On Setting Apartment Rental Rates: A Regression-Based Approach

This study presents a regression-based analysis of apartment rents for a cross-section of properties located in an "edge city" submarket. It attempts to provide a solution for owners and managers of apartments to the thorny problem of setting a property's rental rate. The approach used in this analysis differs from previous studies in at least three important respects: (1) vacancy is treated as part of the dependent variable, (2) the property-specific rental rate generated by the regression analysis is compared to the property's actual effective rent, and (3) each property in the submarket is ranked by the difference between its actual effective rent and its characteristic-adjusted effective rent. This is then followed by several observations concerning the advantages and disadvantages of such an analysis in a practical setting.

A Fundamental Examination of Securitized and Unsecuritized Real Estate

Most studies (including this one) have found a weak statistical relationship between total returns for securitized and unsecuritized real estate equities. Some studies argue that REIT shares behave more like the stock market, than real estate. In an attempt to focus this discussion, this study examines the fundamental underlying return-generating components: dividends, investment values, and dividend yields using NAREIT and NCREIF data from 1978 through 1994. While dividends have been part of the REIT pricing calculus for some time, relatively few studies have focused upon the "dividends" paid by NCREIF properties. The short-run relationships between these fundamental components are weak and many of their distributions display significant non-normal tendencies. Even when quarterly lags of up to two years are examined, these distributions also tend to be weakly correlated with one another. Of the three fundamental components, the long-run path of prices exhibited the strongest relationship. Interestingly, the volatility of the NCREIF dividend series is approximately 150% of the NAREIT volatility, while the volatility of the NCREIF asset values is roughly 25% of the NAREIT volatility. This is contradictory: in a simplified setting, greater dividend volatility should be accompanied by greater price volatility, not less, as observed here. Nevertheless, such comparisons suffer due to the incompatibility of the data sources and, accordingly, this study should be viewed as a preliminary examination of securitized and unsecuritized real estate returns.

A Fundamental Comparison of International Real Estate Returns

This study analyzes commercial real estate returns in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States over the period 1985-95, from the perspective of a U.S. investor. Because national indices can consist of differing property mixes, this study separately analyzes the office, retail, and warehouse sectors. Moreover, these analyses also convert total returns into their fundamental components: initial yield, growth in income, and shifts in capitalization rates. The paths of currency-adjusted income and asset values and, therefore, capitalization rates are also presented. Generally speaking, the fundamental components of retail returns across the four countries exhibit greater divergence than the office and warehouse sectors. It is interesting that the U.S. property sectors showed the worst performance, while the Australian retail and the British office and warehouse sectors were the best performers (both before and after currency adjustments). Additionally, the currency-adjusted Australian returns were adversely effected by exchange rate movements, while the British returns were positively effected. Lastly, the correlation of the quarterly percentage change in income was generally lower and less statistically significant that the correlation patterns observed among the other components of return. This might suggest that more idiosyncratic risk can be found in the real estate space markets (as proxied by income changes) than in the real estate capital markets (as proxied by the pricing of the income--that is, capitalization rates), which appear to be more globally influenced.

Telehealthcare for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

BACKGROUND: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a disease of irreversible airways obstruction in which patients often suffer exacerbations. Sometimes these exacerbations need hospital care: telehealthcare has the potential to reduce admission to hospital when used to administer care to the pateint from within their own home. OBJECTIVES: To review the effectiveness of telehealthcare for COPD compared with usual face‐to‐face care. SEARCH METHODS: We searched the Cochrane Airways Group Specialised Register, which is derived from systematic searches of the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, AMED, and PsycINFO; last searched January 2010. SELECTION CRITERIA: We selected randomised controlled trials which assessed telehealthcare, defined as follows: healthcare at a distance, involving the communication of data from the patient to the health carer, usually a doctor or nurse, who then processes the information and responds with feedback regarding the management of the illness. The primary outcomes considered were: number of exacerbations, quality of life as recorded by the St George's Respiratory Questionnaire, hospitalisations, emergency department visits and deaths. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Two authors independently selected trials for inclusion and extracted data. We combined data into forest plots using fixed‐effects modelling as heterogeneity was low (I(2) < 40%). MAIN RESULTS: Ten trials met the inclusion criteria. Telehealthcare was assessed as part of a complex intervention, including nurse case management and other interventions. Telehealthcare was associated with a clinically significant increase in quality of life in two trials with 253 participants (mean difference ‐6.57 (95% confidence interval (CI) ‐13.62 to 0.48); minimum clinically significant difference is a change of ‐4.0), but the confidence interval was wide. Telehealthcare showed a significant reduction in the number of patients with one or more emergency department attendances over 12 months; odds ratio (OR) 0.27 (95% CI 0.11 to 0.66) in three trials with 449 participants, and the OR of having one or more admissions to hospital over 12 months was 0.46 (95% CI 0.33 to 0.65) in six trials with 604 participants. There was no significant difference in the OR for deaths over 12 months for the telehealthcare group as compared to the usual care group in three trials with 503 participants; OR 1.05 (95% CI 0.63 to 1.75). AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: Telehealthcare in COPD appears to have a possible impact on the quality of life of patients and the number of times patients attend the emergency department and the hospital. However, further research is needed to clarify precisely its role since the trials included telehealthcare as part of more complex packages

Past and Future Sources of Commercial Real Estate Returns

Historical commercial real estate returns are attributed to three fundamental factors: initial current yield, growth in net operating income, and changes in going-in versus going-out capitalization rates (i.e., pricing movements). Separating returns into these three factors appears to provide more insightful information than the traditionally reported income and appreciation returns. Using this three-factor model, a two-dimensional matrix of projected ten-year real yields is estimated for each major type of commercial real estate.

Essays in Real Estate Pricing

126 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2002.Second, real estate investment trusts are used to pursue two related research questions: (a) Can a firm's characteristics be used to determine its pricing (as measured by the firm's dividend yield)? (b) After adjusting for these characteristics, do "value" firms outperform "growth" firms? The first of these questions is hedonically addressed. It was found that a significant portion of the cross-sectional variation in REIT dividend yields can be ascribed, using hedonic techniques, to the differences in their characteristics. The explanatory power of the hedonic models generally improved as the time period becomes more recent and the data set becomes more robust. The "excess" dividend yield (from the findings of the first question) was then viewed as the basis for identifying characteristic-adjusted growth and value firms. A zero-investment portfolio is formed each year acquiring the value firms and selling short the growth firms. However, no (statistically significant) arbitrage profits can be earned. This is interpreted as a yet another affirmation of the efficient market hypothesis and, by extension, a refutation that value firms---once adjusted for their characteristics---outperform growth firms.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD

Essays in Real Estate Pricing

126 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2002.Second, real estate investment trusts are used to pursue two related research questions: (a) Can a firm's characteristics be used to determine its pricing (as measured by the firm's dividend yield)? (b) After adjusting for these characteristics, do "value" firms outperform "growth" firms? The first of these questions is hedonically addressed. It was found that a significant portion of the cross-sectional variation in REIT dividend yields can be ascribed, using hedonic techniques, to the differences in their characteristics. The explanatory power of the hedonic models generally improved as the time period becomes more recent and the data set becomes more robust. The "excess" dividend yield (from the findings of the first question) was then viewed as the basis for identifying characteristic-adjusted growth and value firms. A zero-investment portfolio is formed each year acquiring the value firms and selling short the growth firms. However, no (statistically significant) arbitrage profits can be earned. This is interpreted as a yet another affirmation of the efficient market hypothesis and, by extension, a refutation that value firms---once adjusted for their characteristics---outperform growth firms.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD

Twenty Years of the NCREIF Property Index

This study overviews the performance of the NCREIF Property Index, by property type, over the twenty-year period ended in 1998. More exactly, performance is analyzed from the perspective of the fundamental sources of return: initial earnings yield, dividend payout ratios, earnings growth, shifts in capitalization rates and other (less significant) effects. (While this approach is here applied to private real estate equities, nothing precludes its application to a variety of other investment classes.) Our results indicate the fundamental sources that have contributed to the Index's considerable cross-sectional variation as well as its time-series variation. Therefore, this study should be viewed as a useful historical account for those interested in understanding the "ex post" return-generating process of the Index and its property-type components as well as those who wish to model the "ex ante" return-generating process for a variety of applications in both the equity and debt markets-regardless of whether the securities are publicly or privately traded. Copyright Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2001.