Adjustment in Property Space Markets: Taking Long-Term Leases and Transaction Costs Seriously

Markets for property space adjust only gradually because tenants and landlords are constrained by long-term leases and transaction and information costs. Not only do rents adjust slowly, but space occupancy, which depends on historical rents, often differs from demand at current rent. This creates "hidden vacancies," vacancies that will develop in the future if market rent and the space demand driver are unchanged. That is, if current rent is greater/lesser than average rent, then hidden vacancies are positive/negative. Moreover, because of hidden vacancies, open vacancies and rent are not mirror images of each other. Thus it is necessary to estimate both rental and vacancy rate adjustment processes. We do this using annual data for Stockholm offices during the 1977–2002 period and simulate the response of rent and vacancies (open and hidden) to an employment shock.     

Maintenance, Housing Quality, and Vacancies under Imperfect Information

A model of a rental housing market is presented in which landlords economize on the maintenance of housing quality to profit from tenants imperfect information. In a partial equilibrium model that describes tenants by their distribution of minimum acceptable (reservation) quality for units priced at an identical rent, these profits induce entry of new units, resulting in rental vacancies. The equilibrium number of landlords and the market vacancy rate are derived in a free entry, imperfect information equilibrium in which the distribution of rental unit qualities range from the competitive quality to that which would be offered by a monopoly landlord.     

Office Rent Processes: The Case of U.S. Metropolitan Markets

This paper synthesizes elements of the traditional and contemporary theory of real estate markets to formulate an empirical framework for exploring metropolitan office rent processes. Such a framework is then applied to the analysis of office rents across 18 U.S. office markets during 1986–1995. The empirical results underscore the sluggishness of rental adjustments, highlight the extent of rental disequilibria across markets, and uncover the role of office employment factors (such as size, diversity, spatial organization, growth rates, and volatility), construction costs, interest rates, amenities, and zoning in shaping interarea differentials in the equilibrium component of office rents.     

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.     

An Analysis of Office Market Rents: Some Empirical Evidence

This paper provides an empirical analysis of office building rents using data for a five-year period in a medium- sized city. The results indicate that rent levels respond to various factors in the expected manner: rents vary systematically across classes of buildings and locations, overall market conditions have a significant impact on rents, and contract variations are associated with rent differences. We also present the first evidence at the building level on the rent-vacancy adjustment process. The results show a significant relationship between rent changes and vacancies.     

The Workings of the London Office Market

This paper presents estimates of an equilibrium-based dynamic adjustment model of the office market, using supply and demand relationships to link construction, absorption, vacancies and rents to employment growth and real interest rates. The model is estimated using data from the City of London office market over 1977–1996. The model tracks the market dynamically, and the severe 1985–1996 cycle is shown to be related to the cycle in employment growth and the movement of real interest rates. The latter directly affects both construction and real rent levels.     

Owner Tenancy as Credible Commitment under Uncertainty

How do landlords provide credible signals to tenants that they will maintainthe building when the needed upkeep over the contract period is uncertain at the time that rental decisions are made? In this paper, we develop a model of credible commitment under uncertainty wherein owner tenancy serves as the commitment signal to the market. In comparing completely tenant-occupied (absentee landlord) to partially owner-occupied buildings, the model predicts that in the latter case, the equilibrium rent is higher. We test this prediction using rental data for a sample of office buildings, some of which are completely tenant-occupied while others are partially owner-occupied. The results indicate that, as predicted by the model, rents are significantly higher when landlords can signal a commitment to high-performance standards.     

Implicit Forward Rents as Predictors of Future Rents

This paper investigates the relation between the term structure of rents and future spot rents. A rich database of office rental agreements for various maturities is used to estimate the term structure of rents, and from this structure implicit forward rents are extracted. The data pertain to commercial properties in the three largest Swedish cities for the period 1998–2002. A positive relation between forward and spot rents is found in some regions, but forward rents underestimate future rent levels. Another contribution of the paper lies in the area of rental index construction. We provide evidence that rental indices should not only be quality constant ( i.e. , control for characteristics), but should also be maturity constant.     

Rent Controls in Ontario: Roofs or Ceilings?

This paper describes the rent control program in Ontario and discusses the consequences of these controls. It indicates that rent controls caused both a small nominal decline and a large real decline in the per unit value of rental apartments, substantially reduced new rental housing starts, generated a rental housing shortage, created a dual market with significant rent differences between the controlled and uncontrolled (new construction) sectors, and imposed large costs on government in the form of foregone tax revenues and increased rental housing subsidies. The paper also indicates some of the political responses to the developing economic effects, such as the imposition of additional land use controls and increased government spending programs to stimulate new rental construction.     

Retail Leasing: The Determinants of Shopping Center Rents

The determinants of lease rentals are of fundamental importance to real estate researchers and practitioners. Retail leases are unique in that they typically have two rental components: a base rent and an "overage" rent equal to a percentage of the tenant's gross sales above some threshold level. In this paper, we develop and test a simple cash flow model of retail lease valuation that predicts that base rents are lower with higher percentage rent rates and are higher with greater threshold levels of sales. Using a sample of shopping center leases, regression analysis indicates that these tradeoffs are observed in the market.     

Rental Price Adjustment and Investment in the Office Market

This study presents estimates of the rental price adjustment mechanism and investment response in the office construction market using data from fourteen cities over the period 1979–1983. Market rents are seen to adjust in response to local as well as national economic conditions. Investment, as measured by building permits, responds strongly to rent in a two-stage regression model, as well as to the long-term growth rate of office employment. Tests for a cobweb-type overreaction by investors do not reveal any cyclical characteristics of the market, indicating that the effects of random demand shocks are not felt beyond the normal construction period.     

Profitability of Office Rental Market in Seoul: An Application of Simultaneous Structural Equations

This article is concerned with the estimation of excess rates of return on the office rental market in Seoul using a simultaneous structural equation model. The office rental market in Seoul is spatially divided into CBD and non-CBD, and the model has three behavior equations of Chonsei price, monthly rent and key deposit, with two identity equations of conversion rate and excess rate of return. This article reveals that it would be rational for the owners to ask tenants for a higher deposit with a lower monthly rent under increasing interest rates because the interest rate has a positive effect on the Chonsei deposit and the key deposit, but a negative effect on the monthly rent. Although high nominal interest rate and low economic growth reduce the excess rate of return on both submarkets, the non-CBD office rental market would be more profitable than the CBD market despite lower levels of the monthly rent and key deposit.     

Do Tenants Capture the Benefits from the Low‐Income Housing Tax Credit Program?

This article compares the rent savings accrued by recipient households over the life cycle of Low‐Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) projects to their allocated tax credits. A simple two‐stage empirical procedure is developed and implemented for a selected medium‐sized metropolitan statistical area. Using hedonic pricing parameters estimated in the first stage, LIHTC ceiling rents are compared to predicted market rents. The findings indicate rent savings constitute a relatively small fraction of the programs costs, suggesting developers and investors may capture some of the program's benefits. As this finding characterizes only one potential source of benefits of the LIHTC program, a brief discussion of other potential benefits to low‐income households supplements the analysis.     

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.     

Are There Investor Clienteles in Rental Housing?

The possible existence of investor clientele groups has received little attention in the real estate finance literature. In this paper we develop a clientele model, which in equilibrium produces a clustering of investors by tax characteristics. Low-tax-bracket investors are concentrated in low-value rental housing that attracts rents which are high in relation to property values. On the other hand, only high-tax-bracket investors will be observed in high-value rental housing, and they charge rents that are low in relation to property values. An empirical model is specified and estimated using a cross section of investors in Australian private rental housing markets. Investor clienteles are detected among property investors, though there is a weak diversification effect indicating that clientele effects may be stronger among single property investors.     

The Economics of Architecture and Urban Design: Some Preliminary Findings

This paper makes a preliminary attempt to evaluate empirically the nature of the contribution of architectural quality to the value of buildings. An economic model is postulated that predicts equilibrium rent and vacancy behavior as a function of both design and non-design characteristics. Vacancies are created in equilibrium as a result of search and information costs and tenant heterogeneity and are observed by the landlord as price-inelastic demand behavior. Design quality is seen to influence both rent and vacancy behavior. Its effect, however, is dependent on characteristics both of the production and operating cost functions and of tenant demand for the design vs. non-design amenity. An important characteristic of the design amenity is that it is not, in general, independent of the production function for non-design amenities. The model is tested using disaggregate cross-sectional and longitudinal operating performance and amenity data from a set of 102 class A office buildings in Boston and Cambridge. Data on design quality for the set of buildings were provided by a detailed evaluation of each structure by a panel of architects. Results confirm a strong influence of design on rents; structures rated in the top 20% for design quality were predicted to extract almost 22% higher rents than those rated in the bottom 20%. In contrast, the data showed a weak relationship between vacancy behavior and design quality. Finally, good design was shown to cost more to produce on average, but not necessarily in every case. The magnitude of the point estimates of the rent, vacancy, and construction cost effects suggest that good design may not in fact be more profitable on average, but as with a lottery, may provide a small probability of a high return to the developer.     

Explaining Intermetropolitan Variation in Housing Prices, Rents and Land Prices

In attempting to explain why housing prices, rents and urban land prices vary so dramatically between U.S. metropolitan areas, a simple model of a metropolitan housing market is presented identifying three interrelated submarkets. Estimating equations for rent, housing prices and urban land prices are identified and estimated using two-stage least squares. The empirical results provide strong support for the theoretical model concerning how these three submarkets interact. The results also suggest that household income and construction costs are the most important factors causing housing prices, rents and land prices to vary between metropolitan areas.     

Auctioning Horizontally Differentiated Items

This paper analyzes competition between two sellers that offer horizontally differentiated items at competing auctions. Three possible outcomes can arise in equilibrium. For substantially differentiated items the monopoly reserve prices form an equilibrium, and the market is not entirely covered. When products become closer substitutes, a non-empty interval of types becomes valuable to both sellers. When transport costs are low, and virtual valuations are high, sellers compete for these bidders and set their reserve prices below the valuation of the marginal bidder. In equilibrium all types enjoy participation rents. For intermediate levels of transport costs it is not worth competing for runaway bidders. In this case, there is a continuum of equilibria. In each equilibrium sellers adjust their reserve prices so that the marginal bidder gets no rents.     

How Well Do Section 8 FMRs (Fair Market Rent) Match the Cost of Rental Housing? Data from Thirty-Nine Large Cities

The FMR (Fair Market Rent) idea was built into the Section 8 lower income rental assistance program to provide a means to reflect variations in the rental cost of comparable housing in different market areas and also rental cost differences within a market area due to size variations in housing units. Does the FMR schedule for the Section 8 Existing Housing Program parallel the actual differences in the rents of comparable housing among metropolitan areas? We find the 1975 schedule fulfills some of the criteria for an efficient and equitable Section 8 Existing Housing Program but not all.     

Housing Rental Contracts and Adverse Selection with an Application to the Rent-Own Decision

A model of rental housing is developed in which landlords cannot observe the utilization rate of their tenants. As a result of this imperfect information, an adverse selection problem exists where high utilization households have an incentive to conceal their type in order to obtain more favorable contract terms. Consequently, the market equilibrium must satisfy a self-selection constraint, which imposes certain restrictions on the set of contracts that will be offered by landlords. These restrictions are examined in detail, and their implications for a household's decision to rent or own its housing are derived.