Real Estate Firms Research Articles

Brokerage fee, ownership expropriation and earnings management of Malaysian property companies

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate whether real estate companies manipulate their earnings through the brokerage fee across ownership expropriation or not.Design/methodology/approachThis study considers Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange listed real estate firms to investigate how the brokerage fee in the real estate industry might affect the earnings management of firms across its ownership expropriation. Using annual report data, the authors investigate the associations over a panel for the period 2008−2012. Robust panel regression is used to divulge the probability values with reference by probit regression.FindingsOverall, the results show that high brokerage fees would drive more events of earnings management and that, generally, the ownership concentration among Malaysian real estate firms significantly affects the earnings management of the firms.Practical implicationsThis study shows that firm profitability and brokerage fees enhance the probability of firm’s earnings management. A low brokerage fee would reflect low revenue to the company. Therefore, management would opt to manipulate earnings in order to overstate earnings, which garners more interest from investors.Originality/valueReal estate values in Malaysia have climbed steadily over the years due to a combination of reasons giving companies a higher brokerage fee. Earnings management has become a big issue for property investors. The study demonstrates the relationship between earnings management and brokerage fee across ownership expropriation which can be considered by shareholders in their own strategic planning and investors in their own investing.

Expert problem solving practice in commercial property valuation: an exploratory study

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify the core dimensions of problem solving of experts in commercial valuation in order to provide a rich stimulus for managing current practice and enabling future development.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopted a cognitive position but emphasised understanding the everyday commercial property valuation practice in a naturalistic context and from the participants’ perspectives. Given this, a grounded theory approach was employed as a research strategy to guide the data collection and surface theoretical interpretations. Data were obtained through in-depth interviews with practicing valuers working in private real estate firms within metropolitan Birmingham, UK.FindingsThe interviews uncover four dimensions of experts’ problem-solving practice in commercial valuation: multidimensional, domain-specific knowledge base; cognitive process that is centred on analysis and reflection; collaborative problem-solving venture with colleagues; and professional practice issues awareness. A conceptual model is proposed which integrates these dimensions enabling a clearer understanding of the nature of valuation work.Research limitations/implicationsThis study was designed to be descriptive and theory generating, thus, the findings cannot be generalised as the sample was confined to one city and consists of a small number of senior practicing valuers. Therefore, the findings may not be fully applicable to other practicing valuers, other geographical locations or more widely to other types of property valuation. Nevertheless, the findings provide an important cognitive framework which can be verified by other researchers seeking to examine the practice of expert valuers.Practical implicationsThe identification of the core dimensions of expert problem solving in commercial property valuation is shown to have implications for valuation practice, education and continued research. The valuation practice environments need to develop mechanisms to provide time that would enable these multi-dimensions of professional competence to be developed. Further work is needed to expand and refine the model across expert practice in other specialty areas of valuation practice.Originality/valueThis study expands the current understanding of valuation process to areas of expertise that have received less coverage in behavioural valuation literature, that is, the central role of knowledge and cognition and how these are integrated for effective valuation problem solving and decision making.

The Pricing of Spatial Linkages in Companies\u2019 Underlying Assets

Spatial linkages in returns have not yet received much attention in an asset pricing context, however, they can capture important information about idiosyncratic externalities associated with firms’ holdings. We explain returns of real estate companies by modelling the spatial comovement across their underlying assets. We connect stocks of real estate firms using the location of their property portfolios and show that spatial linkages across real estate assets explain some of the variation in abnormal returns, controlling for exposure to systematic factors and firm characteristics. We propose a trading strategy that exploits the information contained in the spatial linkages of the underlying assets. We show that a long-short hedge that sells the stocks that experience a drop in the price if their connected stocks have also gone down in price and buys the stocks that experience an increase in the price if their connected stocks have also gone up delivers a non-market return of 9.7% per year.

Factors Influencing the Deployment of ICT in Nigerian Real Estate Practice

Real estate is an intensive business that largely depends on information. Information technology has become a major form of communication in the real estate industry, a tool for marketing and information dispersion. As a result, diverse factors influence the use of information and communication technology (ICT). This study is aimed at investigating the factors influencing the use of ICTs in Nigerian real estate practices. Lagos state, the area of study, was delineated according to a central business district locational pattern to ascertain where the firms of real estate were grouped. Out of the 172 questionnaires that were conveniently administered to real estate firms within the study location, only 143 (83.14%) were retrieved and considered valid for the analysis. The collected data was then analysed using a factor analytical test. Findings revealed that technological infrastructure, service delivery efficiency enhancement, and productivity branding influenced the deployment of ICTs in Lagos’ real estate industry. It was recommended that practitioners and real estate firms need to adopt emerging concepts and technological advancement in their quest for survival both locally and internationally. This will enhance their competitiveness and ensure that better value is provided.

Practices and pitfalls of competitive resilience: Urban adaptation as real estate firms turn climate risk to competitive advantage

Coastal cities on the U.S. East Coast are emerging hotspots of global sea level rise as well as increasingly attractive real estate markets. In this context, proactive real estate firms are engaging in various strategies for flood risk management. Analyzing firms' urban adaptation practices, this paper builds on theories of growth coalitions and climate change imaginaries, identifying forms of resilience that promote an ascendant competitive resilience regime. The most proactive firms treat resilience as a competitive advantage to be gained through self-reliant or networked adaptation. As firms act to limit financial exposure and protect their assets, the resulting piecemeal, competitive resilience further accentuates uneven risk and uneven development. While it may hold short-term promise, this approach contributes to larger trends in neoliberal urban governance, threatening to undermine the potential for more transformative regional adaptation. However, given municipal resource constraints, it could become a common and damaging form of urban adaptation.

Achieving property valuation accuracy in developing countries: the implication of data source

PurposeThe demand for accurate property value estimation by valuation report end users has led to a shift towards advanced property valuation modelling techniques in some property markets and these require a sizeable number of data set to function. In a situation where there is a lack of a centralised transaction data bank, scholars and practitioners usually collect data from different sources for analysis, which could affect the accuracy of property valuation estimates. This study aims to establish the suitability of different data sources that are reliable for estimating accurate property values.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopts the Lagos metropolis property market, Nigeria, as the study area. Transaction data of residential properties are collected from two sources, i.e. from real estate firms (selling price) and listing prices from an online real estate company. A portion of the collected data is fitted into the artificial neural network (ANN) model, which is used to predict the remaining property prices. The holdout sample data are predicted with the developed ANN models. Thereafter, the predicted prices and the actual prices are compared so as to establish which data set generates the most accurate property valuation estimates.FindingsIt is found that the listing data (listing prices) produced an encouraging mean absolute error (MAE), root mean square error (RMSE) and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) values compared with the firms’ data (selling prices). An MAPE value of 26.93 and 29.96 per cent was generated from the listing and firms’ data, respectively. A larger proportion of the predicted listing prices had property valuation error of margin that is within the industry acceptable standard of between ±0 and 10 per cent, compared with the predicted selling prices. Also, a higher valuation accuracy was recorded in properties with lower values, compared with expensive properties.Practical implicationsThe opaqueness in real estate transactions consummated in developing nations could be attributed to why selling prices (data) could not produce more accurate valuation estimates in this study than listing prices. Despite the encouraging results produced using listing prices, there is still an urgent need to maintain a robust and quality property data bank in developing nations, as obtainable in most developed nations, so as to achieve a sustainable global property valuation practice.Originality/valueThis study does not investigate the relationship between listing prices and selling prices, which has been conducted in previous studies, but examines their suitability to improve property valuation accuracy in an emerging property market. The findings of this study would be useful in property markets where property transaction data bank is not available.

Equity volatility connectedness across China’s real estate firms and financial institutions

The study investigates the dynamic equity volatility connectedness across the major real estate firms, banks, and other financial institutions in China. Based on the relative level of equity volatility connectedness, the study also examines the systemic importance of real estate firms and banks. The study shows that despite widespread worries about potential real estate bubbles in China, total directional connectedness from real estate firms to banks has decreased over the sample period. In contrast, total directional connectedness from banks to the real estate firms and to the financial institutions has become stronger over the sample period, which implies stronger risk originating from the banking sector. The study also shows that size plays an important role in determining the systemic importance of a real estate firm to the banking sector. The largest real estate firm displays the highest average systemic importance ranking. However, size does not appear to be the determinant factor of the systemic importance of a bank to the financial system. The largest bank shows the lowest average systemic importance ranking and 70% probability of being the least or second least systemically important bank in the long run.

Land manager profession on labor market: condition and problems of request and demand

Land manager profession on labor market: condition and problems of request and demand

Do measurement-related fair value disclosures affect information asymmetry?

Using a sample of European real estate firms over the 2007–2010 period, this study provides some evidence that measurement-related fair value disclosures reduce information asymmetry. We find a negative association between the extent of fair value disclosures and the bid-ask spread, but no association with two additional measures of information asymmetry (zero returns and price impact). Contrary to our expectation, we fail to find evidence that firms using model estimates exclusively benefit the most from such additional disclosure. Analysing measurement errors (the absolute difference between the selling price of an asset and its fair value prior to sale), we find that firms that use model estimates exclusively and provide more measurement-related disclosures have lower errors and more accurate fair value estimates. In other words, if our lack of results is due to investors not using this additional disclosure this is to their detriment.

Improving property valuation accuracy: a comparison of hedonic pricing model and artificial neural network

Inaccuracies in property valuation is a global problem. This could be attributed to the adoption of valuation approaches, with the hedonic pricing model (HPM) being an example, that are inaccurate and unreliable. As evidenced in the literature, the HPM approach has gained wide acceptance among real estate researchers, despite its shortcomings. Therefore, the present study set out to evaluate the predictive accuracy of HPM in comparison with the artificial neural network (ANN) technique in property valuation. Residential property transaction data were collected from registered real estate firms domiciled in the Lagos metropolis, Nigeria, and were fitted into the ANN model and HPM. The results showed that the ANN technique outperformed the HPM approach, in terms of accuracy in predicting property values with mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) values of 15.94 and 38.23%, respectively. The findings demonstrate the efficacy of the ANN technique in property valuation, and if all the preconditions of property value modeling are met, the ANN technique is a reliable valuation approach that could be used by both real estate researchers and professionals.

EVALUATING INNOVATION CAPABILITIES OF REAL ESTATE FIRMS: A COMBINED FUZZY DELPHI AND DEMATEL APPROACH

Due to strong competition, numerous technology advancements and the monetary policy of the government, the survival of Indian real estate firms now depends on their capacity to measure their existing innovation capabilities, rebuild them and adopt new ones. The aim of this study is to evaluate the technology and human resources innovation capabilities of Indian real estate firms by applying fuzzy Delphi and DEMATEL techniques. After identifying the innovation capabilities through an extensive literature review, a questionnaire is designed based on fuzzy linguistic scales to manage any vagueness of information received. Data has been collected from experts in the field, with capabilities then finalized by using a fuzzy Delphi method. To establish cause-effect relationships among capabilities, a DEMATEL method is applied to the data collected from a second questionnaire. Analysis of the data divides capabilities into two groups i.e. cause and effect. The results show that innovation management, robustness of product and process design capability, strategic planning and knowledge resources fall in the cause group; these are critical findings given the effect on the other capabilities. The study outcomes can help real estate firms to enhance their capabilities with the proposed model providing guidelines and direction in this regard.

Leverage and Taxes: Evidence from the Real Estate Industry

Finance theory has long viewed corporate income taxes as a potentially important determinant of corporate financing decisions and capital structures. But finance academics have been unable to provide convincing empirical evidence of a material effect of taxes on corporate leverage, in part because of difficulties in constructing an effective proxy for marginal corporate tax rates, and hence for the tax benefits of debt, for large samples of individual companies.The authors address this by analyzing leverage decisions in an industry whose publicly traded entities are organized either as taxable corporations, or as real estate investment trusts (REITs) that effectively avoid entity level taxation. This enables them to measure the relative tax benefits of debt with greater precision while controlling for important nontax characteristics that affect debt usage. The tax hypothesis predicts that for real estate firms with similar asset portfolios, taxable firms should have more debt than their nontaxable counterparts. Both the nontaxable and the taxable real estate firms in our sample routinely have more than twice the leverage of industrial firms, which suggests that factors other than taxes are contributing to their use of debt. But among real estate firms, tax status appears to play a much weaker role. Taxable firms have significantly more leverage only after 2000, when restrictions on REITs were removed through new regulations that made their operations much more like those of taxable real estate firms. Our findings also depend on real estate characteristics—most notably, only residential real estate firms demonstrated differences that are consistent with the tax hypothesis.Taken together, the authors’ findings suggest that although taxes do seem to matter, their role is clearly secondary relative to factors such as the nature of the firm’s assets. A generous interpretation of our evidence puts the effect of taxes between one‐third and one‐half of that implied by prior research.

Is Financial Regulation Good or Bad for Real Estate Companies? \u2013 An Event Study

This study investigates how three regulatory reforms undertaken in the aftermath of the global financial crisis have affected returns of real estate companies. The three reforms are aimed at regulating different segments of the market – Basel III targets banks, and could restrict the availability of bank debt to the sector; the Alternative Investment Fund Management Directive (AIFMD) targets funds, which could increase compliance costs and reduce the potential investor pool; the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR) is aimed at derivative trading and could impact the cost of debt capital. We employ an event study methodology using daily stock returns of real estate companies and identify the regulatory events through news published in major international financial newspapers and news agencies. Our results show different responses across the three regulations. For Basel III we find support for the regulatory burden hypothesis of the bank lending channel for small real estate firms and firms with low debt-to-equity ratios as they cannot diversify their funding sources. The direct regulatory effect as tested using AIFMD announcements supports the profit-based reaction hypothesis for large firms. We also show that the news have asymmetric effects with tighter regulation news more frequently leading to significant responses in average abnormal returns (AARs) than loosening regulation news.

On the Earnings and Price Momentum Strategies: Evidence from European Real Estate Firms

We test the performance and interaction between earnings and price momentum for European real estate companies by first making use of decile portfolios sorted on the previous 3- to 12-month returns, standardized unexpected earnings and a combination of both. Then, the relation is tested on a risk-adjusted basis employing a 3-factor asset pricing model and Fama and Macbeth (1973) cross-sectional regression analyses. Our analyses reveal several critical findings: (1) both price and earnings momentum are effective for European firms, the effect being stronger for the UK than EU firms; (2) unlike U.S. REITs, price momentum seems to dominate drift for European firms; (3) there is weak evidence for positive interaction between drift and price momentum, contrary to the U.S. evidence; (4) the performance of momentum strategies depends on the state of the economy, while controlling for systematic factors; (5) idiosyncratic risk of real estate property firms may influence the returns on drift and momentum factors.

Does Joint Bidding Reduce Competition? Evidence from Hong Kong Land Auctions

This paper analyses firms’ bidding behavior in auctions for development land in Hong Kong. The real estate market in Hong Kong is considered to be oligopolistic as it is dominated by a few top real estate firms, which have strong financial strength/development capacity and large land banks. Joint bidding is used by other real estate firms (“large” firms) to pool resources/capital in order to compete with the top firms. We test whether joint bidding increases or decreases the level of competition in land auctions, using land auction data in Hong Kong from 1991 to 2011. We find that large real estate firms are more likely to be successful than top firms at auctions when bidding jointly. However, joint bidding/winning does not harm competition as reflected by the number of bids, bids per bidder and number of bidders. Land prices also increase significantly in auctions won by joint bidders or alliances of large developers. Our results suggest that joint bidding enhances competition by allowing large firms to act strategically by pooling their resources and act aggressively to compete with the top firms.

Low‐frequency volatility of real estate securities and macroeconomic risk

AbstractReal estate securities have distinct characteristics that differentiate them from stocks generally. Key amongst them is that underpinning the firms are both real and investment assets. Therefore, the connections between the underlying macroeconomy and listed real estate firms are of heightened importance. To consider the linkages with macroeconomic fundamentals, we extract the ‘low‐frequency’ volatility component from aggregate volatility shocks in 11 international securitised real estate markets using Engle and Rangel's (2008) Spline‐GARCH model. The analysis reveals that the low‐frequency volatility of real estate securities has strong and positive association with most of the macroeconomic risk proxies examined. Differences between real estate securities and common stocks have also been identified.

Political Connections and Corporate Borrowing: an Analysis on the Listed Real Estate Firms in China

This paper investigates the relationship between political connections and corporate borrowing behaviour using the listed real estate development firms in China from 2001 to 2014. Evidence from China is of particular importance due to China being the world’s largest emerging and transition economy. We find that the benefit of political connections is manifested in firms obtaining loans from state-controlled banks in the first instance, but that political influence diminishes over subsequent loan extensions. The performance based requirement prevents banks providing systemic favourable treatment to the connected real estate firms, especially after the Chinese banking system reform in 2006. The results provide fresh insight on the risks and benefits of political connections in the Chinese real estate market as it transitions from a centrally planned to a market based economy under on-going market oriented banking and political reforms.

Seasoned equity offerings and corporate governance in Europe

PurposeThis paper aims to analyze the effects on shareholder value caused by the announcement of seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) by real estate firms from 12 European countries.Design/methodology/approachA 4-factor model event study is conducted to assess the impact of SEO announcements on firm value. Additionally, a cross-sectional regression is run to identify factors that aggravate or mitigate the documented announcement effects.FindingsSignificant wealth losses of −1 per cent are found on the announcement day of an SEO. However, firms with good corporate governance and a low probability of overinvesting experience less negative announcement effects.Research limitations/implicationsThe present study considers equity financing. In this context, investors seem to thoroughly assess the implications of capital increases by looking at quality indicators. For firms with good corporate governance, management incentivizing mechanisms and a lower probability of overinvesting, shareholders’ trust in the management mitigates the bad signal that the announcement of an SEO usually conveys.Originality/valueThe finding of corporate governance as a value enhancing factor in the context of equity offerings, even during periods of financial turmoil, is reassuring to both managers and regulators.

Factors Affecting the ProfitabilitFactors Affecting the Profitability of Indonesian Real Estate Publicly-listed Companiesy of Indonesian Real Estate Publicly-listed Companies

The research studies the relationship between eight firm-specific factors on the profitability of large-, medium-, and small-scale real estate Indonesian companies. The data uses forty-seven real estate companies listed in the Indonesian Stock Exchange from 2010 to 2014. The study utilized multiple linear panel regression models, namely, ordinary least squares (OLS), fixed effects (FE) and random effects (RE) in examining the effect on the return on asset of firm-specific factors, which include: number of days account receivables, number of days inventory, number of days of account payable, size of the company, current ratio, debt ratio, sales growth, and tangibility. Empirical findings show that the number of days account receivable has negative relationship with profitability, but it has no effect on medium-size Indonesian real estate companies. The factor number of days inventories has negative relationship in small-size companies, but the inverse is true for large companies, because large real estate firms have more liquid assets that covers maintenance costs related to real estate inventories. Size and sales growth have positive relationship on profitability for both large and small Indonesian real estate firms. On one hand, current ratio has positive relationship in large companies, while a negative relationship was found in small companies, because of the lower current asset base usually being experienced by smaller real estate firms. Lastly, tangibility has negative relationship with profitability for large companies, while the opposite is true for medium-sized real estate firms. Findings of this research are strong in using two panel regression models, and can help real estate managers have a general perspective regarding determinants of profitability in the expanding Indonesian market. This study also provides fresh perspectives in creating suitable strategies to controlling factors that maximizes profitability.

Analisis pengaruh leverage terhadap nilai perusahaan dengan kepemilikan manajerial dan arus kas bebas sebagai variabel pemoderasi

The purpose of this study is to examine whether or not the effect of leverage on firm value with management ownership and free cash flow as moderating variabel practice of manufacture firms listed in Indonesian Stock Exchange for period 2012-2014. Thirty five sample are selected by purposive sampling and used ordinary least square method to analysis. This study used secondary data such as firm financial statement that published during the observation year. Dependent variabel in this study is firm value practice of real estate firms listed in Indonesian Stock Exchange, while the independent variabels are leverage, management ownership, and free cash flow. The result shows that the impact of leverage is significant on firm value; Free Cash Flow is significant moderating leverage on firm, Management Ownership is not significant moderating leverage on firm value