Did Office Market Size Matter in the 1980s? A Time-Series Cross-Sectional Analysis of Metropolitan Area Office Markets

Recent contributions to the literature have resulted in a standard modelling of office markets. The models provide considerable insight into the working of office markets. • Nonetheless, a major difficulty is the use of data for a single city or aggregate data for the U.S. The latter implicitly assumes that model structure is invariant across cities. In this article we test for structural differences in office markets by size class. Rental data from REIS Reports for twenty-one metropolitan areas for the time period 1981 to 1990 are used to model office market behavior. Results suggest market outcomes vary by city size, larger markets are better modelled using standard procedures, and Manhattan behaves quite differently from the other markets.     

Rental Housing Markets and the Natural Vacancy Rate

This paper employs new census vacancy rate data to analyze the price-adjustment mechanism for rental housing. The study extends previous research on this topic, which provided conflicting evidence concerning the traditional theory of rental housing market adjustment (see Smith [10] , [11] ; DeLeeuw and Ekanem [2] ; Eubank and Sirmans [4] ; and Rosen and Smith [8] ). Cross-section and time-series data are pooled to estimate natural vacancy rates for sixteen United States cities for the 1981–85 period. The analysis further explores the determinants of variation in natural vacancy rates across those metropolitan areas.     

Targeting urban malnutrition: a multi-city analysis of the spatial distribution of childhood nutritional status

This paper assesses the degree to which childhood malnutrition and its contributing factors are clustered by neighborhood in seven different cities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The analysis is based on data from eight different national household surveys that used a two-stage sampling design (households within clusters). Spatial clustering was assessed using the intracluster correlation coefficient (ρ), which may be interpreted as the expected correlation between any randomly selected pair of observations drawn from the same cluster. In general, per capita expenditure and the share of the household budget spent on food showed relatively high spatial clustering across the seven cities, but the magnitude of this clustering varied markedly from city to city. Spatial clustering in the provision of basic services also varied greatly. There was consistently little evidence of spatial clustering of infectious disease, childhood mortality, or the weight-based nutrition indicators. Age-standardized height, on the other hand, showed a little more spatial clustering, with a median intracluster correlation of ρ=0.12. Some cities showed relatively higher levels of spatial clustering on several measures of deprivation simultaneously, while other cities showed consistently lower levels of clustering. Many nutrition interventions are intrinsically geographically targeted. While geographical targeting tends to be administratively simpler than individual targeting and can be politically convenient, the current analysis suggests that where nutrition interventions are focused on stunting (low height-for-age), targeting by neighborhood may often lead to unacceptably high rates of undercoverage and leakage of benefits to the non-needy.     

The determinants of office cap rates: The international evidence

We examine commercial office cap rates in 89 large cities in 33 developed and developing countries in the 2000–2019 period. We find that cap rates decline throughout the world over this period, reflecting a corresponding decline in the real rate of interest. In the cross-city analysis our most robust findings are that office cap rates are lower in wealthier cities, especially those that are either considered gateway cities or financial centers. In addition, cap rates tend to be higher in countries with lower credit ratings and higher inflation rates. We find that cap rates in suburban office markets are higher than in central business districts, and for a given metropolis, suburban cap rates are lower in suburbs with better public transport connections to the central business district. Finally, evidence from regressions with city fixed effects reveal that cap rates rise as the discount rate and vacancy rates increase and fall as cities get wealthier.     

Vacancy Rates and the Future of Office Rents

This research confirms the existence of a strong vacancy rental adjustment mechanism in the market for office space, such as has been found in housing markets. Using national time-series data, we find that real office rents drop approximately 2% annually, for every percentage point of "excess vacancy" in the market. We also find that the definition of "excess vacancy" has been trending upward over time. Using a recent vacancy forecast suggests that office income streams seem likely to decline in both real and nominal dollars over the next few years.     

Explaining Location Patterns of Suburban Offices

Suburban office markets exhibit a pattern of variegated clustering that is little explained by the conventional theories of urban form based on agglomeration effects and the cost of distance. To explain the pattern, this paper introduces industry economies of scale for "Class A" offices. Empirical tests for industry economies of scale are reported, based on data from the office market of Houston, Texas. The models presented, under conditions typical of North American cities in recent decades, imply the patterns of variegated clustering that are observed. They suggest a sequence of clusters, increasing in size and distance from the central business district. Further, they imply the potential for mass movement by tenants from older clusters to new.     

How “Local” are Local Office Markets?

This paper describes empirical investigations of the geographical extent of office markets in the United States during the 1980s. A mixed temporal autoregressive model was estimated for pooled downtown office markets and pooled suburban markets. Results indicate that while the temporal autoregressive effect is stronger for office market vacancies than is the effect of the national trend, their linkages to national trends are significant. However, a mixed spatial autoregression analysis of the data pooled over time indicates that the regional office vacancy effect is stronger than the national office vacancy effect in both downtown and suburban office markets.     

An Investment Model of the Demand and Supply For Industrial Real Estate

A recent inventory of industrial building in fifty-two major metropolitan areas of the country indicates that most such space is either owner occupied or single tenant. This suggests that the production of industrial space may be modeled as a firm "investment" decision. Using the completion date of each inventoried building, we construct a time series of plant completions that moves similarly to some other national investment data. We are able to successfully estimate an "accelerator" type model of plant deliveries, driven by movements in employment and the after-tax cost of corporate capital. Our model can be used to estimate a measure of excess plant capacity in the market, and historic values of this measure do move parallel to some recent industrial vacancy data.     

National Vacancy Rates and the Persistence of Shocks in U.S. Office Markets

In this paper, we develop and estimate a model that decomposes the variance in office vacancy rates into market-specific, time-specific, and random components. The results indicate significant differences in natural vacancy rates across markets. We also find some persistence in deviations from these natural vacancy rates. The analysis is applied to both central business district (CBD) and suburban office markets. We find that natural vacancy rates differ across CBD markets and across suburban markets. Further, the persistence of disequilibrium in one CBD market seems to differ significantly from that in another. This is not shown to be true for suburban markets.     

Potential competition and the factors influencing banking concentration

Multiple regression analysis is used to study the factors influencing market concentration in urban banking markets. The results indicate that independentde novo entry and shifts in population from the central city to the suburbs can be important deconcentrating factors in urban banking markets. In terms of the potential competition doctrine, the results suggest that attractive banking markets are likely to attract enough actual and potential entrants to mitigate any problems associated with a leading bank acquisition by a potential entrant. On the other hand, potential competition is more likely to be an issue in less attractive banking markets where the probability of entry is low.     

一种引入参数无需确定聚类数的聚类算法

针对传统k-均值聚类算法的两大缺点,即算法中需要知道确定的聚类数和初始种群选取的随机性,提出了一种新的聚类算法,即基于k-均值聚类算法的无需确定聚类数的聚类算法。这种算法是基于递增思想的聚类算法,最大的特色是无需事先知道聚类数,初始聚类数取1,初始聚类中心为所有数据点的聚类中心,算法中首先设定一个惩罚参数,对于确定的惩罚参数,运算时聚类数逐渐增加,直到收敛,即聚类数不再发生变化,就得到了所需的聚类数以及最终的聚类结果。运用于茶叶分类和各省市平均工资水平分析的2个实验也验证了这种算法的可行性,通过实验可知,这种聚类算法具有较好的全局收敛能力和较高的正确率,稳定性强,收敛速度快。     

Time-Series Characteristics and Long-Run Equilibrium for Major Australian Office Markets

While much attention has focused on the modeling of office property markets, little emphasis has been put on distinguishing between permanent and temporary effects. This article attempts to address this issue in the context of the rental adjustment mechanism and the demand–employment relationship for major Australian central business district office markets. It is shown that, by allowing the natural vacancy rate and the work–space ratio to be endogenously determined, it offers richer model specifications that permit a partitioning between long-run and short-run influences. This is achieved by employing econometric techniques that examine the stochastic behavior of time series data. It is found that, while equilibrium relationships exist (between the vacancy rate and rent, and demand and employment), other macroeconomic variables are found to be relevant cyclical determinants.     

Tax Structure and Natural Vacancy Rates in the Commercial Real Estate Market

A number of studies have postulated that the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 (ERTA 1981) was responsible for the dramatic overbuilding that occurred between 1981 and 1986, primarily because returns became less sensitive to "real" demand. While there has been much research on how equilibrium or "natural" vacancy rates in the real estate market are determined, beginning with Rosen and Smith's seminal paper in 1983, virtually none of this work has dealt with the impact of the tax environment. This study makes an initial attempt to answer this question with respect to equilibrium vacancies resulting from tenant (or owner) turnover. A formal model is developed that considers as an objective function the landlord's desire to maximize his/her after-tax equity returns in an environment of monopolistic competition in which individual projects face downward-sloping demand curves, owing to market conditions and a degree of heterogeneity among tenants in search costs or some other characteristic. The natural vacancy rate is shown not to depend directly upon the tax environment, but to depend indirectly upon it only to the extent that equilibrium market rents are lowered. The nature of the vacancy response depends critically upon the shape of the tenant demand response relationship upon its transition to a lower-rent region. This response is interactive with the degree of turnover and supply responsiveness within individual markets.     

Variation Across Price Segments and Locations: A Comprehensive Quantile Regression Analysis of the Sydney Housing Market

Standard house price indices measure average movements of average houses in average locations belonging to an average price segment and hence obscure spatial and cross‐sectional variation of price appreciation rates even within a single metropolitan area. This article combines penalized quantile regression techniques with the hedonic imputation approach to reveal such kind of variation. The method is applied to house transactions from Sydney between 2001 and 2014. The analysis finds significant variation across sub‐markets over time and in particular during the boom‐and‐bust cycle peaking in 2004. Appreciation rates were highest for suburban, low‐priced and lowest for inner‐city, high‐priced houses.     

基于社会网络分析法的泛长三角区域经济联系分析

本文利用泛长三角城市职能指标指数将各城市划分为3个等级中心城市，发现城市等级分布不均匀，高等级中心城市主要分布在中东部地区，为泛长三角的核心地区，并且随着经济发展，中心等级差异在不断减弱。通过修正的引力模型计算城市之间的经济关联量，发现经济关联量区域差异十分明显，浙北与苏南城市经济关联量明显，安徽、苏北、浙南地区经济关联量较弱，利用社会网络分析法分析各个城市在区域经济中的中心地位，通过点入度与点出度分析经济扩散效应，利用Concor法将泛长三角划分为8个凝聚子群，分析各个子群发展因素，为长三角区域经济发展提出建议。     

Toward a Model of the Office Building Sector

High rise office buildings represent large capital outlays in very competitive markets. Investment and development decisions require careful market analysis to assure sufficient demand to lease the office space at rental rates which will make the venture financially attractive. Present methodology for analyzing future commercial real estate market conditions can at best be said to be inadequate. This methodology relies on concepts such as "market absorption" rates and "normal" vacancy rates. These concepts usually rely on accounting type and trend line techniques to provide forecasts of space demand. In this paper we provide an alternative methodology for forecasting the key variables in the office space market by developing a statistical model of supply and demand. The key variables that need to be forecasted are the stock of office space (in square feet), the flow of new office construction (in square feet), the vacancy rate (in percent), and the rent for office space (net rent per square foot).     

Measuring External Shocks to the City Economy: An Index of Export Prices and Terms of Trade

This paper details the construction of an index of export goods prices (the Export Price Index or EPI ) for a panel of 196 metropolitan areas from 1977 to 1992. The EPI is an indicator of external demand shocks to the city economy which does not suffer from the causal ambiguity of the endogenous indicators such as income, employment or output. The creation of an index of aggregate export prices, the EPI , for the panel of areas provides both academicians and policy analysts with a new exogenous indicator that identifies demand price innovations and the terms of trade shocks to cities.     

Gross Lease Premiums

The premium for the gross lease relative to the net lease is estimated using a large sample of leasing data for office properties in seven U.S. markets during 2011. After matching gross leases with net leases on propensity scores, analysis for the matched sample of 9,860 lease observations reports the gross lease premium estimated at 12.9%. The relative premium of a gross lease responds to property‐specific characteristics, including tenant size, property size and property class, and is increasing with operating expense expectations. Gross lease premiums are increased in low‐vacancy markets. The findings support theoretical predictions from the existing literature.     

Advertising and Natural Vacancies in Rental Housing Markets

We formulate a model that explains vacancy durations arising from lags in matches between the suppliers and demanders of housing units. We emphasize rental housing markets in this exposition although the model could be extended to competitive or noncompetitive rental or home-ownership markets. In the case of rental markets, if tenants do not immediately inform landlords upon initiating search for a new unit, landlords are delayed in their search for a new tenant. These matching delays induce a positive natural vacancy rate that cannot be reduced to zero, even in competitive markets. Price-taking landlords are, however, able to affect the resulting vacancy duration through advertising in a Cournot-Nash equilibrium and will, in general, invest in inefficient levels of advertising. As a consequence, there may be a role for public policy to provide incentives that would induce noncooperative landlords to choose the vacancy cost-minimizing advertising solution.     

American Real Estate and Urban Economics a Canadian Perspective

AREUEA membership spans both the United States and Canada and there is a tendency to homogenize real estate and urban economics into a "North American" cauldron. However, Canadian and American real estate markets, and the cities within which they operate, differ in fundamental ways. If we are to develop appropriate means for analyzing real estate and financial markets in these two countries it is imperative that we understand the underlying differences between American and Canadian cities. This paper sets out in summary form some of the differences that have been identified to date, differences that relate not only to the cities in the two nations, but to the broader cultural and institutional underpinnings as well.