The Strategic Role of Listing Price in Marketing Real Estate: Theory and Evidence

The seller of a real estate property and his broker have two primary goals: to sell the properly for as high a price as possible and as quickly as possible. While these are separate objectives, they are closely related through the listing price of the seller. The listing price affects how long it takes to find a buyer (i.e., Time On the Market = TOM), and TOM influences the price that results from the bargaining between the seller and the buyer. This leaves the seller and his agent with an important question: What is the optimal price to be asked for the property? The objective of this research is to provide a theoretical and empirical analysis of the impact of listing price on TOM and the transaction price.     

The Information Content of Method of Payment in Mergers: Evidence from Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs)

We provide evidence on the information content of the method of payment in mergers by examining shareholder returns in a sample of REIT mergers over the period 1994–1998. When the target firm is publicly held, we find that transactions are always stock-financed, and that acquiring firm shareholders sustain small negative returns around the announcement date. When the target is privately held, cash financing, mixed (stock and cash) financing, and placement of blocks of acquirer stock with target owners are more prevalent. Acquirer returns are positive in stock-financed mergers when the target is private, which is consistent with both the information signaling and monitoring by blockholders hypotheses. Further analysis supports the information signaling hypothesis as the dominant explanation. The effects of other explanatory variables are similar whether the target is public or private. Most significantly, acquiring shareholder returns are negatively related to the acquirer's size, but positively related to the acquirer's use of the UPREIT organizational structure. The positive wealth effects of the UPREIT structure are not fully explained as the capitalization of tax benefits.     

The Theory and Evidence on Real Estate Financial Decisions: A Review of the Issues

There has developed a growing body of literature, both theoretically and empirically based, on real estate financial decisions. Despite these advances, there are a number of important issues that remain unanswered. The purpose of this paper is to provide a review and analysis of where research on real estate financial decisions has been, where it stands today, and where it is likely to be headed in the future. Some of the unresolved issues in real estate investment analysis are also discussed. The hope is that this review will provide the stimulus for solving some of these complex issues.     

The Fractal Structure of Real Estate Investment Trust Returns: The Search for Evidence of Market Segmentation and Nonlinear Dependency

This article presents a further test for market segmentation between the real estate market and the capital markets. We use rescaled range analysis developed in the fractal geometry literature to test for nonlinear trends in the returns series for different asset classes. We make three major conclusions: (1) the stock market displays tendencies consistent with a random walk, (2) portfolios of mortgage and equity REIT returns display tendencies consistent with a random walk and, (3) conditional upon the methods used, segmentation does not exist between different real estate markets and between the real estate and stock markets.     

The Economics of Maintenance for Real Estate Investments

We propose a theory of urban decay. Following a negative real estate demand shock, property managers optimally suspend maintenance and the probability that they ever restart can be modest. Because maintenance expenditures are proportionately less risky than are the incremental building profits they generate, managers impose a more demanding profit standard on maintenance than on the initial investment. This differential in profit standards means that rather than maintain existing investments, property managers favor new investments, which, if marginally acceptable, they also leave unmaintained. Contractually required maintenance ( e.g ., for publicly subsidized real estate investments), increases the minimum profit for the initial investment acceptance and discourages subsidized real estate investments in favor of unsubsidized investments. However, the required profit for acceptance of a permanently maintained investment is below the profit boundary for maintenance if maintenance is not contractually required. Consequently, the subsidy that induces the investment is least expensive if maintenance is not required, more expensive if maintenance is permanently required and most expensive if maintenance is induced immediately after initial construction but thereafter is at the discretion of the manager. All of our findings are strongest for poorer quality properties.     

The Real Estate Pricing Puzzle

The state-of-the-art with respect to pricing real estate is similar to that with respect to pricing securities just prior to the development of the CAPM. Reading the entrails of real estate markets, however, has proven a formidable task, and the problem is not limited to inadequate data. Perhaps the most important lesson to date is that available pricing models are not up to the task.     

International Evidence on Real Estate Securities as an Inflation Hedge

The current study investigates whether real estate securities continue to act as a perverse inflation hedge in foreign countries given security design differences. Both a stationary and a nonstationary risk free rate are alternatively used in conjunction with the methodology of Fama and Schwert (1977) and also the methodology of Geske and Roll (1983) to investigate this question. Real estate securities provide a worse hedge against inflation relative to common stocks in some countries and are comparable to stocks in other countries. Also, evidence supports the reverse causality model of Geske-Roll.     

Market Efficiency and Return Statistics: Evidence from Real Estate and Stock Markets Using a Present-Value Approach

This paper develops a methodology to identify asset price response to news in the framework of the Campbell–Shiller log-linear present-value equation. We further show that a slow price adjustment in real estate markets not only induces a high serial autocorrelation in excess returns, but also dampens the return volatility and the correlation with excess returns in other asset markets. Using Hong Kong real estate and stock market data, we find that the quarterly real estate price assimilates only about half the effect of market news, whereas the quarterly stock price incorporates the news fully. Our analysis identifies a cumulative price adjustment that recovers lost information in real estate returns due to market inefficiency and thereby restores the real estate return volatility and the correlation between real estate and stock markets.     

The Substitutability of Real Estate Assets

This paper investigates the degree of substitutability between securitized real estate assets and real estate assets whose prices are appraisal-based. Given the insensitivity of unsecuritized asset's returns to the returns on stock market indices, equilibrium asset pricing models cannot be used to compare these two avenues of investment. Two assets are deemed substitutable if the information sets underlying unbiased, minimum error variance estimates of their pricing parameters are identical. The empirical evidence shows that the prices of the transactions-based assets—real estate investment trusts and the stock price index of the home building industry—follow a random walk while the prices of the appraisal-based assets—FRC/NCREIF indices—do not. The variance decompositions of the vector autoregressions also show that the level of economic activity helps predict the price indices of appraisal-based assets while the stock market index and the term structure of interest rates are better predictors of the prices of transactions-based assets     

Empirical Evidence on Shareholder Value and the Sale-Leaseback of Corporate Real Estate

This study examines the valuation effect of the sale-leaseback of corporate real estate on the stock prices of the selling and purchasing firms. The issue tested is whether the sale-leaseback transaction offers a net benefit to the corporate seller/lessee or purchaser/lessor. The empirical evidence suggests that the sale-leaseback of corporate real estate has substantial benefits for the seller/lessee common stockholders. Additionally, the sale-leaseback transaction produces an insignificant loss for the corporate purchaser/lessor.     

The Land Development Corporation: A System for Selling Rural Real Estate

This research illustrates ways in which rural real estate is converted into potential vacation home sites by large land development corporations. The individual and previously disorganized approach to selling property is replaced by an organized framework that is designed to create a demand for rural real estate.
Unfortunately, development is progressing without serious or adequate consideration being given to a number of specific problems. Developers and local governmental officials often fail to consider the environmental impact of these developments, the adequacy of service facilities being provided or the direct and indirect public costs associated with this type of developmental activity. Because of these shortcomings and others, serious questions arise concerning the desirability of this kind of developmental activity for rural areas.     

Clustering Methods for Real Estate Portfolios

A clustering algorithm is applied to effective rents for twenty-one metropolitan U.S. office markets, and to twenty-two metropolitan markets using vacancy data. It provides support for the conjecture that there exists a few major "families" of cities: including an oil and gas group and an industrial Northeast group. Unlike other clustering studies, we find strong evidence of bicoastal city associations among cities such as Boston and Los Angeles. We present a bootstrapping methodology for investigating the robustness of the clustering algorithm, and develop a means for testing the significance of city associations. While the analysis is limited to aggregate rent and vacancy data, the results provide a guideline for the further application of cluster analysis to other types of real estate and economic information.     

The Markets for Real Estate Assets and Space: A Conceptual Framework

In this study, we present a simple analytic framework that divides the real estate market into two markets: the market for real estate space and the market for real estate assets. After describing the size and character of flows and stocks in the U.S. real estate market, we use our framework to demonstrate the important connections between the space and asset markets. We illustrate how these real estate markets are affected by the nation's macroeconomy and financial markets, tracing out the impacts resulting from various exogenous shocks on rents, asset prices, construction and the stock of real estate.     

房地产融资渠道分析

由于国家银根收缩,房地产融资难度增大,加上中国房地产金融体系尚未完善,融资渠道狭窄,在一定程度上限制了我国房地产业的发展。房地产业需要新的融资渠道,如信托、基金、债券等取代传统的银行贷款融资模式。针对新的市场现状,各房地产企业必须加强资本运作能力,扩大融资渠道,创新金融产品。     

房地产促销策略创新研究

随着我国房地产行业外部环境的变化,客观上要求房地产企业及时转变观念根据市场状况及其发展变化确立营销策略。本文把先进的经营理念引入房地产市场,提出了一系列房地产促销策略创新措施。     

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 1989–92 Credit Crunch for Real Estate: A Retrospective

This study surveys a broad range of information to establish the degree to which real estate lending and construction activity decreased in the 1989–92 period owing to a "credit crunch." It reviews the conditions that led up to the contraction in mortgage lending and construction and then documents the extent to which the evidence is consistent with a credit crunch in lending for residential and nonresidential construction, permanent financing of income properties, and residential mortgage lending. Also, this study weighs the relative importance of the credit crunch and other factors that contributed to the falloff in real estate lending and contrasts the recent period with earlier credit crunch episodes.     

The Separation of Real Estate Operations By Spin-Off

In this paper, we consider spin-offs as a vehicle to separate real estate operations from other real estate and/or non-real estate operations. For a sample of 33 such spin-offs announced and completed between 1962 and 1982, we document significantly positive abnormal returns around spin-off announcements. Using the standard event-time methodology, we find average excess returns of 5.7% in the two-day interval surrounding the first Wall Street Journal report of a pending spin-off. While the gains associated with spin-offs by real estate firms are positive on average, they are small in comparison to the 9.1% two-day announcement period abnormal returns surrounding proposals by non-real estate firms to divest real estate operations.     

The Optimal Duration of Real Estate Listing Contracts

The length of the real estate listing contract is examined as a means of providing an incentive for brokers to act in the best interest of home sellers. A limitation on the duration of the contract accomplishes this objective by imposing a cost (namely, the foregone commission) on brokers who fail to complete a sale before the contract expires. The seller's optimal contract duration balances the benefits of improved incentives against the expected cost of renegotiating a new contract in the event of a failure bv the broker.     

The Investment Performance of Real Estate Limited Partnerships

Real estate limited partnerships have become an increasingly popular form of investment over the past decade. Many investors have been drawn to these investment vehicles because of the high claimed rates of return earned by investors in previous partnerships. However, there has been little analysis of the historical rates of return on these investments other than that provided by the syndicators in offering prospectuses. This paper examines the returns earned by investors in real estate limited partnerships over the past decade. These results are compared with previous studies of the investment performance of real estate. Because of the importance of the tax shield aspects of these investments, we calculate the after-tax rate of return for investors in several marginal tax brackets.