Real Estate Services Research Articles

English

This paper aims to extent the prediction model of financial distress among Malaysian public listed companies from period 2006 to 2010. Altman Z-Score Models was used to identify classification on three main zones which are safe, grey or distress zone. The results specify that 56 % of listed companies were classified as ‗distress zone‘, 24 % are known as ‗grey zone‘ while 20 % are classified in ‗safe zone‘. Two likely to fail companies was correctly predict at distress zone which Z-Score was lower than 1.81. Moreover, the findings show most of the companies were facing financial distress during global financial crisis on 2008. Industrial transportation and industrial engineering sectors are generally classified as ‗safe zone‘ while food and staplers retailing, real estate investment and services and industrial metals and mining sectors are classified as ‗distress zone‘.

Real Estate Market Structure: Industrial Organization Perspectives

Existing studies of housing markets assume that property developers is a homogenous, perfectly competitive industry. It concentrates on advanced economies and the impacts of market conditions, regulatory constraints, production characteristics, institutional structure and land supply. Motivated by these circumstances and fewer literature on concentration studies in Malaysia we try to bridging the gap. This paper utilized 5-digit firm level industry data of the Malaysian Standard Industrial Classification (MSIC, 2008) on the average size of property developer establishments and market concentration to test the appropriateness of this paradigm. Our concentration ratio (CR4) results show Malaysian real estate services are considered as competitive market. Keywords: Concentration, competition, market power, real estate services. JEL: L1, L11, L85

Capabilities of the new strategic organization

Purpose – The purpose of this study/paper is to highlight emerging themes in CRE capabilities and organizational models. The authors explain a Lean Six Sigma-based staffing optimization and integration methodology which ensures organizational design is aligned with enterprise requirements. The ultimate objective is a CRE organizational model that sets resourcing requirements for years ahead while yielding innovative new savings. These priorities set an archetypical precedent for emerging organizational models. The emerging organizational blueprint demonstrates a clear move away from the traditional CRE model by optimizing functional service delivery toward a model that drives business integration, strategy development and creative solution deployment. Design/methodology/approach – Throughout numerous assessments of corporate CRE organizations in the past year, the authors have witnessed emerging themes in CRE priorities and the capabilities required for achieving those priorities. The authors have utilized a Lean Six Sigma-based staffing optimization and integration methodology which ensures that organizational design is aligned with enterprise requirements. Findings – Whereas previous models were built to emphasize functional service delivery, the emerging model is structured to enable a core team to focus on developing strategic relationships and delivering strategic solutions. Functional service delivery is managed directly through a strategic partnership with an outsourced service provider. The emerging model suggests a small, centralized core leadership team. Careful governance and communication protocols must be developed to ensure the duplication and redundancy does not become an issue. Originality/value – Lean Six Sigma has evolved into a business improvement system that has taken hold within many high-performing real estate and facility services – a methodology that emerged from mechanized manufacturing might seem ill-adapted to CRE organizational development. Yet, with guided implementation and disciplined use, we have observed that Lean Six Sigma yields high-impact results in service environments and even with non-technical areas like organization design. This is a unique vantage point that combines engineering technicality against cultural aspects of organizational development.

Donation Risk and Optimal Endowment Portfolio Allocations

An endowment is only one component of the total economic worth of a charitable organization. Other assets, such as real estate, donation revenue, and program service fees generally represent a larger portion of the total wealth of a charity yet are often ignored in the endowment optimization process. This article provides evidence that changes in charitable donations, referred to as donation risk, have statistically significant exposures to different asset classes and risk factors. Through a series of portfolio optimizations it is determined that the optimal allocation for an endowment varies materially for different compositions of total wealth. These findings suggest that narrowly focused portfolio optimization routines that ignore donation risk are insufficient, and that a holistic definition of wealth is necessary to build truly efficient endowment portfolios. <b>TOPICS:</b>Portfolio construction, in portfolio management, statistical methods

Industrial symbiosis opportunities for small and medium sized enterprises: preliminary study in the Besaya region (Cantabria, Northern Spain)

In this paper we present the potential for small and medium sized enterprises grouped in industrial areas or parks for systemic eco-innovation through industrial symbiosis strategies. The study was carried out in an industrialised region in the self-governing region of Cantabria (Northern Spain), which comprises 161 inventoried firms, located in 9 different industrial areas. By sectors, 40% work in commerce, the repair of motor vehicles, motorbikes and motorcycles and personal and domestic articles, 16% in metallurgy and the manufacture of metallic products, 13% in construction and the remaining 31% work in such diverse sectors as real estate services, the paper industry, food and the chemical industry, among others. The information on resources and waste flows was collected by means of programmed visits, with a success rate of 104/161 enterprises. The preliminary results show opportunities both for substituting resources with waste products in real and virtual cases and for sharing waste management services and infrastructures. The diversity of synergetic opportunities is related to the number of enterprises that participate in each industrial area and with the occurrence of the types of waste products in the global system; thus we find options for action on different systemic levels. An optimistic scenario for escalating industrial symbiosis between small and medium sized enterprises is revealed from the project, thanks to both the companies' current behaviour and to the potential opportunities that were detected. This paper establishes the basis for advancing in subsequent stages of quantification and the evaluation of the feasibility of specific alternatives for turning the system under study into an industrial ecosystem.

The Fiscal Impact of Immigration

The fiscal impact of immigration — how immigrants and their descendants affect government budgets — is a widely debated and contentious issue. Economists overwhelmingly accept the economic gains of immigration, but are less certain about immigrants’ impact on government budgets. Contention over this issue is fueled by the numerous methodologies and complexity of analysis that obscure the fiscal costs of immigration.The complexities are many. Each layer of the United States’ federal structure of government — federal, state, and local — is funded by different types of taxes and each spend their budgets on different programs and in different ways.The types of public goods consumed by immigrants also affect their fiscal impact. If the public goods are “pure,” meaning that they are non-rivalrous and non-excludable, then more taxpayers in the form of immigrants spread out the tax cost without diminishing the quality of the goods. Immigrants lower the tax burden of providing pure public goods. But, if the public goods are “congestible,” more immigrants could decrease the quality of the goods, prompting the government to spend more tax dollars to maintain the quality. Some congestion occurs for most government-supplied goods whenever population increases, by immigration or through procreation, but the fiscal impact varies widely.Immigrants also impact the U.S. economy. They can displace U.S.-born workers, complement them, or have little impact on their employment opportunities, all of which alter tax revenue and government welfare expenditures in different ways. Immigrants are also consumers of real estate and other goods and services in the United States, boosting aggregate demand and spurring investment that further grows the taxable economy. The methodologies employed to study the fiscal impact of immigration are also numerous and complicated. This chapter will examine these methodologies’ relative merits and demerits, and present the common findings of the major studies using the various methodologies.

The effect of air cargo traffic on regional job creation in Turkey

While there is a large body of literature on air passenger traffic's impact on local employment, the interaction between air cargo traffic and local employment remains relatively untouched. This paper tries to fill in the gap by analyzing the impact of air cargo traffic on local employment in 20 Turkish provinces using Census 2000 data. The results of 2-stage least squares estimations show that air cargo traffic stimulates employment in finance, insurance, real estate and business services and increases the total number of administrative and managerial workers and the total number of clerical and related workers while it tends to reduce employment in agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing activities and the total number of agricultural, animal husbandry, forestry workers, fishermen and hunters.

Pollution Levels in Iranian Economy Sectors Using Input-output Analysis and TOPSIS Technique: An Approach to Sustainable Development

Sustainable development (SD) is a pattern of growth where the resources being used aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but also for the generations to come. One of the most important components of sustainable development is the environmental protection that globally, several actions have been taken by the international community. Their goal was to evaluate the environmental impacts of emissions. Under the Kyoto Protocol, member states are committed to reduce the greenhouse gases to 1990 levels or lower until 2012-2010. Accordingly, this study is to examine the level of pollution in Iranian economy sectors. Data in this study include six fuels, gasoline, kerosene, fuel oil, LPG, natural gas and gas oil that are available in the country's energy balance sheet. Input-Output (IO) analysis was used to calculate emissions of five pollutants, COx, NOx, CO, HC and SPM, in distinguishing 20 economic sectors in Iran. Then with TOPSIS technique and Entropy weighted, five pollutants are combined and pollution levels have been determined. The results indicate that hotel and restaurant services, real estate and other business services, basic metals and metal products made, textile products, clothing, leather, wood, paper products and machineries and equipment gain the highest level of sustainable development in terms of environmental protection. In terms of economic policy, it is necessary to consider the appropriate strategies to reduce emissions in less developed areas.

Bait pricing: evaluating the success of regulatory reform in advertising

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of this legislative reform in the state of South Australia (SA) through an examination of the relationship between listed or advertised price and transaction prices before and after the changes in regulation. Between 2000 and 2008, legislative changes took place throughout Australia to make real-estate transactions more transparent and to deal with misleading conduct by real-estate agents. The practice of “charm” or “bait” pricing was targeted. This denotes the under-quoting of estimated selling prices in real-estate sale advertisements which can be considered deceptive or even fraudulent.Design/methodology/approach– The study area is Adelaide, the state capital of SA and includes analysis of first and last advertised prices and eventual selling price for &gt; 120,000 residential sales transactions over a nine-year period between 2003 and 2011. The analysis to test these hypotheses included, first, a descriptive evaluation of the percentage price difference over time and a spatial breakdown of mean percentage price difference before and after legislation. Second, for each hypothesis, the change was tested by measuring the variance of the percentage change, with significance established through the Levene and Brown–Forsythe tests, rather than by the mean percentage change.Findings– The results, both descriptive and statistical, support the effectiveness of the reform in legislation.Research limitations/implications– The study has application in terms of agents as social gatekeepers and confirms the role of regulation to ensure market values are achieved and consumers not disadvantaged. With friction in the market, imperfect information and the possible behavioural responses of land agents, there may be incomplete market correction of underpricing strategies. This paper confirms the effectiveness of one such market intervention.Social implications– Some half a million dwellings are purchased in Australia every year. Annually, in the state of SA, some 53,000 dwellings are financed to be purchased or built. These levels of purchase reflect national home ownership rates of about 69 per cent, with some 33 per cent of Australians owning their houses outright and a growing number, some 36 per cent, owners with a mortgage. Australian households also move house relatively frequently. In 2008, 43 per cent of Australians reported moving in the previous 5 years, 15 per cent had moved 3 or more times. The most common reasons for moving were twofold, either to buy a house or to buy a bigger house. These levels of purchase, home ownership and mobility underpin the importance and viability of some 10,000 real-estate services businesses in Australia; a sector which, up to 2,000, was largely self-regulated.Originality/value– This paper is one of the first in Australia to effectively quantify the success of legislative reform on residential agency behaviour.

The gender gap in pay in company boards

The aim of this study is to analyze whether a gender wage gap exists in the boards of directors (BD) of companies listed on the Madrid Stock Exchange from 2004 to 2011. We hypothesize that the percentage of female directors on a BD, the presence of female directors on the Nomination and Compensation Committee, the presence of well-qualified independent women directors on BD, the sector, and the geographical region, have an effect on the gender wage gap. The results show that the percentage of female directors on a BD and the geographical region have no effect on the gender wage gap. On the other hand, the finding reports that women’s presence on the Nomination and Compensation Committee increases the gender gap in pay, and it is reduced when there are independent female directors who have gained a degree on the BD, and when the company operates in the finance and real estate services sector. In addition, the results also demonstrate that the seniority of the female directors decreases the gender gap in pay, while there is a rise when the companies are bigger and the size of the BD and the return on assets increase. These conclusions should encourage regulatory bodies to adopt forceful rules to mitigate the gender gap in pay.

Effects of financial crisis on the industry sector of Chinese stock market — from a perspective of complex network

In this paper, we use mutual information to measure the statistical interdependence between 23 industry sectors of Shanghai stock market and construct corresponding correlation network to analyze the shock of 2008 financial crisis on industry sectors. The obtained meaningful facts are as follows. First, such crisis has only a limited impact on leading industries such as Manufacturing, Commercial trade and Machinery &amp; Equipment, which still play an important role in Chinese economy. Second, the crisis badly attacks China's export industries like Electronics, Wood &amp; Furniture and Textile &amp; Clothing. The damage further hurts other industries, and then export industries' influence becomes larger. Third, the crisis adversely impacts the import industries like Petrochemical, Metal &amp; Nonmetal and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology. While due to the stimulation of macroeconomic policies, the influence of crisis on import industries is limited. Similarly, due to relatively strict capital control and the macroeconomic policies stimulating the domestic demand, those industries like Construction, Real Estate and Financial Services are slightly wounded. All these findings suggest that Chinese government should transform from the external demand to the domestic consumption to sustain economic growth.

IDENTIFICATION OF THE LEADING ECONOMIC SECTORS AND INCOME DISPARITY AMONG REGENCIES IN UPPER BENGAWAN SOLO SUB WATERSHED

The purposes of this study are: (1) to identify leading economic sectors and (2) to analyse income disparity among regencies in Upper Bengawan Solo sub watershed. The study covers 5 regencies: Wonogiri, Boyolali, Klaten, Sragen and Karanganyar. Data were analyzed using a Klassen typology to determine pattern and economy structure, Location Quotient (LQ) to identify leading economic sectors, Williamson Index to determine economic disparity and sectoral contribution to determine role of sector. The results show that leading economic sectors were different for each regency, i.e.Wonogiri (transport and communications), Karanganyar (processing industry), Boyolali (finance, real estate, and business services), Sragen (agriculture, livestock, forestry, and fisheries), and Klaten (construction). The leading sectors identified in each regency varied depending on the endowment of resources and comparative advantage. Based on their pattern and economy structure, Karanganyar can be categorized as advanced and fast growing region but Wonogiri as disadvantaged regions. The results also show that the income disparity among regencies was low (0.25) and tended to increase. The development policy of high economic growth with low disparity can be inclusively done by developing the leading sectors and paying attention to the economic transformation that occurred in each regency.

Environmental cost and pollution risk caused by the industrial transfer in Qinghai Province

With the rising pressure due to energy consumption and costs of environmental protection and recovery, industrial transfer from the eastern to central and western areas has surged in China. However, extremely fragile ecological conditions and severe water shortage are significant hurdles for industry development in Western China. Whether the vulnerable environment can bear the pollution caused by the transferred industry from Eastern China becomes a significant issue. This study firstly estimates energy and environmental costs in different areas of China, and assesses the necessity to upgrade the industrial structure of Qinghai Province. Then the emissions of waste water, waste gas, and smoke caused by transferred industries are calculated by Input-Output Model. On the basis of the effect analysis of waste emission on environment, pollution risks of Qinghai province are assessed. The results illustrate that the costs of environmental protection and recovery in China have a gradient distribution, of which the energy efficiency is lower while environmental costs are higher in Western China. Industrial structure adjustment has different impacts on the pollution of different sectors. Although the development of machinery and equipment, hotels and catering services, and real estate, leasing, and business services has increased the emission of pollutants, it is offset by the decreasing emissions caused by other industries such as construction and metal products. Therefore, although economic development will increase environmental pollution, industrial adjustments can effectively decrease waste water and waste gas emissions to reduce the pollution risk. It should be noted that there are still tremendous challenges for industrial transfer in Qinghai Province to coordinate the environment and industry development.

The state of value creation in the real-estate sector – lessons from lean thinking

Purpose– Although great emphasis has been given to the added value of real estate, the current studies miss the phase when the actual value is created, i.e., the production phase of real-estate services. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the current state of value creation of the commercial real-estate services from a lean thinking perspective.Design/methodology/approach– Value creation is studied in four Finnish cases through 122 interviews and eight workshops.Findings– Cross-case analysis identified six sources of waste resulting as poor value creation: sub-process optimisation instead of optimising the entire process, the price minimisation instead of cost minimisation, difficulties responding to customer value, overloaded employees, inability to make improvements, and poorly managed information.Research limitations/implications– Although the findings are grounded on a solid data collection and analysis, the case study nature of the research and the Finnish case study settings create limitations for the generalisation of the findings.Practical implications– Service providers and other process owners can use the findings to improve their value creation and increase the productivity of their service processes.Originality/value –This is one of the first research studies that utilise lean thinking in commercial service processes in the real-estate sector and thus provides new insight into how to increase productivity through waste minimisation.

Real estate services structure evolution with internet and SWOT analysis

The purpose of this research is to analyse the impact of the internet on the real estate purchase transaction. The research issues we are interested in are: how to specify formally the evolution of real estate transactions? How the structure of the real estate transactions changes? What corporate strategies the online real estate companies bring to the market compared to traditional services? We use the Unified Modelling Language (UML) to describe the purchase transaction in the real estate industry both traditional and using the internet. We concentrate in this paper on activity and sequence diagrams. We discuss the changes relating to the agent role. Then, we map the range of services offered by the real estate websites within the geographical reach to describe the real estate structure change. Lastly, we evaluate corporate strategies for both traditional and online real estate companies using SWOT analysis. This shows the advantages and disadvantages of each case.

Performance Assessment of Partnership Estate Surveying and Valuation Firms in Lagos State, Nigeria

This study advances the understanding of the relationship between firm size and performance on partnership formation and sustainability in the profession of Estate Surveying and Valuation in Nigeria. It has been argued in different literatures that size is positively related to performance for some categories of firms but negatively related in some other cases. This study examines the opinion of both the sellers and buyers of real estate services on the subject. Questionnaires were administered to 68 respondents selected from sole proprietorship estate firms, partnership estate firms and commercial banks in Lagos Metropolis. Data were presented and analysed with frequency tables, percentages, 4-point Likert scale and relative importance index. Findings reveal that the performance assessment criteria used by the sellers differ from those engaged by the buyers and that partnership estate firms record better performance from both side. It was further revealed that the overall performance assessment score partnership better than sole proprietorship estate firms. It is therefore concluded that performance could not have been a factor militating against partnership formation and sustainability in Estate Surveying and Valuation in Nigeria. The study suggest that prospective partners and the Nigeria Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers should come up with ethics and code of practice particular to partnership whereby erring partners face disciplinary action at the institution and compelled to compensate the other partner(s) and the firm by forfeiting certain benefits. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n13p489

Providing real-estate services through the integration of 3D laser scanning and building information modelling

There is an opportunity for real-estate services sector to deliver more accurate, faster and quality building surveys and information models. This paper reports on a study, designed to establish automated procedures for the development of a digital model to assist in faster and better services and delivery of real-estate services by integrating 3D laser scanning and BIM technology. It proposes an intuitive and interactive building model that is easy to query and navigate, and thus support property developers, buyers and sellers in the property sales sector. An outline of the new approach is provided to illustrate the benefits of the proposed method to the real-estate services sector. The key arguments in the paper are consolidated by the results of a qualitative study amongst real-estate professionals, which sought to determine the added value of BIM-3D laser scanning in comparison to conventional building surveying and Computer Aided Design (CAD) methods.

Integration Model Design Strategy for Cadastral Information System: Case Study of a Cadastral Management System in Korea

For the cadastral management advancement, South Korea has upgraded its system through digitization of cadastral map. Recently, due to the computerization of the cadastral management system, various work systems have been developed and operate in cadastral fields for cadastral book information services, cadastral map information services, and real estate services. Especially brand-new information systems have been developed as part of a cadastral resurvey project. Although the operation of diversified systems has no problem in independent work areas, the inefficiency of operation such as data non-coincidence and compatibility issues between system databases has been incurred in mutual utilization and provision of cadastral information. In order to resolve these issues, this study suggests an integration model design strategy of cadastral information systems.

Brownfield Development Selection Using Multiattribute Decision Making

AbstractBrownfields are potential development opportunities for the communities in which these old industrial sites sit. The Western Pennsylvania Brownfields Center at Carnegie Mellon University has developed and tested a multiattribute decision-making process for complex brownfield development selection. Local community organizers (in this case, Main and Elm Street managers) collected data on site attributes related to environmental conditions, demographics, development potential, infrastructure conditions, and market realities. Concurrently, decision makers [in this case, the Board of Directors of Keystone Community Oriented Real Estate (CORE) Services (KCS), a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Downtown Center, with a mission to promote real estate development in Main and Elm Street neighborhoods and business districts] weighted the attributes consistent with their priorities and the availability of resources. Then, weights are applied to the attributes collected by the community organizers to estimate a t...

Office buildings in Germany

PurposeAccording to normative‐rational investment decision models, investors who seek office buildings should select markets which show high employment numbers in office related sectors such as Finance, Insurance, Real Estate (FIRE) and Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS). This view is challenged by behavioural studies, which find that the investors' willingness for analysis and the structure of their decision‐making processes in practice notably limit such an influence. Looking at German office markets, the purpose of this paper is to explore to what extent the aforementioned connection between employment structure and market selection holds.Design/methodology/approachQualitative interviews with German investment experts are analysed in a manner that differentiates between investor types. Behavioural economics form a theoretical basis to identify investor type specific attitudes towards investment markets and the resulting market selection processes. The findings are tested by logistic regressions which connect the spatial structure of office investments with employment data.FindingsA sector‐specific employment structure does not have a direct but an indirect influence on the market selection. The existing theoretical contradiction is resolved by this indirect influence. Investor type specific risk profiles and business models determine varying spatial patterns of market selection.Research limitations/implicationsThe study shows that attitudes towards markets, business logics and decision processes differ between insurance companies and open‐ended funds. Researchers should be aware that empirical results may not always be valid for all institutional investors. In some cases a differentiating research design according to investor type may be necessary.Practical implicationsThe study identifies a set of minimum requirements with regard to building and market characteristics open‐ended funds use for filtering in German secondary/regional markets. Market selection by these funds and insurance companies correlates with relative employment in FIRE‐ and KIBS‐branches.Originality/valueThis paper overcomes decision‐theoretical contradictions and gives empirical evidence for the importance of the employment structure on market selection.