Risk measures for direct real estate investments with non-normal or unknown return distributions

The volatility of returns is probably the most widely used risk measure for real estate. This is rather surprising since a number of studies have cast doubts on the view that volatility can capture the manifold risks attached to properties and corresponds to the risk attitude of investors. A central issue in this discussion is the statistical properties of real estate returns—in contrast to neoclassical capital market theory they are mostly non-normal and often unknown, which render many statistical measures useless. Based on a literature review and an analysis of data from Germany we provide evidence that volatility alone is inappropriate for measuring the risk of direct real estate. We use a unique data sample by IPD, which includes the total returns of 939 properties across different usage types (56% office, 20% retail, 8% others and 16% residential properties) from 1996 to 2009, the German IPD Index, and the German Property Index. The analysis of the distributional characteristics shows that German real estate returns in this period were not normally distributed and that a logistic distribution would have been a better fit. This is in line with most of the current literature on this subject and leads to the question which indicators are more appropriate to measure real estate risks. We suggest that a combination of quantitative and qualitative risk measures more adequately captures real estate risks and conforms better with investor attitudes to risk. Furthermore, we present criteria for the purpose of risk classification

The transmission of shocks across real estate investment trust (REIT) markets

This paper examines the transmission of shocks across equity, mortgage, and hybrid real estate investment trusts (REITs). Though the augmented Dickey-Fuller, Phillips-Perron, and Kwiatkowski-Phillips-Schmidt-Shin unit root tests reveal that the respective REITs are integrated of order one, Johansen-Juselius cointegration tests suggest that the three REIT markets are not cointegrated. The absence of cointegration supports the proposition of financial market efficiency proposed by Granger and by Richards. Granger-causality tests and Wald tests of long-run relations are presented to examine the short-run dynamics of the respective REIT markets; moreover, the generalized impulse response analysis reveals that shocks across the REIT markets are disseminated quickly.

Global Property Market Diversification

Diversification, Real Estate, Global, Portfolio, Cointegration,