Market Microstructure and Real Estate Returns

This paper examines the Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) market microstruc-ture and its relationship to stock returns. When compared with the general stock market, REIT stocks tend to have a lower level of institutional investor participation and are followed by fewer security analysts. In addition, REIT stocks that have a higher percentage of institutional investors or are followed by more security analysts tend to perform better than other REIT stocks. Our results seem to confirm Jensen's ( 1993 , p. 868) proposition that ownership structure (that is, who owns the firm's securities) affects the value of the firm. Our findings also have implications about the well documented phenomenon that the financial performance of Commingled Real Estate Funds (CREFs) is better than that of REITs.     

对发展房地产投资基金的SWOT分析

通过对房地产资金来源及我国房地产目前的融资途径分析,揭示了目前我国房地产存在的金融风险,指出发展房地产投资基金是一种可以拓宽房地产融资渠道的途径。结合当前我国房地产市场的实际情况,使用SWOT分析办法对房地产投资基金进行了综合研究。     

Public Information and Abnormal Returns in Real Estate Investment

This study performs empirical tests of the semistrong form efficiency of a real estate investment market. An asset pricing model is utilized to estimate the abnormal returns resulting from two types of public information, major changes in government tax shelter and rent control policies as well as unanticipated changes in interest rates. In both cases the results find an absence of significant abnormal returns and no evidence to suggest that real estate investors can utilize information concerning government policy changes or interest rate movements to earn higher returns on a risk-adjusted basis. In general the findings of this study conform to the semistrong form version of the efficient markets hypothesis.     

房地产信托融资分析与研究

介绍房地产信托的基本概念，简要描述了其发展现状和其产品模式，指出了房地产信托的局限性及其风险，并提出了相应的对策建议，以供房地产信托融资参考。     

Real Estate Investments,Product Market Competition and Stock Returns

By limiting operating flexibility, real estate investments are found to increase firm risk, thus expected returns. This study introduces product market competition as a critical determinant of the relation between real estate investments and stock returns. As part of capacity strategies, these investments are generally associated with increased market power and lower cash flow volatility in oligopolistic industries. I present a simple model of oligopolistic competition showing a negative relation between real estate holdings and firm beta, and empirically confirm this prediction. Controlling for product market competition enhances identification of the endogenous relation between real estate investments and stock returns.     

The Effect of Corporate Governance on Investment: Evidence from Real Estate Investment Trusts

This study investigates the relation between firms' investment choices and various governance mechanisms, using a sample of real estate investment trusts (REITs). We find evidence that the responsiveness of REITs' investment expenditures to their opportunities depends on their corporate governance structures. Within the set of governance mechanisms that we examine, we find particularly strong links between investment behavior and ownership. Specifically, we find that the investment choices of REITs are more closely tied to Tobin's q if they have greater institutional ownership or if they have lower director and officer stock ownership. These results are consistent with institutional owners monitoring the firm's investment policies as well as with high insider ownership allowing managers to follow their own investment agendas.     

The Impact of Market Imperfections on Real Estate Returns and Optimal Investor Portfolios

This study investigates the consequences of several imperfections associated with real estate markets on pricing and optimal investor portfolios from a CAPM context. CAPM assumptions are relaxed to recognize illiquidity, the consumption and investment attributes of owner-occupied housing, and a mildly segmented market structure. The study finds that relaxing the CAPM assumptions lead to a separate pricing paradigm for financial assets, income-producing real estate and owner-occupied housing respectively, that a "dividend effect" arises for real estate as the result of illiquidity, and that illiquidity reduces the extent to which investors hold real estate in their portfolios.     

The Composition of the Market Portfolio and Real Estate Investment Performance

This study investigates whether the composition of the market portfolio leads to different inferences on real estate performance. As a point of departure, this paper first explores whether the omission of assets in a market proxy leads to a biased measurement of investment performance. The study finds that ranking investment performance is not meaningless even though investment performance is inaccurately measured. Furthermore, the composition of the market proxy does not necessarily lead to different inferences on real estate investment performance although superior real estate investment performance arises from the omitted asset phenomenon and also from smoothing bias in general.     

Market Mechanism Choice and Real Estate Disposition: Search Versus Auction

We propose a model of mechanism choice in the disposition of real estate assets where we consider two alternatives: a search market and an auction. Within the search framework, we derive an equilibrium whereby buyers incur search costs and sellers incur holding costs for the period during which the property is not sold. In the auction alternative, the seller joins an existing pool of sellers in undertaking a multiple–object auction and pays a commission upon sale. Buyers and sellers freely choose their mechanisms, which in equilibrium are optimal given each group's conjectures about the mechanism choice of their counterpart. In equilibrium, an agent cannot benefit from deviating from his choice and each agent's beliefs are consistent with the equilibrium outcome. It is shown that (a) buyers with high search costs will choose auctions because the auction payoff imposes an upper bound on buyers' gains from search, and (b) prices at auctions will be higher. Using vacant lot sales data and a method–of–moment estimator which accounts for the presence of an endogenous discrete mechanism choice variable, we estimated a hedonic regression to detect the price effect. It was determined that, on average, lots sold for $1.44 per square foot more in auctions than in the search market, as predicted by our model.     

On the Time-Series Properties of Real Estate Investment Trust Betas

The relation between real estate investment trust (REIT) returns and stock market returns is of significant importance to investors, practitioners and academics. The temporal properties of this relationship have a critical impact on the usefulness of REIT risk estimates and portfolio allocations to this asset class. Recent studies have suggested a decline in the market betas of equity real estate investment trusts (EREITs). This study applies a rigorous statistical test of the hypothesis that the market betas of EREITs have remained unchanged during the 1972 through 2002 time period. There is weak evidence of a downward trend in EREIT betas using a single-factor model; however, the hypothesis is not rejected when using a three-factor model.     

An Investigation of the Change in Real Estate Investment Trust Betas

The betas on equity real estate investment trusts (EREITs) have undergone a structural shift in the past 20 years. We show that this is the result of the lower variability of EREIT returns and argue that the decrease in the standard deviation of EREIT returns can be attributed to the increasing levels of information about EREITs. We find that the number of analysts following the EREITs industry, as measured by IBES, can significantly explain the drop in the standard deviation for most EREITs. This was also found to be the case for another proxy for the level of information—the trading volume of the EREIT index.     

Corporate Transparency and Firm Growth: Evidence from Real Estate Investment Trusts

Using a panel data set of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), we find corporate transparency to be positively associated with REIT growth. These results suggest that greater transparency facilitates firm growth by relaxing information‐based constraints on external financing. The magnitude of this effect is larger in the equity market than in the debt market. Moreover, the sensitivity of investment to cash flows is decreasing in transparency, evidence that transparency relaxes liquidity constraints. Finally, we find more transparent REITs are less likely to crash.     

Financing Choice and Liability Structure of Real Estate Investment Trusts

We conduct an analysis of public financial offerings of equity Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), with a focus on liability structure effects and whether or not firms target longer-run debt ratios. Our major findings are that (1) proceeds from equity offers are more likely to fund investment, whereas public debt offer proceeds are typically used to reconfigure the liability structure of the firm; (2) public debt issuers are often capital constrained and target total leverage ratios to retain an investment grade credit rating; and (3) the preoffer liability structure affects the issuance choice decision, in that firms with higher preoffer levels of secured (unsecured) debt tend to issue equity (public debt). Other notable findings are that the market for public REIT debt is integrated with the broader debt markets and that higher credit quality firms issue longer-maturing bonds.     

Concentration and Market Structure in Local Real Estate Markets

The competitiveness of the residential real estate brokerage industry has attracted much attention. Anecdotal evidence suggests some local markets are concentrated, yet no systematic market structure study has been conducted. We collected cross‐sectional data on real estate brokers in 90 diverse markets across the United States and collected longitudinal data for Louisville, Kentucky. In medium and large markets, no evidence exists that market concentration might create problems for competition. Small markets, on average, have higher Herfindahl‐Hirschman Indexes than medium and large markets. The longitudinal data reveal that many small brokers sell a house or two one year and none the next year.     

Product Market Competition and Corporate Real Estate Investment under Demand Uncertainty

This article theoretically and empirically analyzes the interactions among corporate real estate investment, product market competition and firm risk. In our model, firms own strategic real estate or lease generic real estate. Our model predicts that strategic real estate ownership is positively correlated with industry concentration and negatively related to demand uncertainty. Also, firm risk is higher for firms with more strategic real estate operating in a more concentrated market. This prediction arises because smaller investments induce greater market competition, which effectively eliminates the right tail of the firm's profit distribution. We provide strong empirical support for our predictions. In particular, firm value is more volatile in less competitive markets for a given level of demand uncertainty.     

Commercial Real Estate Returns: An Anatomy of Smoothing in Asset and Index Returns

In this article, we investigate the commonly used autoregressive filter method of adjusting appraisal‐based real estate returns to correct for the perceived biases induced in the appraisal process. Many articles have been written on appraisal smoothing but remarkably few have considered the relationship between smoothing at the individual property level and the amount of persistence in the aggregate appraisal‐based index. To investigate this issue we analyze a large sample of appraisal data at the individual property level from the Investment Property Databank. We find that commonly used unsmoothing estimates at the index level overstate the extent of smoothing that takes place at the individual property level. There is also strong support for an ARFIMA representation of appraisal returns at the index level and an ARMA model at the individual property level.     

The Housing Market and Real Estate Brokers

The major development in this paper concerns the failure, in earlier studies, to consider interaction between alternative methods of arranging sales in the housing market. A seller may market a house by direct negotiations with buyers, without the intermediation of real estate brokers, or by listing the house with a broker. A rational seller would choose the option which offers the higher expected return on the house. In a sequence of models we argue that the seller's option of a method of sale induces competitive pressure in the choice of the commission rate by the broker. We also consider the split rate in a multiple listing system, ease of entry of brokers and the cartel hypothesis as applied to brokers. We conclude that the competitive pressure of direct negotiations between sellers and buyers, relative free entry of brokers and the inappropri-ateness of the cartel hypothesis cast serious doubt about a general consensus of opinion that the brokerage system is characterized by price fixing, excessive commissions and excessive marketing costs.     

The Motivation for Institutional Real Estate Sales and Implications for Asset Class Returns

Since real estate assets are sold infrequently, analyses that use samples of exclusively sold properties to estimate pricing models may be seriously in error. This paper uses data on samples of sold and unsold properties and an appropriate statistical methodology to evaluate the extent of this bias. The results clearly show that it is important to control for sales motivations and that pricing equations that ignore this source of bias may be misleading.     

The Real Estate Brokerage Market: A Critical Reevaluation

This paper presents an analysis of the theories and evidence regarding the structure and performance of the market for real estate brokerage services. Some of the theoretical models found in the literature appear to suffer from logical inconsistencies, while others lack empirical support for their underlying assumptions and/or their predictions of market inefficiencies. Moreover, several important legal and institutional changes that have occurred recently have not been given sufficient attention in the existing literature.
Although some new evidence on this market is presented here, additional empirical research is warranted in at least two areas: the current pricing structure and the underlying production and cost functions of the real estate brokerage industry.