rail construction to approximately 4,100 vehicles per day post light rail construction. 

This study examines the economic impacts of the Gold Coast Light Rail on businesses in Surfers Paradise area. The property values, vacancy rates and numbers of visitors are analysed to undertake a trend analysis of property developments and identify any relationship between business sustainability and the transport network changes. Key findings from the existing literature are applied to the Surfers Paradise context and drawn conclusions about short and long term impacts of the light rail. 
 

Real estate industry in general and its business models in particular are standing at the beginning of a transformation process, caused by fundamental and multidimensional change in technology, economy and society. The drivers of this change can be classified into three dimensions: social development, change of economic structure and digitalization. Although these transformation processes' effects are already visible, immediate consequences for market participants of the real estate industry remain largely uncertain. They are without a doubt going to affect the value system of the real estate industry, because the market environment and therefore business models of relevant participants are changing and will continue to do so. As a result, the demarcation line of the value system is going to become blurred, and a reform of the internal structure will take place. Many organizations struggle to grasp the full extent of this process, which can be seen by a predominant, exclusive focus on digitalization.

The goal of this research is to determine and systemize the drivers of change affecting the real estate industry. Thereby, the author delineates variations of business models and points out which drivers of change have an impact on which business model.

Based on a systematic literature review, a theoretical framework will be developed, in order to determine and systemize drivers of change in the real estate industry. This framework will be tested empirically by a quantitative survey of German real estate market participants. The appraisals are enquired using multivariate analyses and multidimensional scaling (MDS).

An exhaustive systematization of all essential drivers of change cannot be found in the existing body of literature. Only if the effects of the drivers and the consequential impacts on business models in the real estate industry are anticipated correctly, management approaches dealing with future challenges and actively shaping the transformation processes can be developed properly. The research results will help to characterize the need for adjustment in real estate industry. Furthermore, it could reveal approaches for developing new and innovative business models. 
 

This study investigates how location of US multifamily rental housing (MFRH) properties can impact on their investment performance. MFRH units are owned by companies and rented to households, including low and moderate-income households. In particular, we look at property performance characteristics such as occupancy rate, net operating income (NOI) and loan delinquency and assess how those are affected by within city variation of socio-economic and demographic factors. Such factors include household income, house prices, foreign capital flows into real estate, demographic factors such as age, race, ethnicity. We use data on securitized commercial mortgage loans between 1999 and 2016 in order to assess the relationship between property performance indications and the local economy. While the MFRH market provides opportunities for property investors and it should be better understood from an investor point of view, MFRH rental stock also is an important component of the alternatives to homeownership for households and is worthy of studying from this perspective as well highlighting the contribution of this study.

“Mycelium is the network that a fungi has underground. This network connects all the fruit hats of the fungi that is spread out through the forest”

Our approach is based on the idea of the mycelium, the transformation from single office headquarters to a decentralized connected network of offices embedded in the future smart city while at the same time forming it. This approach is of today new for both investors and potential users why Mycelium offers a first mover advantage where the investor will be a pioneer in a completely new type of real estate investment. A major focus on real estate in the last years have been on smart buildings, the problem is that most conventional approaches views a smart building as a structure filled to the max with the latest technology. This presents a problem otherwise small in the real estate market, lifetime. The technology invested in a building today will be outdated within 5 - 10 years rendering the smart building unsmart. The focus on smart buildings therefore needs to shift, from an economic perspective, to something more sustainable throughout time by substituting most of classic office buildings. In our paper we calculated the estimated yield rates, the space and money savings and the agility advantage through a comparison of the traditional office and Mycelium. Furthermore we make an outlook on the implementation in the smart city.

In this paper we investigate the causal impact of sleep disruption on health with data from the longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences (LISS) in the Netherlands between 2008 and 2013. We control for an extensive set of socio-economic, demographic, dwelling, and neighbourhood characteristics. To address identification concerns of potential endogeneity, we adopt an innovative instrumental variable that exploits individual-specific exposure to neighbourhood noise to instrument for sleep disruption. Consistent with theory, we find statistically and economically significant causal effects of sleep disruption on cardiovascular, lung, bones&joints problems, and headache. However contrary to the reduced form results (and many other observational studies), we do not find a statistically significant causal effect of sleep disruption on diabetes. Our results remain robust to checks for self-reporting bias, alternative instruments, and unobservable bias. The findings shed light on the importance of sleep quality control and public policies related.

As technological innovations applied to the built environment become prevalent, real estate players (developers, owners, users) are confronted with a range of disruptions which are redefining the common understanding of what a commercial property stands for. The paper studies the role and positioning of commercial real estate in smart cities, and assesses the need for new tools to analyse this growing segment of the property market.

With the rapid growth of news, information and opinionated data available in digital form, accompanied by a swift progress of textual analysis techniques, the field of sentiment analysis became a hotspot in the area of natural language processing. Additionally, scientists can nowadays draw on increased computational power to study textual documents. 
These developments allowed real estate researchers to advance beyond traditional sentiment measures such as closed-end fund discounts and survey-based measures (see e.g., Lin et al. (2009) as well as Jin et al. (2014)) and facilitate the development of new sentiment proxies. As an example, Google search volume data was successfully used to forecast commercial real estate market developments (Dietzel et al. (2014)) and to predict market volatility (Braun (2016)) as well as housing market turning points (Dietzel (2016)). Using sentiment-dictionaries and content-analysis software, Walker (2014) examined the relationship of media coverage and the boom of the UK housing market. In similar fashion, Soo (2015) showed that local housing media sentiment is able to predict future house prices in US cities.

However – in contrast to related research in finance – sentiment analysis in real estate still lacks behind. Real estate literature so far misses the application of more advanced machine learning techniques like supervised learning algorithms when trying to extract sentiment from news items. By facilitating a dataset of about 54,000 headlines from the S&P Global Market Intelligence database collected over a 12-year timespan (01/2005 – 12/2016), this paper examines the relationship between movements of both direct as well as indirect commercial real estate markets in the United States and media sentiment. It thereby aims to explore the performance and potential of a support vector machine as classification algorithm (see Cortes and Vapnik (1995). When mapping headlines into a high dimensional feature space, we can identify the polarity of individual news items and aggregate the results into three different sentiment measures. Controlling for other influence factors and sentiment indices, we show that these 'tone' measures indeed bear the potential to explain real estate market movements over time.

To our knowledge, this paper is the first one explicitly exploring a support vector machine’s potential in extracting media sentiment not only for the United States but also for real estate markets in general.

Official Statistics on housing prices are a one of the relatively new segments of prices statistics, developed in the wake of the data gaps underlined by the last economic and financial crisis. Official European statistics need to abide to the highest standards of quality and harmonisation across countries. Eurostat and the National Statistical Institutes (NSIs) released the official harmonised HPIs in the beginning of 2013.

Initially only indices on total housing price developments were published. However, users requested a breakdown into price developments for existing dwellings and for new ones. In parallel to further work on developing a methodological framework (with the Handbook on Residential Property Price Indices) and improvements of the data quality (starting from data sources for transactions, to data validation and index compilation) Eurostat worked with the NSIs on preparing the ground for this additional breakdown. Since autumn 2014 the split in new and existing dwellings has been made available both for annual and quarterly data. The quarterly data series start in 2005 and are disseminated with a timeliness of one quarter after the reference quarter.

Today, HPI published by Eurostat are used for several policy purposes: for monetary policy assessments of price signals, for financial stability purposes as a soundness indicator and also to monitor macroeconomic imbalances: The deflated house price index (nominal HPI deflated by the index of private household consumption) is one of the fourteen MIP Scoreboard indicators used in the Alert Mechanism Reports.

For complementing the information on price evolution and for supporting the analysis of housing markets, Eurostat started to work together with the NSIs to collect data on turnover. Furthermore, this was a request of the ECOFIN in order to further enrich the PEEIs (Principal European Economic Indicators). The publication of an index capturing the total value of transactions was launched in December 2015. The annual series are available for 18 EU Member States and going back to 2010. 

The publication of HPIs for EU countries going back often to 2000 together with the indices on turnover are a reliable source of data for better understanding the evolution of housing markets during the tumultuous period of the last decade and its implications for the present and future. 
 

My goal in researching and writing my dissertation is to learn more about the economic processes that work within the housing market. In Germany, regions differ very drastically in terms of home prices, homeownership rates, vacancy rates and the quality of the housing stock. In my dissertation I attempt to shed light on several of the processes that give rise to or result from this variation. My dissertation is comprised in three main chapters. Although the chapters are distinct works, they are related by their focus on property and housing markets. In particular this thesis tries to understand how differences in vacancy rates, market liquidity and housing prices arise. The overall message that emerges from the body of work is that policy makers should pay close attention to the way that supply and demand interact in markets for property and housing and any regulation can have profound effects which might not be obvious.

Auctions have been used as a pricing mechanism for a wide range of goods over thousands of years. In contrast to common practice in most of the world, auctions also have a central place in the Norwegian real estate market, even for non-distressed properties and in non-boom markets. However, there exists little empirical evidence for optimal bidding strategies from real estate auctions. By using unique bidding journal data from 2280 dwellings sold in the Trondheim region, this paper compares price premiums for two distinct bidding strategies – placing a low or a high opening bid. Results indicate that, on average, placing a low opening bid yields the lower price premium. Furthermore, while a higher number of bidders increases the price premium, this paper finds evidence that signaling and intimidation in the form of placing a high opening bid has a negative impact on the number of bidders compared to placing a low opening bid. However, results show that the strategy fails in reducing the number of bidders more than a medium sized opening bid does.

Heating and hot water costs are a very important factor within operating costs of housing units. Under the German rental law, the landlord can recover these costs to the tenants. In order to do this, the landlord must install devices for measuring the energy consumption for heating and hot water of tenants in each housing unit. Other criteria for allocating the costs to tenants apart from metering energy consumption are not allowed under the German law.

Once in a year, the landlord is obliged to send to the tenant an operating cost statement listing all operating costs recovered from him in the previous year. For the landlord, it is important to decide whether to measure the tenants’ energy consumption internally or via an external metering company (make or buy decision). The fees of external metering companies are rather high. The reason for the high fees is that only a few large metering companies dominate the German market which leads to low level of competition. Landlords are hardly able to reduce these fees.

Thus housing companies holding a high number of units try to meter the tenants’ energy consumption in-house. They hope that this option is more cost effective, but they need to be careful because metering tenants’ consumption is not a business undertaken every day of the year. For housing companies, this option can only be profitable, if their staff is also in charge of other tasks, for example general maintenance tasks. Before deciding to recruit staff for metering tenants’ energy consumption, housing companies should analyse their situation and check whether the conditions required are fulfilled.

A third option for housing companies is to get in contact with other housing companies and to establish with them a joint venture for metering tenants’ energy consumption for all partners involved. Whether such a joint venture is feasible, successful and profitable, also depends on the specific situation of the partners.
 

For a successful business, professional established organization structures are the basis for housing companies. The formal organization structure should be used to manage the collaborative organized value-added process. The discussion with two executives from housing companies as well as KPMG management consultant have indicated that the organization structures of housing companies in Germany are often not sufficiently professionalized or existing only in approach, compared to other economic sectors (e.g. automotive). Because of these facts and problems, the following research questions have carried out:

• What formal organization structures are presently existing in German housing companies?
• What are the similarities and differences, in respect of formal organization structure, between the housing companies?

The research objectives are to create transparency regarding to the organization of housing companies and new findings and insights.

In addition, the dependent variable formal organization structure is divided into the following dimensions and will be analyzed.

• Level of formalization (definition of company rules/processes)
• Level of decentralization (competence distribution/decision-making authorities)
• Level of specialization (division of labour)
• Level of integration (coordination of collaborative processes)
• Level of structural sophistication (business unit and hierarchical structure)

Within the framework of primary research, an online survey is conducted. The survey outputs will be analysed by statistical tools. Of course, typical key figures such as standard deviation and arithmetic average will be calculated. In addition, regression analysis and cluster analysis were selected as statistical tools. It can be assumed that certain key figures and research results can also be used as benchmarks and management key figures to manage housing companies efficiently.

This paper examines the long-run convergence of houses price across the eighteen Beijing districts using monthly dataset that span from January 2006 to December 2014. Following a pair-wise approach, we conduct unit root tests on all N(N-1)/2 possible pairs of housing price differentials across the N districts of Beijing. By doing so we do not select any base-district or regional average as the benchmark. A two-stage approach is employed . In the first stage, unit root tests are employed to investigate the convergence (stationarity) of house price differentials across Beijing. Over half of the intra-city house price differentials are found to be stationary. The second stage of the investigates the drivers of convergence. The probability of a pair being stationarity is affected by income differentials across the eighteen districts, as well as the demographics differentials and supply-side factors. Last we reveal that the half-life of a shock towards long-run price equilibrium is positively affected by distance and housing supply while little evidence can be found for the influence of income and population density.

Worldwide there are various norms in establishing senior executive including the Chief Executive Officer’s (CEO) compensation packages, with various academics trying to desegregate and shade some light on such a confidential side of our business world. The agency theory (Berle and Means 1932; Jensen and Meckling 1976) seems to be key in the justification of the business norms aligning the interests of executive management to those of investors in order to create long-term value and profit (Bebchuk and Fried 2003). Senior executive compensation entails agency costs which have to be paid, in order to reduce information asymmetries between shareholders and management (Tosi et al. 2000). 

Our study explores the constituent list of the FTSE/NAREIT United States Index from 2005 till 2015. The sensitivity of executive compensation to financial performance measurement variables is examined by applying a panel-data analysis, which includes executive compensation (ExecuCompustat) and financial performance (Thomson Reuters Datastream and SNL). This study yields information on how the compensation of executive management and CEOs in the real estate sector in the US is structured and how the compensation is influenced by the financial performance. This paper is the first to provide basic advice on how to design a management compensation system for listed real estate companies after the financial crisis with the purpose of management alignment to shareholders.
 

Workspace change projects are complex, not only in their design and preparation (e.g. initiating, planning, and managing the change processes), but also in their implementation and steering them towards their objectives. Starting with goal definition and the determination of key performance indicators (KPIs), an accompanying evaluation needs to be established at the very beginning and be continuously applied. Subject of the evaluation concept are the workspace design, including involved actors and performance parameters on the one hand, and the process of implementation with its change management aspects on the other hand.

A concept for such a holistic workspace change project evaluation has been developed, based on marketing research tools, controlling system components and change management recommendations. It covers the named two areas of workspace change projects – design and implementation – and also considers their interaction. 

Effective evaluation uses the principles of effective controlling and should be set up accordingly, only with workspace-specific aspects and KPIs: It starts with collecting relevant information regarding the goals attached to the workspace change project and the current situation, analyses this information to identify the gaps intended to be closed by the project, supports management at decision making by providing it with current information of project and processes, suggests steering measures when the project threatens to stray from the planned path, and finally checks  the results in regards to the old and/or adapted goals. Equally important is continuously involving the users and „feeling the organization's pulse“ during the project. 

The holistic evaluation concept suggests a respective guideline for evaluation, with measures/instruments, indicators, and timing that supports the organization to achieve their goals associated with the workspace change project.
 

More and more people are working in modern offices; therefore, it has become relevant to explore the impact of this physical environment on employee well-being and performance. For this reason a systematic literature review has been performed. Through an initial search in four databases 268 publications were identified, out of which 79 research works built on quantitative studies conducted on samples of office employees were selected for in-depth analysis. 

In the performed literature analysis physical work environment is explored from two perspectives – internal (atmospheric features, planning and surrounding environment) and external (proximity to nature, accessibility). Results of the analysis show that a wide range of factors of office environment have been analysed in the scientific literature. Predominantly this strand of research focuses on the internal environment. In addition to the traditional physical, or atmospheric, features researchers also analyse interior planning, office type, work space density, etc. The external environment has gained research attention more recently; however findings show that it plays a critical role in enhancing employee well-being and performance too. In this respect most of the authors analyse office surroundings, proximity to nature, commuting options, etc. Effects of physical environment on employee well-being has been analysed at the individual level quite extensively and through different dimensions: emotional well-being, professional well-being, social well-being, cognitive well-being and psychosomatic well-being. Studies looking into environment effects on employee performance may be grouped into three types: in-role, extra-role and counterproductive performance. Though research findings are inconsistent, the analysis has shown that overall physical environment and its specific features have significant influence on employee well-being and performance. 

The paper also discusses different methodological and theoretical approaches applied in prior research and offers directions for future research. 
 

The objective of this paper is to introduce the model and to present a structure of the proper database for planning the social infrastructure for older population, including home-care, based on a multiple decrement/multi-state transition model, where a higher standard can be achieved by implementing flexible Equity Release Scheme (ERS) products. ERSs influence the purchasing power of seniors and therefore the probability of transitions in the decrement models is changing. (a) As the central objective, the multiple decrements approach is developed and applied in the program of housing and accompanying services needed for older citizens as a new tool for better forecasting housing needs of senior citizens with decreasing functional capacities, and therefore the changing services and housing needs over their lifetime horizon. (b) To discuss new urban management model that generate shared values for community, users and commercial actors. (c) The Flexible Equity Release Scheme is developed tied with the person and not with his/her housing unit, as a novelty in the scientific and professional literature. The schemes are embedded in the directed graph of multiple decrements. The impact of higher purchasing power in case of using reverse mortgage benefits is evaluated, especially the impact on the probability of transitions in optimal adjustments to the needs of seniors when their functional capacities are reduced. The model can be used for policy makers on national or community level as well as to banks and insurance companies which are willing to develop such programs in Central and Eastern Europe, where such products are not developed yet. The case study for Slovenian state of the art and the policy development is presented.

Is there added value in the utilisation of serious gaming outcome for practice in real life?

One of the courses at Management in the Built Environment at the faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of Delft University of Technology is the management game. Didactics of this course have been previously discussed at ERES. The focus of this paper is on the content and results of the latest edition.  In 2017/2018 the course is given in the first and third quarter with urban redevelopment of the harbour area Merwe4Haven in Rotterdam and Schiedam as topic. Respectively 80 and 175 students have worked together in groups within the concept of roleplay. With groups of 9 students, this resulted in 30 strategies for the area.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: firstly a comprehensive summary of those 30 strategies, and secondly an evaluation of the management game as a mean to reach such results,  and the utility of these result for policy and practice.

The research approach is at one hand a typical example of research by design – evaluation of the 30 parallel designed strategies and how it is accepted by stakeholders. From the educational point of view the research questions relate more to the level of complexity and scale which can be achieved within a course based on roleplay within the given limitations; the available time students can spend in 10 weeks and the entrance level of students halfway their study.

The specific findings in this paper is a list of development strategies relevant for practice. Municipalities are using the results especially to enhance brainstorming during policy making and support the dialogue with their citizens. The more extreme solutions may not always be realistic, but can be instrumental in brainstorming and fostering discussion.

The educational reflection reveals a trade-off between complexity and depth. Introducing a large scale with many stakeholders and optional impacts on the area and influences in many fields lead to a more abstract perception of the strategy where design concepts stay less tangible.

The implication of this paper is to strengthen social and practical utilisation of education. With public presentation of the results society have immediate profit of the outcome and practitioners can apply the outcomes in the process of redevelopment, while students have a realistic experience (reflection of society and practice) to enrich their education.
 

Market economy has existed in Poland for almost thirty years. While a new economy was being formed, new laws were established. However, the issue of collecting data on real property has not been properly solved, as there is no nationwide database referring to real property. Information on real property in Poland is collected in the Residential Property Price Register in county offices. Different computer programs are used to create regional databases, however these databases are not compatible and the information gathered in the databases is incomplete.

The obstacles in access to full information on real property hamper the work of  valuers, particularly in defining trends in property price changes. For the purpose of a comparative approach to property valuation, the Real Estate Management Act requires that time changes in the price of similar property should be taken into account. 

For the last 20 years, the President of the Central Statistical Office of Poland has had to publish the real property price change index, however the lack of real property information was the reason why the work on defining the index has not been fully completed. For three years, there have been published the GUS President’s announcements concerning the change in market prices of properties purchased by household in a quarter of a year under research compared to their prices in the preceding quarter according to the Regions. 

For these reasons valuers in Poland use transaction prices and property description from notarial acts and they determine the price change rate themselves.

Purpose: The purpose is to present the practices of price change factor determination followed by valuers in Poland, especially the degree to which they are known to valuers and applied.

Design/methodology/approach:

• Results of a survey among property valuers in order to recognise their knowledge of identified methods and their application in practice;
• The appraisal of possible utilisation of the methods of stipulating price change rates, illustrated with an example of the local real property market (quantitative methods).

Findings
Methods of stipulating the property price change ate identified so far are subdivided into simple methods (e.g. average, median, method of tracing representative price of the property) and methods which also include its characteristics (e.g. repeat-sales regression method, hedonic methods, mixed methods). Appraisers in Poland usually use simple methods."

Property valuation is a service to a client by a professional valuer. But, more than that, it is an objective exercise to provide a price estimate for property in the current market. A valuer provides a valuation in accordance with professional standards. In teh UK, valuations are carried out in accordance with the RICS Valuation – Global Standards 2017 (Red Book) which themselves have adopted the International Valuation Standards 2017 of the International Valuation Standards Council (IVSC). 

This paper looks at the importance of linking valuation approaches, methods and models to the appropriate regulation. It also looks at how this information is conveyed to the client.

In a world where there is a greater demand for transparency and context, the valuer needs to look at the way in which valuation information is used, reconciled and reported. Through a targeted survey, leading valuers are asked their opinion of how the existing process works and how it might be improved.

This study explores the problem solving strategies used to solve challenging problems when undertaking valuation of a commercial property. Verbal protocols were collected and analysed from six subjects of varying level of expertise (Novice, Intermediate and Expert) undertaking the task of valuation of a commercial property. The results showed that where available data is inadequate, valuers solve an overall valuation problem by dividing the problem into a number of sub-problems that are solved by integrating available data with existing knowledge through forward and retrospective (‘backwards’) reasoning. However, there were effects associated with level of expertise in the way the processes of forward and backward reasoning are used, with the expert and intermediate valuers being more thorough and comprehensive than the novice valuers. This enabled the expert and intermediate valuers to develop a greater number of more-sophisticated solutions to challenging valuation problems, Novice valuers could not generate such well-developed solutions indicating that they were much more superficial in their valuation problem solving. It is argued that, to develop adaptable expertise, training situations need to be provided which encourage the development of forward and backward reasoning within a functional context (required for non-routine problems). But there many challenges in designing courses to incorporate these features.

Today the health care sector is changing. The number of hospitals is declining and major indicators have changed. The number of cases treated in a hospital is rising while the mean residence time and the accommodation capacity are decreasing. As reasons for this change a multitude of Megatrends can be recognized, which are challenges for the future, like the demographic change, new medical technologies, the change of hospitals from governmental health care facilities to commercial enterprises and the positioning in the health care network or new information- and communication technologies. Therefore operating and economic efficiency are important factors. Typically for hospitals are the different areas of use. Between this areas there are multifaceted spatial, organizational and functional dependences. This is why the functioning of a hospital real estate strongly depends on the connection of these areas, the efficiency of the building structure and the adjustment from the property to the business activities. An essential tool for the development of such an adjusted hospital real estate is the requirements planning. Requirements planning as the basic concept for the constructional progress and building design can be health care specific and based on optimized process flows. Aim of the study is to develop a new method for requirements planning under consideration of the changing conditions for hospitals. To solve this task the following steps are projected: First existing requirements planning methods are analysed and transferred into a reference analysis. This analysis includes the investigation of phasing the process, work stages, activities and tools. In the next step the AHP method (Analytic Hierarchy Process) is used to value the assets and drawbacks of the individual methods relating to the development of hospital facilities. The AHP enables to solve complex, unstructured problems with many parameters or influence factors, which are not quantifiable. Within the AHP the evaluation of parameters is based on a decision hierarchy. In the following step qualitative expert interviews are used to verify this hierarchy, to clarify which influences are relevant to the economic feasibility and the processes, how important they are and which are the resulting requirements. Finally the presented approach will help to develop a specific method for the requirements planning of hospitals.

Purpose: In times of growing complexity, the reasons for failure of built environments’ projects are diverse. A central but widely ignored issue is the insufficient qualification of staff members regardless of rank and discipline.  The focus is on producing specialists while neglecting the development of generalists that are able to handle broad and increasingly linked knowledge areas as well as to communicate, to connect, and to cooperate. 

Starting with requirements analysis and surveying existing degree/course options, the status quo needs to be challenged, considering a fundamentally new approach to higher education in the built environments areas like architecture or civil engineering. By reference to the renowned medical education system and the historic Bauhaus, such an approach has now been developed and its application, named ‘New Bauhaus Degree Program”, is described in this paper.

Design: Firstly, preexistent research discussing the industry’s HR needs and the need for generalists in addition to specialists has been evaluated and compared with the current degree offers in Germany accredited by the gif. For this, multi-dimensional clusters have been formed. Secondly, the system of medical education and the “Bauhaus Studium” by W. Gropius have been comprehensively characterized. All preceding findings have then been consolidated to a framework allowing both specialist and management education to emerge from one multidisciplinary entry path. This framework then served as the basis for the development of an idea for the ‘New Bauhaus Program Degree’.

Findings: The evaluation of preexistent research reveals that despite all graduates needing specific aspects of technical knowledge and (inter)personal skills, career paths should clearly differentiate between Specialist and Manager after broad basic training introducing the world of built environments. The study furthermore shows that both, personality formation and interdisciplinary training, are significantly underrepresented in most existing programs. The medical system with 6 years of basic training before specialization and a similar approach by Gropius suggest that multidisciplinary interfaculty training should be the basis for all students. Using these insights for  the design of a new integrative program resulted in a framework consisting of a 2-year module of Pre-Specialization and a 2-year module of Specialization with one specialization being Professional Management of Built Environments.

According to the Energy Performance of Building Directive, by 2021 all new housings have to be 'nearly zero energy buildings'. Currently, the definition and the resulting requirements for buildings are a subject of controversial political discussions in Germany. 

This paper aims to analyze the financial effects for owners and tenants resulting from the proposed ‘nearly zero energy standard’ by 2021.

The objective is achieved by investment calculations using the method of complete financial plans. The analyses of the economic effects rely on building energy efficiency calculations of well-known engineering consultancies for two representative Multi-family-houses that form the political debate. 

Our analysis shows that the specific valuation approach has a significant impact on the result. The discussed 'nearly zero energy’ standard seems to be efficient according to the federal Energy Saving Ordinance (EnEV), but comes to high costs for owners or tenants. That is, because increasing standards of energy efficiency require higher investments, which are not compensated by the achieved reductions in energy consumption. Due to that, the discussed 'nearly zero energy’ standard leads to higher living expenses for tenants, or to lower returns on investment for owners. In addition to that, the stronger requirements result in GHG avoidance costs that are much higher compared to the ones in other sectors.

The study is limited in its results to the analyzed building types. Nevertheless, it is of political relevance by showing that further deviations must rely on various efficiency considerations if real estate actors shall not be overburden and the environmental law effective. 
 

The real estate industry is closely linked to urban development since space is a major factor of urban competitiveness. On the other hand, a successful property development is dependent on suitable patterns of legal rights, which are specified by the municipality. While this interdependence has been widely discussed in literature (e.g. D´Arcy & Keogh 1999, Renigier-Bilozor et al. 2016), it seems rarely respected by municipalities and property developers in practice. 

Although there are recognizable efforts to synchronize the procedures and processes on both sides, stereotypical prejudices as well as partly divergent objectives seemingly impede a collaborative partnership between municipalities and property developers (Bone-Winkel & Gerstner 2005; Meyer & Pfnür 2015). The consequences of this contradiction are, for example, considerable delays and cost overruns of construction projects, while the causes continue to be a lack of communication and unwillingness to cooperate. It is often underestimated that cooperation is regarded as transgressing borders, and affects not only the objectives of both partners, but also their identities (Willinger 2013; Juch 2012). To achieve an adequate balance of interests, considerations regarding working methods, structures and self-concepts of each entity have to be aligned beforehand. Furthermore, the respective views of “project success” have to be discussed. Both stakeholder groups have a mutual interest in functioning urban structures. To show the potential of jointly maximizing mutual benefits, the action patterns of municipalities and property developers need to be investigated in more detail. Based on these findings, a common culture of cooperation can be developed. Accordingly, the demand for an increase in mutual trust as well as the reduction of information and competence asymmetries can be effectively pursued.

This conference contribution will point out the need to see properties in a contextual view. Especially property developers tend to underestimate the need to see themselves as urban designers. It will also highlight the theoretical structure of cooperation and its inference for the design of partnership-based cooperation between municipalities and property developers. Furthermore, the research method of the Ph.D. project will be presented and put up for discussion. 
 

Adequate public housing provision in Nigeria seems to have defied all government housing policies and programs initiated to reduce housing deficit in Nigeria which is currently put at about 17 million units. This problem could be attributed to land tenure system, poor policy implementation, funding, bureaucracy, lack of political will, corruption, etc. The focus of this paper is to evaluate the Nigerian Police Force Property Development and Construction Company Pilot Program which aims to provide 40,000 affordable units of accommodation within three years. The program is currently limited to four states of the Federation with 400 units completely developed and subscribed in each of the four pilot states. Basically, the study adopts a case study approach to describe and analyse the development strategy of NPDCC for public housing development and delivery using the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) Analysis Model. Personal interview and structured questionnaire were used to collect vital information from the NPDCC top management staff. Furthermore, a desk research approach was also adopted using various secondary sources including materials from web search and the case company’s in-house documents. Findings show that NPDCC developed a strategy which enabled her to overcome the challenge of funding which is the major constraint to affordable housing delivery. The housing units developed specifically for the rank and file in the NPF were affordable and completely subscribed. Notwithstanding the accomplishments of the NPDCC, there are also challenges such as land availability and cost; given that over 200,000 units of accommodation were applied for by the officers in the pilot program and only 1600 units were developed and delivered in the four states. In conclusion, the NPDCC pilot program shows a great potential for effective and affordable public housing development and delivery; and should be emulated by other government ministries, departments and agencies in Nigeria.

Transport plays a crucial role in urban development by providing access for people to education, markets, employment, recreation, health care and other key services. Cities which prioritize public transport and non-motorized modes are considered at the top of surveys measuring urban quality of life. Concerns over the quality of life have spread to the growing use of active transportation modes, and as so, proximity to the public transportation system is highly valued. 

The relationship between public transport accessibility and residential land value is the subject of many recent researches. A house located near public transports will tend to be sold at higher prices. This is due to the convenience that public transportation brings to its influence area, enabling quick access to the network and reduced travel times. However, some studies have found that this proximity can induce adverse effects on property values.

The main concern of this paper is to address the importance of a public transport subway system in urban areas, and to analyse the effect of housing distance to stations has in real estate prices.

A geocoded database integrated in a geographical information system was used, containing information on housing unit’s sales from Bucharest, Romania, between 2013 and 2017. This system allowed analysing and exploring all data characteristics. 

The effect of housing distance to stations has in real estate prices was obtained through statistical modelling procedures, developed within an R software environment. 
 

A case study shows, that a BREEAM.de certified building is consuming only 28.5 kWh (sqm x a) primary energy, than a state of the art green high tech Passivhaus in Frankfurt Germany with 37 kWh (sqm a).

A former German railway headquarter building in the North of Germany, Muenster, has been revitalized with a completely new building services structure to subdivide a former single tenant building in a multi-tenant building with multiple 400 sqm units. All mechanical and electrical services have been replaced and newly laid out, while the building of approx. 32.000 sqm was in full use.

Newly implemented district heating ducts with electronically adjustable heating pumps, metered new radiators with individually adjustable thermostat valves led to energy savings.

Together with new window frames with special gas filled glass panes led to an energy consumption which is below the primary energy consumption the politically promoted green Passivhaus system.

Yet a state of the green art Passivhaus residential building in Frankfurt with 300 mm insulating walls and 800 mm insulating materials on the roof, with triple glazing windows and compulsory ventilation units with highly efficient energy recuperation of 82 % showed a primary energy consumption of 37 kWh (sqm a).

The comparative case study will highlight some important facts that green energy does not start with the building technology, but with the technology of areal heating with the local power plant. 

The paper can get read on Friday or Saturday, since authors in private practice. 
 

Within an efficient market, price is supposed to mirror the quality of a product: A high quality product gets a higher price than a low quality product. However, for real estate products one has to question this assumption. Real estate markets are nontransparent and properties are rather complex products. Thus the informational content of the price of a property will reflect rather scarcity then quality. Within a well-defined sub-segment of an office market similar properties are seen as substitutes for one another. Therefore the transaction price of one property is more influenced by the prices of the other properties than by detailed analyses of the quality of this specific property.

For portfolio management a key task is to examine the value chain of each property and to determine potentials for improvements. Consequently, it is important to have a good assessment of the quality of a property in order to decide whether it will be worthwhile to invest in quality improvements. We developed a new approach and tested it for the French, German and UK real estate markets. This methodology is directly based on the dimensions of the quality, elicited via qualitative interviews with experts. We introduce a new approach where the contributions of each characteristic are judged by market participants themselves. More precisely, this approach consists in making explicit market quality judgments used questionnaire on line.

In the first phase, a group of national market participants are asked to formulate overall quality judgements on buildings ofthe national office market. Then an econometric procedure is applied to identify what are the most valued characteristics. This approach allows different buildings to be positioned relatively to a benchmark and provide an alternative way to consider quality, i.e. the reference value of the building. Furthermore, a comparison between the three countries France, Germany and UK is possible. This approach also allows determining the impact of the “green"" component of a property. 

Altogether, the paper highlights the need for a more comprehensive approach including all the dimensions of quality, objective as well as subjective, to define a indicator of the ""real value” of a building enabling buildings to be compared on a the overall quality dimension.
 

The importance of real estate risk management has recently been highlighted by various developments: The GFC in 2007 as fundamental crisis, recently increasing disruptive events and fat tail risk, as well as a general shift up the risk curve due to yield compression in the asset class real estate. Thus, professionals show an increased interest for adequate methods to manage the risk of their position. These professionals include the Deka Immobilien GmbH, who financially as well as intellectually support the present paper. On the other hand, academic literature shows a vital discussion in the risk management of real estate and the feasibility of corresponding methods. Accordingly, the need for an evaluation pattern in order to judge the adequancy of each existing method in the context of fundamental characteristics of the asset class and its dynamics appears to be the logic step. To date, no such real estate-specific assessment pattern exists. Consequently, the central idea of the present paper is to develop a model to evaluate practices from an academic point of view with regard to their adequancy of asset characteristics as well as recent dynamic developments of the market environment. In order to set up this evaluation pattern, economic as well as legal requirements are described and hierachially ordered by ubiquitary versus firm-specific ones to discriminate development levels and set up the evaluation matrix. Subsequently, risk management methods are presented. Lastly, observed methods are evaluated with the newly developed evaluation matrix to assess their feasibility to fulfil above mentioned economic and legal requirements.

Purpose - Automated valuation models have been in use at least for the last fifty years in both academia and practice, while a proper definition was coined only in the last decade. Automated valuation models is a very mature topic that has recently reemerged as very important with the rise of digital infrastructure. Therefore, this paper provides needed analysis and synthesis of the accumulated body of knowledge, and proposes a conceptual framework adapted to reemerging trend.

Design/methodology/approach - This imply two-sided contribution of this paper, a taxonomy and a conceptual framework. In order to address properly a broad notion of automated valuation models’ use, this paper introduces automated valuation system as a term and its taxonomy based on key facets, properties and measurements. Proposed taxonomy is non-hierarchical because all automated valuation systems have the same importance and each one has these facets. Furthermore, conceptual model represents the relationships between the facets. The conceptual model for automated valuation system is based on the visualized decision support system consisting of decision, end user, interface data and model. Both taxonomy and conceptual model came into being after literature review that included a bit more than one hundred references.

Findings - The overview of facets, their properties and their dummy measurement is discussed only with examples that would be sufficient to illustrate their regularities. Examples are selected as the most cited articles for each of the newly introduced automated valuation approaches. As mentioned, all indicated facets are visualized in a conceptual model that is again an adapted version of the most visuals example of a decision support systems.

Research limitations/implications – As mentioned, taxonomy and conceptual model are built upon although relatively broad but selective choice on more than one hundred references. Perhaps a systematic literature review process could additional validate the proposed taxonomy and conceptual model.
Practical implications - Assuring the credibility of an automated valuation model that is based purely on comparing the predictive accuracy of method ‘a’ versus method ‘b’ has become a common practice. Therefore, discussion of the use of the proposed automated valuation has been push forward. In addition, as a domain of price estimates has been far surpassed any unique discipline, term that is more generic would be appropriate to accommodate future research coming from multitude of disciplines.

Originality/value – By knowledge of the authors this is the first paper that develops taxonomy and conceptual model of automated valuation systems.

Data are the new currency of our time. Various digital technologies drive the successful business models of today, but will also determine the real estate industry in the future. The paper examines the relevant digital technologies and various real estate tech startups. The underlying modes of operation can be condensed to four types:
1.) Increasing transparency
2.) Raising efficiency
3.) Enhancing flexibility
4.) Enabling new opportunities, new contents, and new insights.

Based on these modes of operation it is possible to describe the successful companies, the driving forces behind real estate digitalization and thus our industry in the near future.

All over the world, real estate programs have been following European and north American guidelines, trying to reproduce the “Book of Knowledge” observed in those countries’ disciplines.

The aim of this research is (1) to analyze the structure and themes found in Latin American real estate disciplines for graduate students in comparison to a basic framework and (2) to understand Latin American real estate contents according to the level of the real estate market found in different countries in the region.

Eighteen disciplines were found, concentrated in eight different countries. Among them, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Peru were the ones in which discipline programs most matched the BoK, mostly explained by real estate economics found in those countries and by the maturity of the local economies as well.
 

The debt structure - and the complexity of it - affects both agency and bankruptcy costs. For bankruptcy costs, the effects of debt complexity channel through increasing negotiation costs and decreasing liquidation value. In this paper we analyse, how debt complexity affects firm valuations. Employing a sample of 215 U.S. equity REITs, we construct a HHI-index based measure of debt complexity and analyse the effect of debt complexity on Tobin’s Q. We find that higher debt complexity is associated with lower firm values during recessions, consistent with our hypothesis that the effect is due to bankruptcy costs. The effect is economically and statistically significant and robust to alternative specifications.

Investing in real estate through investment funds in many highly developed countries is extremely profitable and is becoming a viable alternative to investment in stocks. Investment funds allocating capital to real estate are also present in Poland. However, the Polish market is relatively underdeveloped. There are only a few funds of this type available, and capitalisation of these funds does not exceed a few hundred million zlotys. There are no REIT type investment funds, in their traditional form, on the Polish market, because of the missing legislation. However, an act is being prepared, which aims at regulating the functioning of REITs in Poland and facilitating a dynamic development of this form of capital allocation for individual investors.

The aim of the first part of the article will be to present the current state of the Polish investment fund market, with funds allocating capital to real estate. Capitalisation of these funds, rates of return and possible reasons for the poor development of the Polish real estate investment funds market will be presented. The second part of the article will present the main provisions of the act, which is being prepared and aims at regulating the functioning of REIT funds in Poland, and the act’s objectives according to its authors.
 

Present research investigates commercial real estate investments in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) within Pan-European portfolio during the period of 2007 to 2016. The situation of this recently “discovered” market by global real estate investors is analysed with the help of quantitative and qualitative methods using boom-bust model principles.

Firstly, the direct property data set is reviewed, and then the performance of coun-tries based on their annual returns is compared. The overall total return and the corresponding volatility over 3, 5 and 10 years is calculated. Based on direct re-turns series an optimal European portfolio is calculated using modern portfolio theory. The role and positioning of individual countries of this region is identified by maximising the Sharpe ratio. Furthermore, economic data of each country is analysed and compared with real estate returns with the support of cross-correlation analysis in order to find out regional clustering.

Secondly, the correlations of economic growth among countries are examined over the period of the last 25 years between 1991 until 2016. Finally, return series and GDP growth series are put into a cross-sectional correlation analysis in order to investigate dependencies between these indicators. This could possibly be the key to forecast future growth of total returns in certain countries with high correlations between GDP growth and real estate returns.
 

This study looks at the relationship between real estate investors and service providers (valuators and brokers) in the commercial real estate market of Central and Eastern Europe. Based on principal agent theory and related concepts of behavioral real estate economics, we analyze the relationship between these two groups of actors on two levels: theoretically and empirically.

From a theoretical level, we look at the context in which the two groups operate and at the role, each of them performs in a commercial real estate investment deal. Real estate investors are typically active in various countries of the CEE region. They manage portfolios in the whole region and therefore have to deal with different legal systems, regulations, customs and norms. In order to cope with this issue, they often hire local service providers who have a better understanding of the local context. This creates an information asymmetry, which may form the basis of conflicts of interest and principal-agent relations. Moreover, valuators and brokers provide services to the investor that may strongly influence the profit the investor can generate from a transaction. Because of this, the investor prefers one type of result from the service provider over others and will probably attempt to guide the service provider in the preferred direction. 

From the theoretical analysis, we derive hypotheses about specific types of actions and behavioral strategies of the two groups if they really are connected in a principal-agent relation. These hypotheses form the basis of our empirical analysis. We interviewed investors and service providers active in the CEE region and analyzed the interviews with NVivo. Because of the many national contexts relevant for service providers, we focused this side of our empirical analysis on Austria and Romania.

Our results provide strong evidence for a principal-agent relationship between investors and service providers in the CEE market. The interviews bring up many statements that support this hypothesis. Investors as well as service providers are aware of this conflict of interests and try to manage it. We can identify key strategies of both types of actors and relate them to the theoretical literature.
 

This research focuses on macroeconomic risk factors pertaining to the various types of real estate exposure (direct, listed, and non-listed) and how the resulting return predictability can be used in a mixed-asset portfolio framework. Comparing sensitivities to risk factors is important to assess whether indirect (listed and non-listed) exposures react in the same way as direct investments to the macroeconomy and how well such investments replicate direct real estate behavior. The various types of real estate exposure generally respond similarly to risk factors: GDP, money supply, construction costs, expected inflation, and expected economic activity positively impact returns, while the term and credit spreads, unemployment, and unexpected inflation negatively affect returns. We then rely on the identified risk factors to predict the expected returns and volatility of real estate, stocks, and bonds. These forecasts are used to build mixed-asset portfolios for various investment horizons. The benefits of including real estate in a portfolio and the possible substitutability between the three types of exposure are analyzed. The empirical analyses are conducted using U.S. data spanning over 30 years.

Average house prices usually differ across regions. Spatial variation in residential property prices can be attributed to social, economic and historical characteristics of regional marekts. Moreover, existing studies do not provide strong evidence for convergence of house price levels in regional dimension. The lack of price level convergence, however, does not exclude convergence in terms of price dynamics. 

The paper tries to answer the question whether price trajectories on regional housing markets in Poland show long-term similarity. Using quarterly data covering the period of 2003-2017, the panel unit root testing has been conducted on relative prices across sixteen regional housing markets.
 

Hedonic models in real estate context are already frequently used to derive data for market description and appraising e.g. with automated valuation models (AVM). However, the number of purchase cases is sometimes not sufficient. This is caused by a general small number of transactions in specific areas and lacks in meta data collection. These missing meta data is sometimes used as independent variables in the hedonic model. Many purchase cases are useless for investigations because information of one main explanatory variable is missing. Also data exist but is not discoverable e.g. due to data privacy policy. 

investigations fail when the general small number of transactions is coinciding with the lack in data accessibility. Sometimes, some information is available but not for all purchases. Thus, some influencing factors are unusable because of these lacks even if we know that its explanatory power on the dependent variable would be very high. Question raises, if the remaining information can be used.
 
In this paper, we present investigations on different approaches to fill gaps. In addition to approaches from social science (e.g. pairwise exclusion and case exlusion) also mathematical approaches are analysed. As objects of investigation, we compare classical approches (elimination of data with gaps), imputation-based approaches (use e.g. the mean to close the data gap) and model based approaches (based on Maximum-Likelihood and Gauß-Helmert-Modell). Maximum likelihoodThe benefit of a Gauß-Helmert-Model is the additional information about the accuracy of the estimated observations. 

The investigation is done with simulated data. We compare the different approaches with a reference dataset (no data missing) in a closed-loop simulation. As results show, a higher accuracy especially in small data sets can be determined with the non-classical approaches. A larger number of usable data also increase the potential of detecting outliers in the dataset (inner reliability). 

In recent decades, problems in real estate have contributed much to U.S. business downturns and have challenged financial stability.  Collapses in commercial real estate (CRE) prices sharply reduced construction outlays and—via their accompanying loan losses—induced bank credit crunches, thereby playing a large role in the recessions of 1990 and 2007-09 and the sluggish recoveries from them. 
 
Using quarterly data spanning a half century, our study begins by estimating how changes in taxes, interest rates, credit conditions, and capital requirements have affected CRE valuations for the four main types of commercial property. Using data covering several decades is needed because CRE activity tends to experience long cycles.  We assess the extent to which CRE valuations respond to changes in macro-prudential capital requirements and real interest rates.  We also develop models of office rents, vacancies and construction.  Our results indicate that while current high valuations of CRE primarily reflect a low real interest rate environment, the impact on office construction has been muted by less pronounced changes in existing property prices relative to replacement costs. 

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we estimate forward looking risk and return characteristics of a theoretical commercial real estate portfolio employing real world hedonics with the goal of seamlessly integrating the asset class into a total portfolio risk management system. Because a factor model is at the core of the model’s analytics, the model is additive and we are able to calculate estimates at both the property and portfolio-levels. Second, we create liquid instrument portfolios that mimic the portfolio’s performance in order to hedge the portfolio’s risk or simply to gain exposure in the form of direct or collateralized investments in instruments such as stock and bonds whose characteristics would otherwise be unknown if investors were to rely solely on appraisals or index-based risk models. The paper hopes to show, not only what drives real estate risk and return, but also ask the fundamental question about ownership. If liquid synthetic portfolios can be efficiently built with a desired set of risk and/or return characteristics, why own the bricks and mortar? That is the fundamental question that all investors need to both ask and answer

Household property tax default presents a considerable challenge to local governments aiming to provide public services at a sustainable level. The loss of revenue due to default is particularly acute in emerging markets and other communities with weak regulatory enforcement, and public policies aimed at reducing the incidence of property tax default have an important role to play in these communities. 

In this paper, we develop a dynamic framework of household property tax default in an environment with no regulatory enforcement and income-constrained households. Households pay their taxes as they benefit from the public goods provided, yet free-riding incentives and negative income shocks lead to property tax defaults as households aim to smooth consumption over time.

We study the assumptions and the predictions of our theoretical framework empirically, using a large dataset of property tax payments of over 50,000 households in Ghana during the 2007-2016 time-period. The data allows us to differentiate among properties that are purely owner-occupied, purely tenant-occupied, and jointly occupied by owners and tenants. We find that, in support of our public good hypothesis, households positioned to benefit more from services rendered by public hospitals and suburban police stations are less likely to be in long-term default. Properties occupied by tenants are more likely to be in a long-term default compared to owner-occupied properties. Further, default rates increase after tax hikes yet the magnitude varies by occupancy types. In accordance with our theoretical prediction, the joint owner-tenant category comprises more income constrained households which, as we empirically observe, tend to be more often in short-term default. Thus, we find a statistically significant variation in property tax default rates among different home occupancy types. 

These empirical results conform to the predictions of our theoretical framework: in the absence of regulatory enforcement, property tax default is dependent on the household’s access to the public goods provided and its income constraints. The results bear useful insights for policy-making at the local level particularly in emerging markets where local governments struggle to guarantee continuity in the provision of public services.

This is the first paper to examine the behavioral value impact of residential real estate aesthetics on investments. The unique feature of this study is the combination of cognitive science, aesthetics and behavior in the field of real estate. The results have a potential impact on the way professionals should evaluate investment options as well as on the way investments should be presented in order to get the highest possible price.

Real Estate, in contrast to most other investments, has a clear physical component. On the one hand the physical appearance of a building transports lots of information that can be directly evaluated on a financial basis, for example structural integrity or maintenance backlog. On the other hand every building has certain aesthetic properties that cannot be directly linked to the buildings value or price. In general the design of a product can induce psychological reactions with cognitive and emotional content (see Bloch 1995) and can also influence the consumer’s quality of life (see Crilly et al. 2004). Therefore product evaluation from a consumer’s point of view should also be affected. In theory an investor who was able to include aesthetic aspects into his financial considerations should be unaffected in his decision if shown pictures of the product in question. That means under the assumption of certainty two buildings with identical cashflows and location (only possible in theory) should have the exact same value no matter their aesthetics. If investors are willing to pay more for one building than the other in the presence of pictures it would be proof that building aesthetics not only affect consumers but also investors. In addition it would either suggest irrational behavior in the presence of building pictures or the transportation of implicit information through building pictures that goes beyond basic financial data. In order to get reliable results this paper distinguishes between different categories of real estate professionals and professional and private investors. Each individual’s inclination towards aesthetics will be taken into account as well. Since every person necessarily has at least some connection with residential real estate and therefore a certain form of experience, this asset class seems to be the ideal research object.
 

Purpose – Determinants of Residential Rental Values (RRVs) are analysed differently by researchers. Correctly identifying variables that are significantly relevant in Ghana’s rental market has not been realised because of data paucity and asymmetries. The purpose of this research is to identify key market variables that can be utilized in modelling Ghana’s residential rental submarket based on stakeholder perceptions of rental value determinants.

Methodology – We analyse 38 different RRV determinants based on literature review in 3 broad groupings; structural, locational and neighbourhood characteristics. Experts and stakeholders rank these explanatory variables that determine RRVs based their knowledge of Accra’s residential rental market. Their responses are interpreted using the Relative Importance Index (RII).

Findings – Respondents agree that electricity connection, piped water connection, type of house, property condition and number of bedrooms ranked among the top 5 determinants of RRVs. Not all rental properties have basic services, which are critical in rental value determination. Moreover, storeroom availability, near recreational facilities, near place of worship, quality of landscaping and number of storeys ranked among the bottom 5 variables. This could be because these variables may be seen in the local context as luxuries. 

Principal implications – The findings provides rental market stakeholders (especially researchers and valuers) useful insights to dynamics in housing market modelling. 

Originality – This research is the first attempt to comprehensively develop RRV determinants based on the perceptions of market stakeholders in Ghana. This will serve as a guide in understanding rental market dynamics in a developing country context.
 

In this paper we disentangle reservation prices of buyers and sellers for commercial real estate at the city level. To do so, we further develop and extend the cite{fisher03,fisher07} methodology to a repeat sales indexing framework. This has the advantage that it takes care of all unobserved heterogeneity, which is an important consideration in commercial real estate. Furthermore, it allows for the construction of supply and demand indexes without the need for many property characteristics or assessed values. A key innovation in our methodology, which also enables granular index production, is our use of a Bayesian, structural time series model for index estimation. By introducing these new methodological developments, we are able to estimate reliable, robust supply and demand indexes for all major metropolitan areas in the US. Here we focus on two very different urban markets: New York and Phoenix. Consistent with the notion of pro-cyclical liquidity, we find that buyers' reservation prices move much more extremely and earlier than sellers' reservation prices. Our results show that the demand indexes in both New York and Phoenix went down a full year earlier than the supply indexes during the crisis.

Purpose: This paper investigates real estate specific risk factors, such as location, liquidity, as well as market size, and evaluates the performance of commercial real estate. We use cash flow based information on individual property investments, instead of using aggregated index returns that are prone to the well-known appraisal bias or reflect a liquidity bias, such as transaction-based indices. Moreover, these issues are often coupled with a return-based methodology not catering to the distinguished characteristics of commercial real estate.

Methodology: To circumvent these issues, this paper employs a cash flow based methodology labeled Generalized Public Market Equivalent (GPME) proposed by Korteweg and Nagel (2016). The GPME is a Generalized Methods of Moments (GMM) approach that accounts for cross-sectional dependence, different investment horizons, and skewed private commercial property payoffs. Our data obtained from National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF) contains 10,790 individual properties in the U.S. over the period January 1994 to December 2017. We test several asset pricing models ranging from Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) to multi-factor models.

Findings: The estimation results based on the NPI as benchmark portfolio suggest a discrepancy in performance between the larger and smaller Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), pointing to a real estate specific SMB factor. The model based on the CRSP stock market index is more robust to different sample periods and different assumptions on liquidation rates. We do not find systematic abnormal performance of private commercial properties compared to the stock market over the full sample period. In contrast, from sub-samples limited to a seven-year horizon, private commercial real estate does exhibit abnormal performance. 

Implications: From an investor perspective considering commercial properties as part of her portfolio, the results provide important information on the pricing of private commercial real estate. This is interesting for investors holding a diversified portfolio of traditional assets since adding private commercial real estate to the portfolio would not deteriorate the long-term performance but could provide steady cash flows from rental income and potential short-term excess returns.
 

NZ housing allowance is a dualist regime having a cash subsidy known as the Accommodation Supplement (AS) and a stock of social housing in the rental market. Apart from State housing tenants, it is not easy to identify if a potential tenant is receiving any (housing) subsidy. I show that NZ housing LR equilibrium data for the previous century tells a story of consistent fundamentals shaping the sector. I then point to the emergence of financialised residential capitalism which begins to appear in the data post 1990 reforms via a structural shift. I witness disequilibrium in the housing markets which is better explained by bank behaviour than fundamentals, possibly assisting commodification of housing in NZ. Bank behaviour towards credit lending for housing needs appears as a fundamental determinant for modelling to avoid omitted variable bias. This helps to better understand asset price (house) inflation which I call “affordability inflation”. Theory and data present robust indications how housing markets disrupt rental markets. Ripples into the NZ rental markets are also witnessed. My analysis leans towards an idea of (a sort of) ‘institutional transformation’ being set in place leading to a growing private rental sector, and NZ losing its traditional role of a home owning democracy. In effect, I show that ‘velocity of tenure shift’ is on the rise in NZ, with rapid mortgage-debt led accumulation tipping in favour of investment property instead of home ownership. Housing cash subsidy results in increased disposable / residual incomes. Although, this argument lends support to the tool but says nothing about its efficiency, which lies solely in its structural formation. The case for ‘landlord capture’ and ‘fiscal blowout’ are examined. Comparative analysis of the dual housing regime is deconstructed in its detail towards interesting revelations. In case of AS, the picture almost suggests a ceiling mechanism at work within the complex layers of the subsidy, in effect, comfortably managing any risk of a ‘fiscal blowout’ under the subsidy’s conditions at present. Alternatively, social housing results in ‘perfect landlord capture’ – when mkt rents increase, change in subsidy goes to the landlord (i.e. Crown). It is argued that rapid financialised residential capitalism and the resulting institutional shift require serious attention. I explain that NZ is an outlier in the typologies for the varieties of residential capitalism pioneered by Schwartz and Seabrooke (2008). On the policy front, I attempt to construct an ordinal index to measure the Gap in the Accommodation Supplement Promise (GASP) for use as a policy instrument for the government in future. The premise being the crucial importance of efficiently structured housing policy tools that are critical in an environment witnessing rapid residential capitalism with falling homeownership and an increasing reliance on a rental market.

This paper develops a comprehensive methodological framework demonstrating that hedonic pricing (HP), comparable sales and nearest neighbours are (constrained) versions of a general spatiotemporal hedonic specification. We meticulously account for existing real estate professional practice, illustrating that it complies with theoretical imperatives and performs well even under informational and computational constraints. The resulting specification of a parsimonious spatiotemporal Durbin model provides superior performance to alternatives, forgoing local submarket issue and multiple sources of bias common in other Hedonic pricing specifications. This framework provides exciting opportunities for further research not only in real estate, but in other applications of HP especially valuing environmental and social externalities.

The development of people skills has become a key element of management training in the real estate profession. Strategic skills and implementation skills can make or break business success. Universities and business schools are up to better integrate these challenges of the real world in the classroom. This paper debates the teaching experience with the ‘The Blue Game’; a serious business simulation game for experiental learning, developed and used since 2012 at the Henley Business School, University of Reading. The game is set within a capstone term in the MSc real estate programme and delivers a strategy training in responsible investment in real estate.

The students’ object in the game is to solve an actual business dilemma in the Australian real estate market. To win the game, the students team up in groups and take on roles. They develop winning strategies for their companies, incorporating the dynamic interplay of competition and cooperation. A blend of both online and on-site learning tools includes a physical ‘Real Investor’ game box with game money and agreement cards, an electronic memory stick with data about real world portfolios of assets, lecture-style tutorials in game theory, networking applications of the social media Facebook and Twitter, and an interactive e-book for iBooks.

‘The Blue Game’ allows participants to develop a range of personal transferable skills, such as negotiation, team working, leadership, strategic thinking, managing complex relationships, meeting deadlines and delivering professional presentations and reports. It also contributes to delivering professional values and wider value sets relevant to the real estate sector such as sustainability and social responsibility. However, instrumental for a successful learning outcome is an experienced game master – making a stimulating setting available for dynamic exploration, steering a successful workflow, and providing intermediate feedback and individual coaching.

Different from a fun game, ‘The Blue Game’ is a serious game, based on the behavioral concepts of game theory. In the past 6 years more than 1000 students have played the game and enjoyed their exciting learning experience. Positive feedback from the industry qualifies ‘The Blue Game’ as a highly effective learning tool – facilitating the development of interpersonal skills and contributing to the actual challenges of employability in the real estate sector.

This study explores the strategic entry modes of overseas investors in commercial real estate market, specifically, whether if the market entry and partnering decisions of foreign investors get affected by the participation of peer investors. Existing literature in international business suggests investors tend to follow the choice of their peer group so that to acquire the local information through peer business network. As an alternative, aligning with partner benefits foreign investors on accessing local information via partner(s), also sharing the cost and risk; however, research from corporate finance and international investment addresses that one need to balance this benefit with partner’s potential hazard of opportunism. This study conducts multinomial logit model with commercial property transaction data in London, Manchester, Midland and Yorkshire from 2001 to 2015. Empirical results confirm the different choices among foreign and UK investors on submarkets, and show evidence that foreign investors incline to conduct investment independently instead of partnering with a UK investor when a larger group of peers that share similar socio-economic backgrounds had participated in previous 3 years; this supports the hypothesis that investors adjust their investment strategy ex ante when they anticipate the potential agency issue and moral hazard in partnership in foreign market where information access is limited. The effects, however, varies between London and non-London area in terms of submarket selection, where there is subtle result in non-London area reflecting pure foreign consortia may stay within fringe of cities while UK-foreign consortia incline to explore peripheral markets; on the other hand, UK-foreign consortia have broader market horizon in London sample and have higher probability on exploring the submarkets outside “core” (West End, City and Canary Wharf) area. This study provides insights on asset allocation and market entry strategies of commercial property investors by bridging international business theories with real estate investment. It also leads to a further discussion on the composition of investment group and its influence on the liquidity and market cycle of commercial real estate market.

In June 2007 the “Competitive Campuses – The Challenge for European Universities” conference was arranged in Trondheim, Norway NTNU in conjunction with ETH Zürich and Sasaki Associates in Boston. The main focus was on the revitalization of the mono-functional campuses to new concepts that stimulate interaction and integration with the city.  At that time two contradictory trends emerged: on the one hand the trend to create campus projects that reconcile and reintegrate large-scale institutions with the surrounding urban tissue into open, communicative structures, and on the other hand towards “gated-ness”, the increasing seclusion under the influence of efficiency, economy and social security. 

During the 2007 conference a group of 16 international experts addressed questions such as: ‘What kind of spatial organization promotes internal knowledge transfer and social interaction while simultaneously integrating with the surrounding urban environment? Which strategies are needed to create sustainable centres of knowledge that are flexible enough to respond to the fast changing demands of industry and society?’ 

This study investigates if the trends, major questions and the understanding of these challenges for campus development of European universities are relevant ten years later, and how these challenges and opportunities are used in urban and campus planning. Our main focus will be on strategic campus development. This is based on a view that buildings can be seen as functional frameworks for human activity, and thus, that ideas about university space should be reconsidered as activities and demands on performance changes (den Heijer 2011, Beckers et al., 2015). The landscape of learning, teaching and knowledge development is currently moving into new forms altering the needs for working spaces.  

The comparative study of the two universities in the Netherlands and Norway will be descriptive cases, and they both represent institutions having gone through major changes for campus development and management over the last 10 years. 

For analysing the case studies we have used a simplified theoretical framework addressing; challenges and opportunities, vision and main objectives, strategic aims and target goals and how these factors are implemented in real projects. The expected outcome will include analyses of how strategic goals and aims for the two institutions align with actual campus development projects and management in large and smaller scale.
 

Purpose: Since the introduction of the German states double bookkeeping the awareness of local governments increased, that the municipal inventory of real estates should be managed actively. The active management of real estates requires a deep knowledge of the property itself, its area, costs and return. However, in small and middle size municipalities there exist rarely any such strategies. The active management of a whole life cycle of state owned real estates is often perceived as a side activity of the construction division in many municipalities.   Various property-related tasks, especially during the utilisation phase, are perceived reactive instead of active or even proactive.

Additionally investment in human resources and financial means is essential, but for which usually funds are not available. Though, looking at the saving potential of an estimated 10 – 20% per year if a professional strategic real estate management is applied, it should be questionned, why the public real estate management is still given comparably little attention.

This article addresses following questions: What is the situation on strategic management of municipal real estate today? What kind of strategies, structures and systems do they have? How are they going to decide?

Design/methodology/approach: To work out foundations and develop a theoretical background an intense literature study is conducted. Participating municipalities for the case studies are already selected and confirmed. In those case studies interviews will be conducted with a standardized questionnaire.

The shift to an agile CRE portfolio has been stated as one of the major drivers of CRE over the last 25 years (Joroff & Becker, 2017). To achieve agility CRE needs to have capability for dynamic alignment (Cooke, Appel-Meulenbroek & Arentze, 2018). Without dynamic alignment change of the CRE portfolio will lead to the creation of a surplus leasehold portfolio. Models of alignment have a number of common components (Heywood, 2011), but exclude the process of re-alignment and its consequences, surplus property provision (SPP). To date research has been limited, such as focussing on the scale of the liability (e.g. Cooke & Foster, 2016). 

This paper seeks to understand the relationship between SPP and both business and CRE metrics. It does so by examining data from 203 companies over an eight-year period. The analysis uses a distributed time lag auto-regression, together with descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression.  

The research has found that SPP increases when business is in decline (declining profits), and when it is expanding (increasing turnover). This indicates that SPP functions to allow the business to adjust its CRE portfolio and re-align it. If dynamic alignment has been built in there will be agility and business will not need to use SPP as a temporary solution. 

The longevity of the provision appears to be linked to the size of the business. Short-term provisioning appears associated with smaller turnover companies, albeit more profitable than larger companies, which have smaller CRE commitment. SPP is an indicator of CRE agility.
 

Starting point: In the 1960s till 1970s german hospital buildings were built as efficient, functional and rational as possible. Basic requirements such as daylight or the comfort of patient rooms receded into the background. Nowadays, hospital buildings are still technically demanding and complex facilities that must be flexible regarding the continuous improvements and further developments of medical technologies. However, the focus is on human beings and their needs. Design qualities are gaining in importance so that a visionary and efficient planning becomes more and more important for the sustainability of hospitals (cf. Nickl, 2015). 

Problem definition: Hospital architecture presents a challenge in planning because process-oriented structures and medical technologies at a high-level need to be combined with a health-promoting environment and atmosphere. During the planning phase, various changes in the requirements consistently affect the planning process. The process of hospital planning is changing from a stringent procedure to a more iterative and dynamic process so that the requirement for the development and planning of hospitals become more complex (cf. Gerber, 2011; Wiesinger, 2014). 

State of research: The planning of healthcare buildings is of high interest for politics, the economy and, the society. According to my research, there are various of scientific publications which deal with this topic in Germany as well as on an international level e.g. McKee, M. and Healy, J. (2002): Hospitals in a changing Europe and Roth, C., Dombrowski, U., Fisch, M. N. ed. (2015): Zukunft. Klinik. Bau.

Objective:  A sustainable hospital building can be characterized by hard facts, such as functional floor area or process-oriented indicators, and soft facts e.g. sustainability or design aspects of healing architecture. The objective of this research is to analyze the different key figures of hard and soft facts that nowadays affect hospital architecture and design. Afterwards, the results can be used as a tool for a more standardized and efficient planning in healthcare architecture.

Methodology: Literature study, structural analysis of hospitals in Germany, interviews with planners and users e.g. hospital managers, chief physicians, nursing staff, and patients.

This paper discusses sustainable real estate and the role of ethics within real estate. Both terms ‘sustainability’ and ‘ethics’ needs an explanation. With this discussion the tripartite system of ‘morals – principles - laws’ is described in order to have more grip on sustainable real estate and ethics.

The aim of the paper is to examine the mass valuations of large housing stock, taking into account housing privatisation measurements at a later stage (2nd order privatisation / housing privatisation).

Starting point of the analysis is data on case studies of the sales processes of the large housing companies (1st order privatisations). The data was collected in Germany between 2000 and 2008. The housing companies examined held between 50,000 and 140,000 housing units. In the course of Due Diligence processes more than half a million housing units were analysed.

Data from the sales processes (bidding procedures) was collected and evaluated and from the observations and conclusions best practice were derived. The process presented here, is described as the privatisation analysis model PAM. The result of the investigation is a PAM report with a results database connected to it.

Bases for the property valuations are the standardised methods: comparative approach, cost method and income approach. Within the scope of the investigations, the focus was on the micro and macro markets, respective building types and the occupants. Here it was differentiated between desktop valuations on the one hand and drive-by valuations on the other hand. Partly also interviews with tenants were conducted. 

In addition, the added value generated is examined scientifically as well as in proactive respect. Furthermore, the substantiation and methodology of the analysis is underpinned and described. 

The central questions resulting from the analysis were formulated in hypotheses and theses. The actual investigation includes a practical part i.e. the privatisation analysis model as well as a theoretical part comprising the presentation of property valuations and the determination of the Topic price.

As a result, the dynamic effects of real estate valuation lead to a cost-effective solution for in-vestors. 1,000, 10,000 or 100,000 housing units can be valued in a relatively short time span. Already during the purchase inspection (1st order privatisation), the potential for tenant privat-isation (2nd order privatisation) is assessed more closely.
 

Taiwan is among those countries or places of a developed economies such as Hong Kong, Italy and Greece where unauthorized building works (UBWs) are prevalent. A variety of measures have been employed in various countries to tackle the UBWs that include at least immediate teardown, pardon, amnesty through retrospective penalty and etc. In response to the accumulated massive number of illegal extra floors or extensions on the rooftop, or unpermitted enclosed balcony, a set of rules have been established in Taiwan to identify, and record UBWs for them to be later dealt with. However, due to historical, cultural and even political factors, a significant number of UBWs still remain untouched. Official statistics show that as of Oct. 2017, there was 670,000 UBWs in Taiwan nationwide. That is to say, approximately 8% of households committed construction of UBWs in their houses, apartments or condos. There is no exception in the largest city of Taiwan, Taipei where the laws are widely recognized to be well enforced compared to other Taiwan cities. Despite the seemingly uncontrolled situations in Taiwan, prior to demolition, UBWs are subject to annual house taxes. There are at present over 300,000 UBWs registered in house tax records in Taipei alone. Because land and buildings are taxed separately at differing rates, UBWs can largely be viewed as a special form of buildings as far as house tax is concerned. UBWs are taxed annually along with the legal buildings which they are attached to. In spite of the long practice of taxing UBWS, the rationales and revenue contribution of this tax is rarely discussed in academic literature. In addition, how the value of UBWs is determined for taxation is poorly understood. This paper first reviews the pieces of legislation passed and amended over time that regulate UBWs. This historical account is hoped to understand the rationales behind the legal changes. We afterwards carefully examine the tax records that comprise of both legal buildings and UBWs. Various regression models are employed primarily to unveil the relationship between house taxes on the legal buildings and UBWs. In so doing, how the UBWs is assessed compared to the legal buildings they are attached to and their relative tax burden will be revealed. Those empirical evidence allows us to better interpret the house tax on UBWs either as a supplementary source of tax revenue, a penalty on illegal activities or a tacit acknowledgement of their de facto existence.

This paper studies the impact at county level of the mass arrival of refugees in 2015 on residential housing rents in Germany. Using unique and novel data for 2014 and 2015 on end of year (EoY) county-level refugee populations and their type of accommodation as well as on monthly individual offers of flats for rent from Germany’s leading online property broker, we find strong evidence for a negative effect of refugee immigration on rental prices for residential housing in Germany. An increase in the county-level EoY refugee share by one percentage point is associated with a lower average rental price of 0.57% in the period October to December 2015, and a lower average rental price of 0.97% in January to March 2016. Additional evidence suggests that this negative price effect may have been facilitated by increases in the share of refugees in decentralized accommodation. IV regressions that exploit for identification variation in intra-state distances between counties that house refugee reception centers and surrounding counties produce even stronger negative price effects. Our finding of a negative price effect is at odds with the majority of studies which have investigated the consequences of immigration for local property markets at the county or city level. These diverging results may reflect differences in natives’ perceptions of potential adverse externalities associated with refugee migration, differences of seemingly sufficient magnitude to successfully counteract and outweigh any positive demand-side driven stimulus of immigration for higher rental prices.

Universities are key agents in the knowledge-based economy and their campuses are increasingly seen as resources enabling regional innovation.  Previous research outlining the university campus as a European asset (Den Heijer & Tzovlas, 2014) collected various indicators about universities’ goals, finances, users and spaces across 866 European universities. This research also found limitations for comparison (e.g. differences in university types, socio-economic contexts and data collection techniques). Both, the value of such management information and challenges to collect comparable data are addressed here.  

This paper aims to compare campus management information (CMI) in universities of technology located in Europe’s innovative regions. This scope allows comparing campus management in universities with a similar knowledge-base and located in similar socio-economic contexts. In order to do so, this research asks: What is the current state of the tech-campus in Europe’s most innovative regions?

Four perspectives of campus management were used to develop a structured survey targeting 1) university country organisations and 2) university real estate management departments. The survey containing 19 indicators across the four perspectives was sent via email in spreadsheet format. The review of documents and statistical datasets generated by country organisations was also used as data source. 

Available data from country documents and statistics datasets focused on one or two types of indicators. From 62 universities contacted in 12 countries, 13 universities in 8 countries agreed to participate. The respondents provided most of the indicators and/or sent links to relevant documents to retrieve them. However, the overview of the current state of the tech-campus in Europe is limited to this relatively small sample of respondents. 

Although the added value of the campus for universities and Europe is relevant, collecting CMI to improve this practice is still a challenge for CREM researchers. First, the indicators in our framework integrate various perspectives and their collection may be challenged by the availability of CMI in different departments. Second, some universities may lack structural information databases and do not want to share incomplete data for comparison. Last, the benefits of collecting CMI may not (yet) seem to exceed the costs of investing time on it in absence of structured databases. These lessons can be used to improve further research.

Recent years have seen increased international property investment activity from both traditional property investors and new property investors (e.g.: Asian players). This paper uses the Real Capital Analytics database of over $7 trillion in global property transactions over 2007-2017 to assess the changing dynamic of international property investors in recent years; particularly highlighting the increasing role of new international property investors (e.g.: Asian pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and property funds) as they seek to grow and diversify their property portfolios both locally and internationally. The strategic property investment implications are also highlighted.

Real estate buyers pay a premium for lucky properties. Using a large sample of Hong Kong apartment sales, we show that the transaction price itself is priced as a property attribute when it ends in a lucky 8 digit. This explains our observation of price clustering. Hedonic regression modelling is used to show that properties which sell at a lucky price also sell for a 1.4 percent premium, on average. Unlike lucky floor premium, lucky price premium does not exhibit luxury goods characteristics and is not sensitive property price cycles. This shows that the lucky price premium is attributed to cultural heuristics. The results are robust to alternative model specifications.

Many researchers have found that households are willing to pay more for apartments on higher floors than for apartments on the lower floors. Some have also found that corner apartments are higher priced than non-corner apartments. To the best of my knowledge, however, a systematic examination of how intrabuilding location in blocs of apartments affects relative prices of apartments has not been reported in previous research. 

We use two different data-sets for examining empirically how prices are affected by intrabuilding location. Corner apartments and apartments with light from two opposite sides of the building are found to be sold at higher prices than apartments with daylight just from one side. Moreover, like most other researchers we find that the floor at which an apartment is located has an impact on price.

We next address the issue of what will be the optimal concept of building design. In discussing this we account for the fact that differences in building design affect developers’ costs. Moreover, on the demand side of the market we account for the fact that households are non-homogenous in their willingness to pay for different intrabuilding locations. An implication is that the optimal design of buildings usually will differ from one market to another, depending inter alia on the income distribution in the local market. This in turn has the consequence that towns inhabited by populations with different income distributions will differ in their architectural design.
 

This paper examines the effect that gender and racial diversity of a board have on the performance of REIT in South Africa. The legacy of the Apartheid system and the creation of affirmative action programmes make South Africa a justifiable and relevant case study for such research. The dataset used is obtained from the McGregor Database and covers thirty-three (33) JSE-listed REITS. The dependent variable is the squared of return on asset (ROA). The independent variables are the proportion of females and non-whites on the boards. The control variables used are the board size, board independence and market capitalisation. We hypothesised that the proportion of females and non-whites on the boards lead to improved performance. Using the multiple regression model, we find gender (the proportion of females on the board) and racial diversity (non-whites on the board) to affect the performance of the REITs. While the gender affect ROA Positively, the racial diversity has a negative effect on ROA. The results show that when the proportion of females on the board increases by 1%, all other things being equal, ROA also increases by approximately 4.1%. However, when the proportion of blacks on the board increases by 1%, all other things being equal, the performance of REITs reduces by some 2.95%. Two of the control variables, board independence and the size of the board also have a positive and negative effect on performance respectively. These results have are useful for various decision makings for REITs companies.

The study demonstrates that real estate prices react in a statistically significant manner to exogenous announcement effects that may affect regional employment opportunities. We analyze the impact of the announcement of the VW emissions scandal on 9/18/2015 on house prices in the vicinity of Chattanooga, TN, the location of the only current VW production plant in the United States using quantile regression-analysis. Our results indicate that the announcement of the VW emission scandal lowered average, quality adjusted sale prices by an average of 3.3 percent 31 to 60 days after the announcement and by 4.5 percent after 61 to 90 days. There are no statistically significant effects after 90 days. The quantile regressions show that in particular the mid-price range is negatively influenced by this exogenous shock. Our robustness checks show that the price impact increases with proximity to the production plant.

Dwellings of historic value offer qualities that benefits the owner or user, or the society in general. Historic preservation involve use of different policies including push and pull strategies to help protect and manage historic valuable dwellings for present and future generations. The majority of previous studies aiming to assess the impact of historic preservation on housing values employ hedonic pricing models to control for the heterogeneous nature of dwellings. These studies show deviant results and cannot, however conclude whether the observed historic preservation premium are due to a policy effect because it is likely to include a heritage effect due to unobserved characteristics that got the dwelling historic preserved in the first place. This study expands upon previous studies by introducing a unique dataset, which combines data of historic preserved dwellings in Oslo, Norway, and data from the housing market from 1990 to 2017, allowing us to study sales prices for the same dwellings both before and after the action of historic preservation. We further address the omitted variable bias by estimating a two-way fixed effects model including a differences-in-differences estimator. Our results suggest a policy premium of about 4%. Moreover, results suggest that the dwellings subject to the strictest policy hold a lower policy premium than the dwellings subject to the less strict policy, what implies quite clear policy recommendations.

In residential real estate, sellers often revise their initial listing price. Our paper investigates the impact of such price changes on the final result of the sales transaction. Using a sample of single family home sales transactions in Palm Beach, Florida for the period 2006-2016, we find that 45% of transactions show a price change after the initial listing price. We examine both price change up and price change down on the probability of sale, time on market, and the selling price received by the seller. In our first set of estimations, we examine the impact of a price change on the probability of sale. We next employ Lewbel's (2012) two-stage least squares estimation to examine how the degree of overpricing impacts time on market and the sales price. Our results show that change in the list price, that is, not pricing correctly in the initial stage of the selling process is costly for the seller as it decreases the probability of sale, significantly increases the time on market, and also decreases the final sales price for the property.

Software technology companies seek to follow the lead of Google, Facebook, Pandora and other successful technology companies with amenities and an open-office design that reflect the company culture. Efforts to attract the millennial generation, retain employees, decrease overall office space size, and increase employee performance may be driving this trend. However, there may be an alternative explanation driving the commercial real estate decision that is tied to the chosen daily business processes of a given company in technology sector.

This research explores the connection between the software development processes, agile and waterfall, used by the software technology companies and their corporate real estate (CRE) needs. A questionnaire is used to gather real estate demands from fifteen randomly selected technology companies in Charleston, South Carolina, at three stages of growth – small, medium and large. The survey was developed by interviewing local brokers, architects, and interior designers in order to identify questions that would provide a meaningful dataset on the CRE demands in question. These demands include both quantitative and qualitative measures including square footage per employee, furniture design, additional amenities offered to the employees and office layout. Our primary question is does the business process chosen by the technology companies matter?  We expect to find that technology companies using primarily agile processes, which require regular collaboration between employees, would use less square footage per employee due to a shared, flexible, and open office design.  

Whereas, companies mainly using waterfall processes, which require more heads-down work and less frequent collaboration, would have a higher square foot per employee ratio because of a more private, permanent, and closed office design. Results from this study will be useful for many real estate stakeholders including the tenants/corporate users, brokers, architects, interior designer and the real estate investment community.   
 

Real estate education across the globe has, at its core, certain universal and value-neutral skills and knowledge. This knowledge has developed over decades to reflect the functions of specific market structures which characterise real estate markets. Moreover, it is reflective of the maturity of property markets, and as such, the tools developed reflect specific market structures. Real estate analysts are becoming increasingly interested in real estate markets in emerging markets/economies, particularly in Africa. The challenge facing these analysts is that dominant real estate theory is based on mature markets within an industrialised context and therefore do not accurately reflect real estate markets in emerging economies. The context of real estate markets in emerging economies tend to be characterised by a dual economy, a lack of transparency in the market, high levels of uncertainty, and the existence of communal/customary and informal rights in the ownership of real estate. In light of this, it is argued that real estate theories should better reflect the peculiarities and level of maturity of the markets they attempt to analyse.

Through the application of qualitative, semi-structured interview surveys with academics from several prominent African institutions specialising in real estate, this research examines the academic syllabus taught by universities to assess the degree to which local real estate markets are integrated into African university programmes. This will serve as a basis for developing an understanding of the multi-disciplinary knowledge base required in order to allow graduates to succeed in contextually diverse real estate markets.

Improving the energy efficiency in the real estate sector plays a decisive key factor in the German energy and climate policy. In order to meet the EU-targets of reducing the energy consumption as well as CO2 emissions energy performance certificates (EPCs) have been introduced to prove the energy efficiency of commercial and residential properties. The aim of the present work is to determine the role of EPCs in the rental decision-making process by investigating their influence on tenants' preferences in the housing market. In this study, we apply a choice-based conjoint (CBC) analysis to investigate the relative importance of different housing characteristics including the apartments' energy efficiency represented by the buildings' EPC. The results suggest an ongoing change in the perception of energy efficiency in the housing market, as the attribute received the third highest importance score after monthly rent and residential area. Moreover, the analysis of different respondent segments provides new insights into the importance of EPCs that strongly depended on the awareness and conscious consideration of the provided information. Thus, the results emphasize a novel perspective on EPCs in the housing market and point out crucial factors for its success as a marketing tool.

Aim: 

The aim of the paper is to evaluate the influence of macro-economic and demographic variables on residential mortgage growth in Italy. This study will expand the indicator of macroeconomic variables considered in the analysis of mortgage trends and will also include demographic variables. The objective is to identify if and what is the relationship between the following variables and the provision of loans in the Italian market.
 
The sample consider all banks presents in Italy for which residential mortgage data are available in the balance sheet. The data are yearly and the time period analysed from 2002-2016. Bank control variable are collected from Bank of Italy database while macro-economic variables are from ISTAT and Eurostat database.

The methodology adopted is the multiple regression analysis. We have as dependent variable the outstanding residential mortgage and as independent variable:

• Average Yearly Inflation Rate
• Average Yearly GDP growth Rate
• Average Yearly Exchange Rate
• Percentage Informal Sector Employment
• Treasury bill rate
• National Saving Rate
• House Price Index
• Structural Dependency Index
• Index of resident foreigners
• Number of leases

For each variable, in order to evaluate the relations within each other, we will run the following tests:

• Test of Normality
• Correlation test
• Multicollinearity Test

Expected results: 

We will expected that GDP per capita, House Price Index, informal sector employment and inflation have the highest influence on mortgage growth in Italy, while, demographic factors should show a negative impact on residential mortgage but not relevant for Italian market.

In the scientific literature there are various studies about the prospects of online-shopping. Important topics are the impact of online-shopping on in-store shopping and on travel behaviour. Most of these studies are about possible future developments. There are hardly any studies which investigate empirically the effects of online-shopping. In this paper we will investigate the effect of online-shopping on the amount of retail space that is in use in Dutch municipalities. Our hypothesis is that due to the increase of online-shopping the amount of retail space in use by retailers, is decreasing.

We use data from 2011 and 2016 which include data about retail floor space and survey data about shopping behaviour of consumers. Bivariate analysis show the an increase in expenditure on online-shopping (between 2011 and 2016) is significantly related with a decline in retail space in use. Also, in a regression model, were we correct for exogenous variables such as number of households and income levels, changes in online-shopping expenditures are significantly (negatively) related to changes in retail space in use by retailers. It seems however that this effect is not present in every municipality.
 

In this study, we examine the release of analysts’ net asset value estimates of firms and ask whether they transmit new information to security markets. We find that net asset value estimates do contain new information as measured both by abnormal returns and by abnormal share turnover. Our findings remain significant after controlling for concurrent analyst FFO forecasts, buy/sell recommendations, and price targets. Consistent with efficient information transmission, the information is absorbed quickly and permanently by market participants. Analysts of most companies seldom release definite net asset value estimates. The exception is real estate investment trusts (REITs), whose analysts regularly issue estimates of net asset values (NAV) based on the value of their underlying real estate portfolio. We are the first to our knowledge to examine whether analyst estimates of REIT NAVs transmit new information to securities markets.

The quality of and access to firm-level information is essential to reduce market information asymmetries between a company’s insiders and stock market investors. In this context, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) aims to enhance information transparency for investors in publicly listed firms. Common SEC comments received by REITs relate to inconsistencies between the FFO disclosed by real estate companies and NAREIT’s definition, or missing information on the Net Operating Income (NOI) or AFFO calculation. The SEC also increasingly requires REITs to discuss commercial real estate market conditions and risks in more detail. A REIT has 10 days to respond to the SEC letter. Since 2005, SEC has publicly disclosed comment letters shortly after a completed review. Considering that SEC comment letters represent an external audit of REIT financial statements and letters contain information about, amongst others, a REIT’s operational performance measurement, business operations and relevant real estate market conditions, the question arises as to whether SEC comment letters have informative value to REIT investors that help reduce information asymmetries. Previous studies find that additional or enhanced firm disclosures have been found to reduce information asymmetries (Kohl and Schaefers 2012; Leuz and Verrecchia 2000; Welker 1995). Investigating the informational value of SEC comment letters to stock market investors, we in particular analyze the impact of SEC’s comment letters received by REITs on information asymmetries, as measured by the bid-ask spread (Anglin et al. 2011; Bozanic et al. 2014; Johnston and Petacchi 2017), over the period from 2005 to 2017. To collect the content and frequency of comment letters, we use Audit Analytics database. To our knowledge, this is the first large-sample study investigating the impact of SEC comment letters on information asymmetries perceived by REIT investors. We explicitly take into account REITs special accounting measures by focusing on SEC’s real estate-relevant reviews like comments on non-GAAP metrics (e.g. NOI, FFO and AFFO).

The aim of the paper is to assess the distinctive drivers of investment performance in the logistics real estate sector and provide insights into the process of change. The study will draw on historic reviews of warehousing patterns and compare it with the current model of logistics encompassing the ‘last mile’. It will look at the implications of technological change on distribution for rental change, development and investment. The research will be based on an interrogation the CoStar Property database to assess the current scale of the real estate sector and identify how it has changed with the advent of ecommerce over the last ten years. This analysis will include a case study of how one logistics company has addressed the ‘last mile’ in a particular metropolitan area. It will draw parallels with the emergence of retail warehouses in the 1980s as its concept evolved through a product life cycle. It is intended to frame the analysis of investment in warehousing over time in the same way, encompassing the interaction between rental growth, obsolescence, risk premiums and yields.

We examine office yield behaviour in key European cities which account for the bulk of investment transactions in Europe. A number of studies investigate the cross sectional influences on real estate yields identifying factors which drive the geographical variation of yields. These studies also highlight global factors driving yields in addition to geography specific influences. Research work using time-series data ascertain the impact of dynamic drivers of yields such as the business cycle and yields in alternative asset classes. 

This study examines the response of yields to dynamic influences that reflect changing macroeconomic and investment conditions. We explicitly examine the relevance of investor sentiment in yield movements by including both direct and indirect measures. The empirical investigation extends to include the ‘flight-to-quality/liquidity” phenomenon in bond and real estate markets.   

We pool the European office yield data provided by BNP Paribas and opt for a panel VAR (PVAR). This framework allows interaction among variables but also across cities. We study whether yield changes are contemporaneous or some cities move first. Given that the cities in the sample are heterogeneous the PVAR allows for individual heterogeneity by introducing fixed effects. A useful extension of this methodology is to study shocks and their impact across cities such as the response of city office yields to political uncertainties in various parts of Europe. 
 

In literature, large performance discrepancies have been found for comparable buildings. Moreover, often a large gap between predicted and actual building performance has been observed. The underlying reason for these phenomena is in many cases user behavior. Buildings may have become more efficient, but user behavior can easily offset potential efficiency gains.

User behaviors have been and still are puzzling researchers. A key question remains how individual factors like knowledge, awareness or attitude relate to behaviors; commonly known as attitude-behavior gap. Anecdotal findings suggest that mindfulness is associated with closing this gap. Mindfulness is usually defined as an enhanced awareness of and attention to what is currently taking place. It may be important to disengage individuals from automatic thoughts, habits, and behavioral patterns. Mindfulness may facilitate behaviors which are consistent with one’s attitudes, values, and beliefs. This paper investigates the effects of environmental awareness and mindfulness on environmental real estate user behaviors at home and at work.

A pre-test study has been conducted among students and evaluated with structural equation modeling. Preliminary findings revealed that mindfulness positively affects environmental awareness as well as environmental behaviors at home and at work. Other sustainable consumption patterns positively affect environmental behaviors as well, suggesting that “green” individuals also behave accordingly in buildings. Additionally, the context seems to influence behaviors, since environmental real estate user behaviors can be rather observed at home. One possible explanation is that occupants do not pay for utilities at the office. Nevertheless, the results imply that until environmental real estate user behaviors become the societal default, their enactment depends on mindful and environmentally aware individuals. In a next step, a study using a representative sample of the German population will be conducted to test for support of the findings.

The contributions of this article are twofold. Firstly, it is one of the first articles to assess whether the same individual behaves differently depending on the context. Secondly, the article contributes to the existing literature in the field of building energy and water conservation by offering evidence that mindfulness as well as environmental awareness affect environmental real estate user behaviors.
 

The purpose of this paper is to examine the risk-adjusted performance of EREITS and MREITs in advancing (bull) and declining (bear) markets. Fabozzi and Francis (1977) stress however that no one definition of advancing (bull) and declining (bear) exists therefore we use a number of different definitions. The empirical findings show that the risk-adjusted performance EREITs and MREITs differs in the phases of the market. Conclusions that continue to hold under the alternative definitions of advancing and declining markets. Although, advancing and declining markets were evaluated ex-post, the finding that the risk-adjusted performance of EREITs and MREITs perform differently in different phases of the market is of significant importance for the decision-making of portfolio management.

Condominiums comprise about eight percent of the current occupied housing stock in the United States; and a larger share (11 percent) in cities. Since 2001, the share of the condominium stock in cities has grown by more than 80 percent. Yet, they are an understudied asset, partially due to a lack of comprehensive data, with only a small body of research exploring the unique opportunities and challenges they bring to households and policymakers. Demographically, the U.S. is experiencing increasing demand for cities, decreasing household sizes, and an increasing share of aging homeowners who are over-invested in housing. These factors, coupled with recently identified needs for energy-efficient housing, supply-side solutions to increase housing affordability, and mixed-use development, all suggest condominiums could be a viable alternative to traditional single-family homes for an increasing share of households.

The paper is divided into three parts, the first documents condominium unit and dweller characteristics using the American Housing Survey. This section also explores the different types of costs associated with condominiums, and documents housing quality and mobility trends for these units. The second section documents housing affordability for condominium occupants. It looks at a number of factors, including: the probability of a unit being purchased by a first-time homebuyer or a downsizing older household, housing-cost-burdened-status of occupants, and housing conditions in any given year.  The last section looks at condominium loan performance. It uses Fannie Mae data on loan performance to look at the mortgage default probabilities for condominium properties compared with single-family homes over time. These data allow for further analysis of the condominium investor market, and the paper subsequently explores diverse behavior across owners, secondary homes, and investors in these markets to look at disparate outcomes across groups. Finally, using both datasets, the paper compares projected wealth outcomes for different unit-types over the past decade. 

From a housing policy perspective, there is very little research on this sector of the housing market, and the unique nuances associated with condominiums are important to understand. As an increasing component of the urban housing stock, condominiums have the potential to influence housing affordability, fill a gap in supply to address a specific segment of unmet housing needs, and reduce

Tourism has become one of the major strategies for urban or city authority to generate competitiveness. The benefits include increasing incoming tourists, conference and conventional business opportunities, foreign direct investments, establishing operational sites or even headquarters. For local citizens, successful tourism could enhance job opportunities, innovations and normally will induce higher infrastructures qualities. Under current trend of IoT and big data applications, smart tourism is meant to be one of the crucial movements of this century. This research established a spatial database of tourism resources of Taiwan and its major competitors from open data sources to evaluate and reveal the gaps between users’ demands and current tourism data supply. This research focused on Taiwan and its surrounding competitive cities, and examining the methodologies and proper open data environment. The results suggested a more user- orientation open data platform should be considered and the 3D visualized measurements of spatial variety could help users to identify and making tourism decisions. The empirical results also reveal some interesting implications to the determinants of hotel room rates.

It is broadly recognized that real estate has been subjected to a veritable tsunami of change forces dramatically impacting and buffeting:

• Property use - Air BnB;
• Retail shopping - Amazon;
• Workspaces - WeWork and other co-working models;
• Capital access - FinTech innovations and crowd funding;
• Urbanization - prospectively to be accelerated by autonomous vehicles and exemplified by proliferating high-rise construction.

These changes are not necessarily reflected in the focus of research topics investigated by the property research community. Mainstream real estate textbooks are even more innocent of these forces and their implications. Consequently, the academy is not well serving students studying property, as learning resources are predominantly anchored in conventional practices applicable in the pre-innovation, pre-information era.

This paper explores how the implications of change influence the concerns of property scholars, generally, and the contents of property curriculums, specifically. The study emphasis is on textbooks targeted to the introductory real estate principles/overview, this research revisits, updates and extends two significant prior research studies, which were published in Journal of Real Estate Literature a more than two decades ago (“Foundation of the Knowledge Structure: Review of Real Estate Principles Texts, Journal of Real Estate Literature, January 1994: 37-65) and a decade plus ago (“Shifting Foundations of the Real Estate Knowledge Structure: Revisiting the Review of Real Estate Principles Texts,- Journal of Real Estate Literature, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2004: 237-265).

Although REITs do not have any tax advantage of debt, their leverage ratio is twice as high as that of non-REITs. By scanning capital structure theories and previous studies, then comparing results of the REIT sample with that of the comparison sample, we find reasons encouraging REITs use of debt financing. 

First, regarding the impact of capital structure determinants on REIT and non-REIT leverage, our analysis suggests that tangibility is the most influencing factor that contributes 17 percentage points of total difference between REITs’ leverage and non-REITs’ leverage.  This result indicates that a high availability of desirable collateral increases the REITs’ preference for debt financing. The most second influencing determinant is operating risk which implies that REITs with more volatile cash flows tend to utilize debt financing to avoid the potential problems of new equity, e.g. misvaluation or the adverse reaction of investors to equity issue announcements. In contrast, firm size is the most influencing factor that reduces the magnitude of the total difference. The reason is that firm size has a positive impact on non-REITs’ leverage, but it has an insignificant impact on the leverage ratio of REITs.

Second, we find evidence that REITs and non-REITs pursue different goal functions. Specifically, REITs pursue an optimal deviation from the target leverage ratio to maximize the risk-adjusted performance, while non-REITs follow an optimal deviation to maximize the firm value. Our investigation indicates that REITs can maximize their risk-adjusted performance if they maintain their deviation at the level of 40.6%, which corresponds to the leverage of 62.5%. Similarly, the firm value of non-REITs can be maximized if their deviation is 0.9% or their leverage is 24.5%.

Finally, our findings reveal that the market response to a debt issue announcement is more positive than it is to an equity issue announcement. For example, on average, the cumulative abnormal return in the event window of 11 days surrounding a debt issue announcement date is 1.9 percentage points higher than that surrounding an equity issue announcement date. This result implies that the leverage ratio of REITs is high because managers desire to avoid the adverse reaction of investors to equity issue announcements.

We argue that economic shocks to a regional private housing market are transmitted through the hierarchical structure of the market, and this ripple effect is not only confined within the owner-occupier sector, but also across the private rented sector. Our empirical analysis is related to existing models of spatial ripple effects across housing markets, we use transaction prices and rents in the Aberdeen housing market of northeast Scotland, and our preliminary findings support the argument that economic shocks result domino effect in prices and rents through the quality continuum.

The paper shows that the average periodic return decreases with the holding period, both for residential real estate in the Netherlands and England and Wales, as well as for commercial real estate in the United States: The longer the holding period is, the lower on average the periodic return is.

The literature provides several reasons why the average periodic returns are higher for shorter holding periods. The first reason is the disposition effect: investors tend to sell more quickly a `winner' and to hold onto a lower-performing property longer. The second reason is that there might be improvements just after purchasing the property. 

The first implication of this finding is that the widely used repeat sales (RS) model is misspecified, because it does not differentiate between holding periods. The second implication is that systematic revisions in RS indices are due to the changing distribution of holding periods over time. This link has so far not been provided in the RS literature on index revision.

This paper proposes an adjustment to the RS model by including dummy variables for each holding period, apart from a baseline holding period to avoid perfect collinearity.  The estimated price index represents the left-out holding period. This model solves the misspecification issue. Moreover, it is shown that (systematic) index revisions are much smaller in RS models including holding period dummy variables compared to a standard RS model.
 

Periods of high volatility in house prices increasingly occur synchronously in the housing markets of different countries. Such contagion, or volatility spillovers are often captured by ARCH type models and “GARCH models have been used extensively to analyze cross-border volatility spillovers in asset markets” (Beirne et al, 2009, p8). While markets in different countries may show periods of correlation in performance, i.e., house price movements, this by itself does not necessarily imply contagion. Contagion can be taken to refer to the unanticipated transmission of shocks and as such can be differentiated from correlations that may exist in more normal market circumstances. Kaminsky et al, (2009) “refer to contagion as an episode in which there are significant immediate effects in a number of countries following an event” (p55) They contrast this with situations where effects on a number of countries take time, labelling the latter as a ‘spillover’. Masson (1998, 1999) refers to three types of contagion caused by the simultaneous impact of common shocks, spillovers due to inter-country interdependencies and pure or shift contagion resulting from sudden movements, e.g., the withdrawal of liquidity following a crisis in one country that then impacts on other countries. Interdependencies between countries in, say, liquidity flows are the main channels through which crises are transferred (Forbes and Rigobon, 2000 & 2002). Brunnermeier and Pedersen (2009) discuss the role of liquidity and postulate a liquidity correlation channel that can generate contagion. 

In this paper we examine contagion in house prices in selected OECD countries following the sub-prime crisis, beginning in 2007, focusing on the increase in liquidity caused by quantitative easing applied by central banks including the European Central Bank. The aim is to capture the effect of liquidity shocks after 2007 and 2014 measuring house price contagion among three countries two of which do not belong to the Eurozone. Unlike models using financial data, our data frequency is lower and is quarterly rather than monthly or daily. This reflects data availability and the slower transactions process for complex (multiple attribute) housing assets compared to more liquid financial assets. Our analysis builds upon correlation and we use the dynamic conditional correlation model developed by Engle (2001, 2002), Engle and Sheppard (2001), and Tse and Tsui (2002) – DCC-GARCH. 

This paper reports part of a study funded by New Zealand’s National Science Challenge 11: Building Better Homes, Towns and Cities. Unlike the UK and other European settings, in New Zealand there has been very little policy emphasis placed on the development of peripheral regions. Uneven economic development has been a fact of life with very significant growth in Auckland, the country’s largest city, and far less growth in other localities. In the face of this, public, private and third-sector agencies in regional settlements have initiated a range of urban regeneration activities. Our study, focusing on three South Island settlements, Oamaru – Timaru – Ashburton (with a population range of 14,000 to 29,000), has attempted to understand the situation they face and the nature of the initiatives they are pursuing. One set of these initiatives is very much property-related with local government and the private sector both engaging. These include retail facilities, business parks, heritage precincts and service facilities such as hospitality, recreation and accommodation for locals and tourists. At times local government and private sector developers work in harmony, but in others there are elements of antagonism and frustration evident. We use our understanding gained from interviews with local government, property professionals and the development sector to outline to identify a number of cases studies. Each of these emphasising the important roles played by locally based developers in regional settlements and the need to find ways of harnessing their energy and commitment more effectively.

Introduction:

In a non-peer reviewed session Alan Thompson and Cléo Folkes take a look at the Real Estate Investment Trusts, a form of indirect property holding that is mostly listed on a stock exchange and that is strongly regulated and safe for non-sophisticated investors. REITS own, and in most cases operates, income-producing property or ‘real estate’, although some focus on financing real estate, and pay out most of their income as dividend, and are tax-efficient.

REITs were first established by U.S. Congress in 1960 with the aim to give investors, especially the small investors, access to income-producing real estate, whilst before the huge lot size limited access to many. They were eternally managed. 

The REIT model was copied across the world since then to over 35 countries, albeit in different forms and to differing degrees of success. Australia is a clear success story with deep REIT markets, whilst in the United Kingdom REITs only came into existence in January 2007. A relaxation of the rules there have increased the uptake of this structure, but the market is far from fully mature. Residential REITs are only in its infancy in the UK, for example.

We will start the session with looking at the history of REITS and its (unequal) spread across the world. 

Key discussion

The main part of the discussion will focus on two key questions:

•    The existence of specialist, small REITs and large REITs, looking at the existence of economies of scale vs benefits from having specialist knowledge

•    Self-managed vs externally-managed REITS: what does the evidence say generates better returns, and why? Are there variances across the world?

The first point will go into the theory that economies of scale exist for REITS, and we will look at evidence for and against, and will examine for which factors economies of scale have been achieved and where they have not. 

A case will be made that despite a clear case of economies of scale for certain types of cost, having superior in-depth, specialist knowledge can outweigh those benefits to explain the existence and survival of some smaller specialist REITs

The second point will look at the impact the management structure has on REIT performance. Whereas so-called externally managed REITs, mostly found in Japan, are oft considered more efficient and with a simpler organization, they have the disadvantage that manager fee structures can create conflicts of interest and problems with corporate governance. The exter

The globalisation of financial markets has driven the need for the internationalisation of valuation processes and standards. The valuation methods used in each country depends on the techniques adopted. These standards are typically set by government legislation and may also be the established “norms” of relevant professional bodies. In new global markets, little academic work has been done to evaluate levels of consistency amongst valuers. This new PhD research investigates the extent and possible causes of valuation variance for commercial property in Dubai (United Arab Emirates). Having established the level of valuation variance the research investigates the possible causes of variance in property investment valuations based upon questionnaire surveys, valuation case experiments and an industry focus group. 

The surveys revealed that valuers in Dubai are on par with variance observed in other international markets. The surveys found the main cause of variance to be a result of information efficiency; including sparse transactional evidence; wide yield assumptions; and a lack of standardisation in key areas of the valuation process. Individual client “behavioural” influences were also pertinent in the cause of valuation variance. The research recommends that regulators and professional bodies ensure variance is minimised through the pooling of property data in order to provide more meaningful and consistent valuation advice. It is expected with an improvement in temporal data the local valuation profession will be better informed and client pressure exerted when finalising the valuation figure will subside. 

This new research is a useful starting point to expand the range of global studies in property valuation. In addition, the findings assist in improving valuation practices in Dubai and the wider GCC and Middle Eastern markets. 

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of combining listed real estate securities with infrastructure and real asset allocations. The study looks at how the time variant the results are , as well as the extent of regional variations. Following on from the academic evidence, the paper examines the practical applications of this strategy.

A fast-growing number of small and medium size hotels in Thailand leads to a fierce competition within hotel industry. Old strategies such as price cutting may be obsolete. Needs of niche customers must be identified in order to target the right market and to employ the limited resource with correspond strategies. Thus, this paper aims to examine the preferred attributes on hotel choice decisions for Thai baby boomer travelers. Conjoint analysis technique was applied to explore how qualified respondents perceive the relative importance of cleanliness, monetary value, sleep quality, location, facilities, and amenities quality in the selection of small and medium hotels under the operation of Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) entrepreneurs. Despite the complication in collecting the samples of the technique, an innovative board game is created correspondingly to simplify the process and to visually mimic the trade-off situation in a process of consumer's evaluation. The findings suggest that application of the most preference profile card: Clean bed, Free Breakfast, Adjustable temperature, Green Environment, Fast-heated water heater should be put in priority in regard to the willingness to pay. SME hotel entrepreneurs targeting baby boom traveler could adjust the attributes to the outcomes accordingly in order to be competitive.

Accessibility to homeownership in western countries, especially for middle to low income earners has decreased over time due to several factors such as stringent covenants, pressure of rental growth on household income expenditure and a negative gap between wage and house price growth. Moreover, young households face higher accumulated student loans and, in a steadily rising and strong rental market, they are not able to generate enough savings to cover the initial deposit necessary to become homeowners. We design an income sharing mortgage product where borrowers accept to pledge a portion of their future income to anticipate the time necessary to become homeowners by obtaining a higher LTV (up to 100%). Our analysis nds that this mortgage may be useful for lower income households in periods of higher uncertainty and that it may become less expensive in a high interest rate environment. Finally, this product also embeds an incentive to save, with potential benefits for the overall systemic risk of the banking sector. As a consequence we find that the default risk is not higher than a plain vanilla mortgage with lower LTV.

Institutions providing access to housing in all tenures have become further entrenched and exposed to financial risk. Literature on housing policy trends and financial risk cover drivers such as liberalisation, monetary approaches, innovation, political commitment, and asset management. A conceptual model is put forward for framing housing policy trends that engage with financial risk. This allows documentary analysis of national housing policy trends to be carried out in a taxonomy of financial risk sources, financial risk types, and financial risk measurements – focussing on UK, US, and China national cases. Qualitative primary findings are integrated from multiple key stakeholder interviewees in residential real estate, particularly those engaged with financial risks of housing policy in New Zealand. Findings show that contemporary housing policy trends have incentivised institutions to take on greater financial risk, whilst simultaneously institutions have encouraged financial risk exposure. Discussion centres on systematic and unsystematic risk ‘in’ the finance of housing policy trends, that often work counter-intuitively to the financial risk ‘of’ housing policy trends. Especially as there are financial risks of a housing policy trend that focus on a single tenure. Plus, there is tendency to focus on the downside financial risk of known probabilities, rather than seek out unknown upside financial risks that may have escaped detection.

In today's world of turbulence and repeated economic crisis, firms, as well as industries, face new challenges and opportunities. This complexity req uires thinking in a systemic way of the whole system, rather than looking at few parts of the system. Countries and regions that are too costly for doing business with a little focus on competitiveness and innovation throughout the entire legislative process are losing global leadership and ground towards main competitors. The industry that is being studied here, real estate, represents 70% of global wealth and touches everyone's life being an investor/owner or tenant. Multi-stakeholder's centered sustainable competitiveness this industry is advocated as current traditional business centered competitiveness may not work anymore. 

Few studies touched on real estate industry level competitiveness apart from the application of Porter's diamond model. Not only that but these competitiveness models focused mainly on economic performance. With the introduction of Sustainable Development Goals, new thinking about competitiveness of this industry is becoming more important.  In light of the above complexity and dynamism of the world, there is a need to have a new thinking about real estate industry's competitiveness beyond business centered economic definition to more of inclusive multi-stakeholder approach. Thus the research aims at reaching a comprehensive multi-stakeholder's definition while developing a dynamic framework of Real estate industry level competitiveness 

The methodology presented here seeks to uncover and understand stakeholders’ expectations and needs in real estate industry competitiveness, which aligns with the research question: How does a more stakeholder-oriented understanding of real estate industry competitiveness look like?. We study real estate competitiveness from different perspectives, looking to shared experiences of multiple stakeholders. In particular, we look at experiences of stakeholders who have experienced aspects of (un)sustainable real estate competitiveness, to find common themes in these experiences. Thus, phenomenological qualitative research design was chosen as our main paradigm. To select interviewees, the different industry stakeholder groups were clustered (i.e. developers, tenants, investors, policy-makers, consultants, and brokers) and interviewees were chosen to represent these groups. The city of application is chosen to be Dubai given its nature as a booming  cosmopolitan city that attracted more than many international investors  and witnessed a booming real estate market. 

By analyzing different stakeholders responses about challenges, opportunities, and the future of the real estate industry, the following key areas stand out as key determinants of real estate industry’s inclusive competitiveness: Real estate cost and quality tradeoff,  Economic sustainability, Environmental sustainability, government and legal certainty, Political sustainability, Resilience and Social sustainability. These determinants can be clustered into three major pillars which are :  Economic sustainability ; Central government role Beyond economic sustainability (social and environmental sustainability) . 

The research findings confirm the importance of dealing with real estate industry as a system with interconnected parts. On one side, quality and affordability are central determinants of real estate industry's competitiveness which is in line with traditional competitiveness theories. However, by following a stakeholder focused approach , new themes such as  sustainability, system thinking and central government role come to play important role in driving competitiveness. Different stakeholders look beyond economic value of buildings to the total offerings of the neighborhood and city ; beyond economic to social and environmental pillars of sustainability. Moreover, government's role is believed to be central to enhance real estate industry's competitiveness that goes from providing an enabling legal environment to employing better proactive tools to manage the real estate industry. Although different stakeholders have conflicting interests concerning expectations and priorities, common ground can be reached based on creating a sustainable real estate industry. Cities' success in creating a competitive real estate market depends on their ability to build quality of life infrastructure that attracts people, while offering sustainable economic opportunities without compromising on social and environmental performance. 

To conclude, the proposed model can help governments in understanding city's competitive advantages by applying a multi-stakeholder approach to understand determinants of real estate industry level competitiveness and thus to enhance it.

Real estate is increasingly becoming an asset class subject to the same requirements as other capital investments. As a consequence, the strategic relevance of real estate portfolios has gained in importance for many businesses. The resulting large quantities of documentation and information require a structured database system, in which information and documents will remain permanently transparent, complete, and findable. Portfolio and operating documentation must be reliably and consistently available to a variety of actors, over a period of decades. 

In order to facilitate effective document protection, administration and access at all times, it is necessary to establish a unique structure and identification system for the information. In practice, however, there are a variety of existing standards relating to document structures for particular lifecycle phases and for transmission of the data between specific phases. The documents are consequently subject to repeated restructuring throughout their lifecycle - a process that is expensive and entails a risk of data loss.

The paper describes an approach for unifying and establishing compatibility between the existing document structure standards throughout the property's lifecycle, making use of unique document classes. The goal is to achieve a stable, unique document classification, accompanied by a capacity to automatically classify relevant (and, in particular, unstructured) documents. In this way, in the course of digitalization or migration, it will be possible to directly associate documents with a document class and thus ensure that they have a single unique classification throughout their lifecycle; they can then be displayed (by the users) in restructured forms for specific use cases at any time without incurring additional costs.

In order to determine to what extent this process can be automated with machine learning, a range of algorithms were applied to real building documentation, analyzed, tested for reliability and optimized to building-specific data. 

The analysis demonstrated that not all digitalized documents are directly suited to automated classification; the paper therefore illustrates the associated problems, presenting detailed recommendations for how to facilitate automated classification and migration using machine learning. In this way, major errors can be avoided from the very beginning of the digitalization process.

Over the last two decades, many developed countries have experienced notable changes in house prices. This exploratory study considers if house price movements in the UK can be linked to the political cycle as governments realise homeowners represent a large portion of the voter base and their voting decisions could be influenced by the magnitude and direction of house price changes. Specifically, the study investigates whether house prices behave differently before and after elections and under different political regimes. To examine this relationship, the study analyzed quarterly UK national house price data since 1960, along with data on the results of UK parliamentary elections during the same period. Over this period, real UK house prices increased by an average of 2.83% per annum. While there is no evidence that house prices in the UK behave significantly differently under different political parties, it is evident that house prices perform much better in the last year before an election, compared to the first year after an election. House prices increased by 5.2% per annum, on the average, in the last year before an election compared to 1.0% per annum in the first year following an election. As this research clearly identifies major variations in house price performance around election times, residential property investment decisions should take into consideration the political cycle.

In addition to the progress made by official statistics in monitoring the evolutions in the housing markets, interest increased in commercial property price indicators (CPPIs). Interested parties are public institutions, policy makers, analysts, and market investors. However, more so than residential property prices indices, limited information is available on price changes of commercial buildings. Compared to house prices statistics, for commercial buildings additional problems typically arise such as a relatively small number of transactions and a greater variety of types of structures. 

Against this background and in the context of the G20 Data Gaps Initiative, Eurostat took the lead in coordinating the drafting of a statistical report called ‘Commercial property price indicators: sources, methods and issues’. The report has been published on the Eurostat website in December 2017.1

The primary aim is to outline concepts, methods, data sources and key issues so as to better inform both compilers and users. The report makes a first attempt at setting out the wide range of challenges linked to the measurement of developments in commercial property markets. It provides a basis for further work in this new area of statistics.

Work on developing CPPIs needs to take into account that heterogeneity among commercial properties exists not only at the individual asset level, but also at an aggregate level in populations of properties that are effectively traded in distinct asset market segments. To construct useful CPPIs it is crucial to recognise this type of aggregate level heterogeneity and market segmentation, because different price dynamics can prevail across different market segments. The statistical report published by Eurostat reviews different methods for compiling CPPIs. However, the fact that commercial property is much more heterogeneous and there are usually significantly fewer transactions can limit the practical choices of index construction methodology.

Furthermore, access to relevant and good quality data is crucial for CPPIs compilation. In practice, the choice of methodologies are constrained by the lack of data, especially on transaction prices. The statistical report reviews also the advantages and disadvantages of different sources of information.

• 1. see link:
  http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-statistical-reports/-/KS-FT-16-001?inheritRedirect=true&redirect=%2Feurostat%2Fpublications%2Fstatistical-reports

"Hot" and "cold" market cycles on the real estate market are characterized by co-movements between rents and liquidity. Substantial deviations from these phases signal either overrented or underrented expectations by landlords or drastic changes in tenants' housing demand. Since a general market liquidity indicator is missing, this paper develops hedonic rental and liquidity indices to explore their co-movements along the real estate market cycle. Based on a Granger test the paper determines a lead-lag relation between rent and liquidity indices in order to explain the contemporaneous rent-liquidity causality. By making use of more than half million observations, the paper further explores the response of the indices in presence of exogenous variables from 2013 to 2017.

Universities, like other public sector institutions, face the need to operate in an increasingly competitive environment. The decrease of public funding, and additionally the demographic trends and other global challenges, increase the competitiveness among higher education institutions.

For several years in many European countries traditional government public funding for universities has stagnated and it is assumed that it will not increase sufficiently enough to cover the full costs of universities. Therefore, universities are forced to implement strategies that will enable them to make more effective and efficient use of all their resources (including real estate, which is the one of the key strategic resources). On the other hand, the ability to implement different strategies and consequently achieve the university’s goals are affected by the university governance model. 

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to present and compare the university governance model(s) and campus strategies implemented by public universities in the Netherlands and Poland.

Design/methodology/approach – Literature overview discusses the relationship between university governance, campus strategies and university outcomes. In this paper, a broad perspective to define campus governance has been adopted, which enables a comparison of campus legal frameworks, management structure, degree of university autonomy, accountability and transparency as well as participation of different stakeholders in campus decision making in the two European contexts.

Findings - The paper demonstrates two contrasting campus governance models. In the Netherlands, there is limited regulatory intervention of the state in campus decision making. Since 1995 Dutch universities have far-reaching autonomy and need to be transparent and accountable for their campus decisions. In their campus strategies, universities are mainly guided by changing needs of students and (academic) staff, ultimately to achieve or maintain a competitive advantage in the global higher education market. 

By comparison, universities in Poland operate on the basis of a significant number of regulations. They, nevertheless, have a relatively high level of autonomy in campus decision making, which is not counterbalanced by accountability and transparency to the government and other stakeholders. Their campus strategies are often isolated from socio-economic needs.

An accelleration in the use of technology to automate core real estate services is likely to mean that the surveyor of the future will need a dramatically different skillset than that being taught today.

Building on work undertaken for the RICS this paper examines the curricula of a sample of real estate courses around the world in the light of the findings published in ""The Impact of Emerging Technologies on the Surveying Profession"" published by the RICS in July 2017.

The subjects at greatest risk of functional redundancy are highlighted and alternatives proposed, rounding up with an assessment of the likely impact upon courses and student numbers in the future.

The quality of the built environment is a multidimensional notion, as it deals with the land use patterns and mixes, the spatial and temporal distribution of activities, the accessibility to services, the open spaces and green areas, the air quality, the arrangement and appearance of the physical elements of urban design. Although several studies have listed the environmental, social and economic benefits of good urban design for many stakeholders (Cabe, 2001), there is a small body of literature on their monetary value. Most of the scholars focus on the impact of open spaces, urban parks and amenities on residential property values (Anderson and West, 2006), without providing a real monetary estimation of the quality of public goods and services. The present paper focuses on the contribution of urban quality on real estate value. In particular, the Hedonic Pricing Model is used for estimating the marginal price of this variable. Starting from a previous work of the authors in which a multicriteria analytical framework (Keeney and Raiffa, 1976) for calculating an urban quality index has been proposed (Oppio et al., 2018), the research aims at integrating the multidimensional index in a standard hedonic model to estimate the monetary impact of public open spaces' good urban design on the real estate market. Furthermore, the integrated model has been applied on a pilot case study of 200 residential units located in the area of Garibaldi-Repubblica in Milan (Italy). The results of the model are represented using specific thematic value maps that allow the relationships between properties market values and urban quality driving forces to be analysed.

Rising urban population growth increases demand for multi-family housing; sustainable urban form and building level sustainability represent vital planning areas for this demand . Here, the multi-family housing stock is used to examine consumer preferences about sustainability in growing urban areas. Drawing on a data set of more than 40,000 apartment buildings/complexes from Apartments.com and secondary data from the describing urban form, walkability, proximity, access to transit, schools, and crime, this paper addresses the question: what sustainability features are desirable both in building and locational form in the largest U.S. CBSAs? Methodologically, the paper uses the traditional hedonic modeling techniques that include both apartment complex and unit attributes. These models are augmented with spatial and locational attributes designed to reveal preferences for sustainability in cities. Further, the unique data reveals previously unobserved property and locational traits. Model results have implications for property investors, developers, asset managers, and urban policy makers

With the rapid development of real estate markets under globalization and exponential competitive market conditions, risk evaluation has been one of the most important tasks in the process of real estate investment valuation. This paper describes the relationship between construction permit uncertainties and real estate development projects by using the Decision Tree Analysis (DTA) approach together with Monte Carlo simulations. Expected Value (EV) criterion for an office development project proposed and incorporated into conventional Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) analysis which is determined by stochastic DTA. This will help utility function to come closer to the real world, so that decision making and risk analysis can be done based on the real and possible data providing better conditions for investors. The results are consistent with the results calculated by conventional DCF analysis. However research demonstrates that is of application Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) and DTA obviate the deficiencies of conventional DCF analysis under construction permit delays and scheduling uncertainties. Results also emphasize the importance of applying EV and DTA for the construction permit delays generate a significant change in NPV and also investment decisions of real estate development projects.

Valuation is often said to be “an art not a science” but this relates to the techniques employed to calculate value not to the underlying concept itself. Valuation is the process of estimating price in the market place. Yet, such an estimation will be affected by uncertainties. Uncertainty in the comparable information available; uncertainty in the current and future market conditions and uncertainty in the specific inputs for the subject property. These input uncertainties will translate into an uncertainty with the output figure, the valuation. The degree of the uncertainties has changed in recent years with a new economic reality where there is a perceived increase in risk and thus uncertainty

In the UK at the moment the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has tightened up the way that uncertainty in the valuation should be conveyed to the user of the valuation.

One of the major problems is that Valuation models (in the UK) are based upon comparable information and rely upon single inputs. They are not probability based, yet uncertainty is probability driven. In this paper, the author discusses the issues underlying uncertainty in valuations and suggest a probability-based model (using Crystal Balbpto address the shortcomings of the current model. Although the capitalisation model is analyzed, the paper concentrates upon the application of Crystal Ball to the investment cash flow approach.

Purpose - Most studies on real estate focus on one of the housing sectors, i.e. single family homes or apartments. On average, single family houses have higher prices compared to apartments. This work looks at a relative price trend between the two asset groups, as well as its dynamics. In order to disclose information about the sources of potential changes in preferences the gap is decomposed.

Design/methodology/approach - Using data form Berlin, Germany this contribution disentangles the mark-up between SFH and APP by the usual housing characteristics, amenities and socioeconomic variables. Following the majority of the hedonic literature in real estate research the analysis starts with a semi-log hedonic model. Different spatial economic approaches verify the results. Finally the Oaxaca decomposition technique is applied to distinguish between the different determinants of the observed gap.

Findings – The hedonic regression results confirm earlier studies for most explanatory variables.  It is shown that preferences between SFH and APP change over time, mostly driven by a higher preferences for amenities for APP and higher evaluation of the larger floorspace of SFH. 

Originality/value –The approach allows to estimate price indexes for real estate assets which are not dependent on the general price level or inflation. The novelty lies in filling a literature gap regarding the explanation of the price gap between single family homes and apartments.
 

International capital flows is a very common phenomenon of economic globalization and it plays an important role on promoting the world economy development rapidly. 

From the 90s of the 20th century, a large number of foreign investments poured into China, they made an important contribution to the China’s economy growth. By contrast, China’s foreign investments were kept the lower level during the same period. However, China’s foreign investments were rising obviously in recent years, and it has become an important component of Chinese government strategies. In 2015, the capital flows of global FDI were 1.47 trillion US dollars, and China’s FDI was 145.67 billion US dollars, it set a new record and the year-on-year growth raised 18.3%. The capital flows of China’s foreign investment exceeded Japan and became the world’s second largest foreign investor in 2015. China’s foreign investments are covering more than 188 countries and regions nowadays. At the end of 2015, the real estate industry investment was 33.49 billion US dollars, accounted on 3.1% of China’s FDI stock. 

The EU is the largest source and destination of FDI in the world measured by stocks and flows. On 21 November 2013  EU-China both sides announced the Launch of negotiations of a comprehensive EU-China Investment Agreement. The Agreement will provide for progressive liberalization of investment and the elimination of restrictions for investors to each other’s market. Investment flows between the EU and China also show vast untapped potential, especially when taking into account the size of our respective economics. China accounts for just 2%-3% of overall European investments abroad, whereas Chinese investments in Europe are rising. By the end of 2015, the total volume of EU’s direct investment into China was $103.14 billion. In 2015, the 28 EU countries’ actual investments into China was $6.51 billion, up 4.6% from a year earlier; China’s FDI into EU was $64.46 billion by the end of 2015, accounted on 5.9% of China’s total foreign investments stock. In the mainly invest industries that China invested into EU in 2015, real estate investments stock was $2.98 billion, accounted on 4.6% of China’s total investment stock.

And this paper will select several important factors that determine real estate capital flows between the EU and China and use model to analyze them.

Using a microeconomic model of housing demand, we show that the effect of price increases on demand depends on whether a household trades up or down the property ladder. For a household that trades up the cost effect of a price increase typically outweighs the capital gains effect of such an increase. For a household that trades down the reverse might hold which can lead – in contrast to the standard model of consumer demand – to an upward sloping housing demand curve. This result is in line with the idea that housing is both a consumption and investment good and occurs even in the absence of down-payment constraints and nominal loss aversion. Nested logit regressions of residential mobility on housing capital gains support these findings.

In this study, we analyze whether additional payments for energy efficiency are induced by either tenants’ willingness to pay, the market power of landlords, or both. With a German housing dataset from 2011 to 2016, we identify price discrimination for the energy performance certificate using hedonic regressions in a single and double sort setting. Results indicate that a high willingness to pay -– indicated by purchasing power and environmental awareness -– leads to price discrimination effects of 7-8%. These potential extra profits can stimulate investments in energy-based refurbishments by landlords. However, additional market power of landlords –- indicated by housing market conditions –- does not amplify these discrimination effects and is therefore not exploited against tenants.

Although Thailand is a developing country, it is well equipped for medical care. Nowadays, Thai people have a better quality of life and step into senior society, which makes it necessary to study the needs of the elderly in various aspects including their preferences of using wellness center. Past studies have focused on medical therapeutic health care rather than preventive health care. Therefore, it is crucial to study wellness center characteristics preferred by the elderly as well as willingness to pay of each group. Location, staffs, facilities, design, and accessibility are the main senior wellness center attributes extracted from triangulation. Willingness to pay analysis of 471 respondents from 50 to 79 years old shows that recreational center with safety concern design, skillful staffs, located in quality environment, and accessible via public transportation are the most valued characteristics of senior wellness center. There are 3 groups of the respondents: (1) Fit & Cozy Pre-Senior (2) Recreation & Cozy Senior (3) Recreation & Green Pre-Senior. For future research, data collection in different seasons can be useful to test the validity of senior wellness center attributes and levels. Exploring the needs and willingness to pay of LGBTQ elderly and senior consumer behavior in health care services can be valuable information for real estate developers.

Real estate yields are thought to reflect risk free rates of return, a risk premium and expected growth in cash flows. Modelling of real estate yields can then be conducted using proxies for each of these factors. A common proxy for risk free rate is nominal government bond yields, but these compensate investors for expected inflation and inflation risk, whereas real government bond yields should track changes in the underlying real risk free rate. This paper examines whether real bond yields provide more explanation than nominal bond yields of real estate yields for a panel of 20 office markets in five European countries over 1997-2016. Past bond yields, disequilibrium in rents and levels of investment activity are also used to explain real estate yields. The initial results suggest that the use of real bond yields does not improve empirical models much for this sample of data. However, past bond yields and lagged transaction volumes exhibit statistically significant relationships with office yields, raising questions as to how investors adjust target rates of return and required yields in the face of changing macroeconomic and real estate market conditions.

University lectures are facing higher quantities of students showing increasingly heterogeneous knowledge, interest and intellectual capabilities. To prepare those student groups for a changing, interconnected world, basic knowledge teaching is not sufficient any more. Instead, to let them acquire 21st century skills, e.g. strong communication and collaboration skills, expertise in technology, innovative and creative thinking skills, it is necessary to change the methods of teaching. Blended learning and Flipped classroom are concepts that can be combined to achieve these goals. The questions the paper addresses are: 1.) Do these concepts provide benefits when dealing with student groups that are strongly heterogeneous in knowledge, personality, culture, background? And 2.) How effective are these concepts, and which factors cause or prevent success?

The research team, consisting of real estate subject lecturers and instructional learning design experts, set up an introductory class of business administration in a blended learning format and used this situation as a “real life experimental” study. During the study, 'big data' was collected and analyzed, operationalizing up to 250 students’ online behavior, their learning time slots as well as intermediary test results and direct feedback. The study was complemented by longitudinal surveys regarding the students’ motivation, workload sentiment, expectations, knowledge and other dimensions Also, a comprehensive evaluation survey was analyzed quantitatively as well as qualitatively.

Survey results showed a large variance of the appreciation of the learning concepts which can be explained by several reasons. However, the workload sentiment was a major issue. Rather minor changes are sufficient to adress this problem, while the general concepts of blended learning and flipped classroom can be kept as effective learning methods. Yet, for fully assessing the learning success regarding 21st century skills, further empirical studies are necessary.

The study provides recommendations of what works and what was not effective in a blended learning/flipped classroom course, e.g. how an incentive system can be designed to engage students in a constant learning process and increase interaction during the semester. The originality/value of the study is its focus on large, heterogeneous groups and its design as an experimental real-life study combining the collection of big data with quantitative and qualitative methods.