Sale Leaseback Transactions: Price Premiums and Market Efficiency

Sale-leaseback transactions are ubiquitous in real estate markets in the United States with annual volume estimated to be greater than $7 billion. However, there is no evidence concerning the price impact of such transactional arrangements. Using a data set of sale-leaseback transactions, this study examines the price impact on commercial property transactions across seven markets. The findings reveal that transactions structured as saleleasebacks occur at significantly higher prices than market transactions. In addition, after accounting for income differentials, buyers and sellers are appropriately pricing the transactions resulting in no undue advantage to either party, that is, the expected price premium is accounted for in the saleleaseback prices.

Using Geographic Information Systems to Improve Real Estate Analysis

Geographic information systems (GIS) technology provides users with the ability to improve real estate analysis. First, we describe GIS in general and then discuss some GIS real estate applications. Next, we illustrate how GIS can be used to calculate a shortest-path algorithm that produces a location variable superior to the traditionally used straight-line distance variable. Our sample provides empirical evidence of a statistically significant relationship between residential sales prices and the additional information provided by the GIS-created variable.

Optimal Competition and Allocation of Space in Shopping Centers

This article explains why a profit-maximizing developer may include multiple, competing outlets in a shopping center. While competing outlets presumably dissipate potential profits, thereby lowering aggregate rents that the developer can extract, the presence of shopping externalities causes the developer to be interested not just in individual store profits, but also in the traffic they generate throughout the center. And since competition among identical stores increases traffic, it can create an offsetting advantage that favors multiple outlets. The article provides a theoretical analysis of this problem and illustrates its implications for tenant mix by applying the theory to the problem of filling a vacant store. The paper concludes by explicitly relating the analysis to Brueckner's (1993) model of the optimal allocation of space in shopping centers.

Rental Concessions and Property Values

This paper examines apartment rental concessions and their effect on property values through apartment rent and occupancy rates. A simultaneous equation model is used to estimate rent and occupancy equations in linear, semilog, and logged form. The results show that rental concessions have a positive effect on both rent and occupancy rates. This would indicate that concessions have a positive effect on property values since higher capitalized value should follow. The results also reveal that various amenities and services provided by apartment units have significant effects on rent.

Apartment Rent Prediction Using Spatial Modeling

This paper provides a new model to explain local variation in apartment rents by introducing the notion of a spatial process. This model differs from those in the literature by explicitly specifying spatial association between pairs of locations as a function of distance between them. Data on apartment rents for the eight markets are used to illustrate the spatial model. Results indicate signi?cant prediction improvement over traditional hedonic rent models that only include indicator variables to capture spatial effects.

Apartment Rent, Concessions and Occupancy Rates

This paper examines the effects of rental concessions on apartment rent and occupancy rates. Using limited-information maximum likelihood estimation, equations for rent, occupancy, and concessions show that landlord-supplied rental concessions have a positive effect on both rent and occupancy rates. Rental concessions seem to provide the landlord a means to collect higher average rent and at the same time to increase occupancy rates. The results also indicate that a negative relationship exists between rent and occupancy rates and that certain amenities, services, and occupancy restrictions influence rent.

REITs as Captive-Financing Affiliates: Impact on Financial Performance

Some real estate investment trusts are created as "captive-financing" affiliates by their sponsors. This creates conflicts of interest between the sponsor/manager and shareholders. Such conflicts could affect the financial performance of the firm. Using data on a sample of REITs, results show that captive-financing REITs' financial performance is on average inferior to that of non-captive REITs.

A recursive model of the spatial allocation of migrants : some empirical results / BEBR No. 341

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 26-27)

An Analysis of Office Market Rents: Parameter Constancy and Unobservable Variables

This paper reexamines variations in office building rents using data for a six-year period in a medium-sized city. Previous literature has relied on estimates using OLS estimation of standard fixed-effects models. We test for structural shifts and parameter constancy using random effects on heteroscedastic-autoregressive models and we find that structural shifts occur. Overall, the rent adjustment process does not remain unchanged across different time periods or submarkets.

Strategic Orientation and Marketing Strategy: An Analysis of Residential Real Estate Brokerage Firms

This article analyzes marketing strategy concepts as they apply to real estate brokerage firms and reports an empirical investigation of marketing strategies of firms in a local market. Firms followed one of three strategic orientations with respect to revenue generation, depending on the extent to which they emphasized obtaining listings versus making sales. The effectiveness of marketing mix strategy variables such as service level and advertising in achieving market share was also investigated. Analysis indicated that the effectiveness of these strategy variables varied, depending on the strategic orientation adopted by the firm.