Rental Property Research Articles

Airbnb Property Management: Performance Evaluation of a Rental Property*

ABSTRACTThis teaching case requires students to generate performance evaluation reports for a short‐term rental property. The case demonstrates the need to analyze variances and think critically about the potential causes of these variances and assess management performance. Students are also required to make forward‐looking recommendations based on the local business environment for short‐term rental properties.

What Matters to University Students when Looking for a Rental House?

The rapid growth of higher education institutions in Malaysia is parallel with the growing demand of its population pursuing tertiary education. For such reason, universities and other tertiary education providers are constantly challenged in providing sufficient in-campus accommodation to help students living comfortably. Regardless of their continuous effort in improving their facilities, the issue of shortage of students’ accommodation persists; thus, boosting the demand for rental properties surrounding campus location. This opens the opportunity for homeowners who own rental units within proximity to a campus location to target students as their potential tenants. Therefore, it is worth the effort for homeowners to understand students’ preferences when searching for a rental unit. In line with the stipulated issue, this study aims to investigate university students’ perceived perception of five relevant criteria when searching for a rental house. This study employed a quantitative research design with a total of 150 respondents were successfully gathered via an online questionnaire. These respondents are off-campus students studying at Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Melaka campus. The result of the descriptive analysis revealed that many of the respondentsplaced rental agreement as to the utmost important criterion when deciding to rent a property. It was followed by the location of the property, the surrounding security, rental price, and finally utilities and amenities. From this study, it was suggested that the homeowner should emphasize all the mentioned criteria as it was relatively perceived as significant by potential tenants. It is recommended for future researchers to expand this study at other geographic locations in addition to examine other criteria focused on by tenants when searching for a rental house.

Learning with self-attention for rental market spatial dynamics in the Atlanta metropolitan area

The rental housing market plays a critical role in the United States real estate market. Prior studies have used various approaches to model housing rent, such as interpolation, hedonic modeling, and machine learning. However, only a few studies have modeled rental prices based on textual data, which provides rich and contextual information about rental properties. In addition, many models, especially deep learning models, use an end-to-end black box for prediction, which hides the decision process. Such models are difficult to interpret and explain the driving factors. This study builds on our previous work, aiming to develop and evaluate rental market spatial dynamics models combining Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks and self-attention mechanism. We compare the performance of the proposed model with our previous models on predicting rental prices in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. We also use techniques from saliency maps to explain the generated model. Results show that the self-attention-based model outperforms our previous models. The saliency map techniques reveal how the model attends to a different part of the textual information. The predicted results reflect the spatial variation of textual information. Such a model offers practical pricing references for homeowners and renters, and spatial patterns for urban planners and stakeholders.

An Adaptive Personalized Property Investment Risk Analysis Method Based on Data-Driven Approach

Risk assessment analysis for investment decisions largely depends on expert judgment using traditional approaches and is lacking in considering investors’ different preferences and limitations. This paper proposes an adaptive personalized property investment risk analysis (APPIRA) method to identify the property investment determinants using a data-driven and personalized approach to weight the risk factors using the multicriteria decision model for optimal solutions. Result for predictive modeling using value prediction technique that measures the median house price depicts that the best method used was nonseasonal ARIMA. Furthermore, classification technique indicates that in each of the three selected suburbs, different property characteristics determined the rental properties desirable. As shown in result, for the investors who plan to invest in property for rental purposes, they need to choose townhouse type or property to make it rentable while for Vaucluse, terrace houses. These results can be applied into practice and will benefit the property industry directly.

Guests with Guns: Public Support for 'No Carry' Defaults on Private Land

A nationally representative survey of 2000 American adults shows broad support for prohibiting gun-possession on private land without the landowner’s explicit permission. Many states have laws which permit concealed weapon unless explicitly prohibited by the landowner, but our survey suggests statistically significant majorities would prefer no carry” defaults with regard to homeowners, employers, and retailers. While respondents who are Republican, male or gun owners are more likely to support carry defaults, we find that the majoritarian rejection of “carry” defaults does not tend to vary by region or state. However, our survey does find majority support for a default right to possess guns in rented property and on an employer’s parking lot. Respondents across all contexts also report substantial ignorance or misinformation about the law. Landowners who don’t know or mistakenly believe that concealed is, by default, prohibited on their land may be less able to protect themselves by explicitly prohibiting such third-party possession.

An Efficient Privacy-Preserving Credit Score System Based on Noninteractive Zero-Knowledge Proof

Credit system is generally associated with the banking and financial institutions, although it has far reaching implications for residents of countries, such as U.S., particularly for those with a poor credit history. Specifically, a credit score computation (CSC) quantifies an individual’s credit value or credit risk, which is used by banking and financial institutions, as well as other entities (e.g., during purchasing of insurance policies and application of rental properties), to facilitate their decision-making (e.g., whether to approve the insurance policy purchase or the level of premium). Although a number of CSC models have been proposed in the literature for supporting different application scenarios, privacy protection of CSC is rarely considered despite the potential for leakage of user private information (e.g., registration, hobbies, credit, relationships, and inquiry). Such information can then be abused for other nefarious activities, such as identity theft and credit card fraud. Thus, in this article, we first analyze the privacy strength of existing CSC models, prior to presenting the formal definition of a privacy-preserving CSC system alongside its security requirements. Then, we propose a concrete construction based on Paillier encryption with three proposed noninteractive zero-knowledge schemes. To demonstrate feasibility of our proposal, we evaluate both its security and performance.

Shame and Eviction in Juan Miguel del Castillo’s Techo y comida (2015)

In 2014, Spain’s then prime minister Mariano Rajoy declared: ‘La crisis ya es historia’. This proclamation of recovery was based solely on macro-economic indicators and reinforced a flawed hegemonic narrative equating progress with economic growth. It ignored what Labrador Méndez calls ‘historias de vida subprime’: subjective and affective accounts of the enduring eviction crisis triggered by the 2008 financial meltdown and strict austerity measures. Juan Miguel del Castillo’s film Techo y comida is one such ‘subprime’ life story. It follows Rocío, a young, unemployed, single mother facing eviction from her rental property in the absence of state or community support. Exposing the flipside to the Rajoy’s statistics, the film reveals the increasingly brutal ‘expulsions’ (Sassen) that facilitate GDP recuperation. It politicizes through affect, showing that shame functions as a mechanism for social exclusion and normalisation but also as a catalyst for altruism. Within the diegesis, Del Castillo uncovers the potent, subjective shame that conceals expulsions and allows them to proliferate. This concurrently engenders shame in the spectator, encouraging them to consider their part in sustaining these degrading processes at micro-level and pointing them towards ‘non-capitalist practices’ (Castells et al).

The Impact of the Coronavirus Pandemic on New York City Real Estate: First Evidence

Concerns about the lingering novel Coronavirus may have led to long-term structural change in desired dwelling locations in some large U.S. cities, such as New York City. Densely concentrated neighborhoods may be at higher risk of virus contagion, giving more individuals incentives to move out. We investigate whether this pandemic-induced disamenity adversely affected real estate prices of one- or two-family owner-occupied properties across New York City. First, OLS hedonic results indicate that greater COVID case numbers are concentrated in neighborhoods with lower-valued properties. Second, we use a repeat-sales approach for the period 2003 to 2020, and we find that both the fear of contagion and pandemic-induced income effects adversely impacted home sale prices. Estimates suggest sale prices fell by roughly $60,000 or around 8% in response to both of the following: 1,000 additional infections per 100,000 residents; and a 10-percentage point increase in unemployment in a given MODZCTA. These price effects were more pronounced during the second wave of infections. Based on cumulative MODZCTA infection rates through 2020, the estimated COVID-19 price discount ranged from approximately 1% to 50% in the most affected neighborhoods, and averaged 14%. Interestingly, the fear of contagion effect intensified in the more affluent, but less densely populated NYC neighborhoods, while the income effect was more pronounced in the most densely populated neighborhoods with more rental properties and greater population shares of foreign-born residents. This disparity implies the pandemic led to inequality between homeowners in lower-priced and higher-priced neighborhoods.

The Impact of COVID-19 Curfew on Food Security Status, Eating Habits, and Health among Adults Living in Saudi Arabia

Objective: The COVID-19 pandemic and its related containment actions have impacted food security. This study aimed to assess food security status of adults in Saudi Arabia during the COVID-19 curfew, and describe their coping strategies, eating habits, and health conditions. Design: A cross-sectional study was conducted using an online survey, which included questions on sociodemographic characteristics, food security status, coping strategies, eating habits and self-rated health. Results: A total of 605 adults living in Saudi Arabia were recruited through an online survey. The overall prevalence of food insecurity was 28.4% (n= 172). Food insecurity was significantly higher among males with lower education and income level, and in participants living in rented properties. Numerous coping strategies were found to be significantly different between four types of food security groups. The total score of coping strategies was negatively associated with food security status (0.94 +/- 1.59, 2.78 +/- 2.44, 6.43 +/- 2.76, 7.34 +/- 2.20, respectively, p < 0.001). Food-insecure participants were significantly more likely to report poor/fair physical and mental health, compared to food-secure participants (p< 0.001). Food insecurity was significantly associated with changes in usual eating habits during the COVID-19 curfew (p < 0.001). Conclusion: The results showed that food insecurity can have a potential impact on adults' health and eating habits. Governments need to take crucial actions and adopt comprehensive policies, both locally and globally, to ensure food security among populations.

Empirical evidence on the ownership and liquidity of real estate tokens

Empirical studies on the tokenization of real asset markets are necessary to better understand the potential and limitations of this radically new organization of financial markets. We examine the financial economic consequences of the tokenization of residential rental properties in the United States. Consistent with the goal of tokenization, we find fragmentation as the median residential property has 254 owners. In contrast with the literature on stock markets, investors in real estate tokens diversify their real estate ownership across properties within and across cities. Property ownership changes on average about once per year, and significantly more for properties available on decentralized exchanges. We document that the prices of real estate tokens move in line with the house price index, suggesting that investing in real estate tokens gives economic exposure to residential house prices.

SHORT-TERM RENTALS: HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH – SPATIAL PATTERNS IN PORTUGAL AND LISBON

Purpose - This paper analyses the growth of tourism in Portugal and in the municipality of Lisbon, with a focus on short-term rentals. Design - The paper begins with the statistical background of the tourism boom that occurred in Portugal in the 2010s. The central part of the paper concentrates on an analysis of the spatial distribution of short-term rental properties, consisting of two parts: i) observation of spatial patterns in Portugal, by NUTS II region; ii) analysis of the municipality of Lisbon, which accounts for 22% of all short-term rentals units registered in Portugal. Methodology - The spatial analysis was carried out within GIS, using an approach based on spatial statistics, with research that involves geographic data and big data. Approach - This study combines a qualitative and quantitative approach. It begins with a theoretical review on the growth of tourism and short-term rental in the last decade, followed by a quantitative-spatial analysis to the case of Portugal and the municipality of Lisbon, and ending with reflections that combine the results of the practical analysis with the most recent literature on the impacts of tourism in Lisbon Findings - The paper ends with some reflections on the excessive concentration of short-term rentals in urban areas and their positive and negative externalities on urban life. The results suggest that the city center presents the highest concentration of short-time rentals, but not the highest concentration of beds. It also shows that the excessive concentration of short-term rentals units may cause serious negative externalities that affect the quality of life in its multiple dimensions. Originality - The results and the final discussion of this paper contributes to a greater knowledge of the spatial distribution of short-term rentals in Portugal and Lisbon and to debate the future of short-term rentals in cities that are among the world’s leading tourism destinations.

Making a home in the private rental sector

With increasing proportions of households living in lightly regulated rental markets, long-term, there is an urgent need to examine the interconnections between tenancy regulation and private renters’ agency when making a home. Accordingly, this article asks: How do private renters, through their homemaking practices, exercise agency to overcome tenancy regulations that challenge the ways they make home? And how does tenancy regulation impact private renters’ agency? An analysis of interviews with 24 private renters living in Sydney, Australia, is used to answer these questions. For participants, meanings of home were informed by the belief that they were not homeowners and therefore, could not achieve a sense of ‘home’. Despite this, through their possessions, household relationships and their relationship with their landlord and/or property manager, participants created a sense of home within their rental property. This article argues that while the regulatory environment and structures of private rental tenure pose significant challenges and therefore change the meaning and importance of homemaking practices for private renters, renters strategically employ their (albeit limited) agency to challenge and resist these structural limitations to make a home.

Real Estate Appraisal in the Aftermath of the Coronavirus Pandemic

In February 2020 the coronavirus (COVID-19) begun to roll over the globe. Suddenly, some true resilience leadership – or at least, decisiveness – was needed from individual citizens and businesses. The crisis conditions also forced some sectors and industries to be innovative, in search for solutions. This contribution speculates about the future of real estate appraisal, and the extent it is being affected by the crisis. The implications of the ongoing and future virus crises for real estate appraisal are examined using the concept of risk, and, in doing so, a potential methodological innovation based on subjective risk analysis of real estate investments is argued for. The consequences are likely to fit in the space between the extreme scenarios: that nothing will change, and that all with change. So, we do not believe that the distribution of rental incomes and property values will be the same as before, but we also do not buy the claim of some kind of end of real estate. Instead, what seems plausible is to approach the issue by establishing the risk; that is to say, how the real estate industry is reacting to an inevitable resetting of the businesses of the tenants, based on how adaptable the industry and sector is. The findings of the conceptual analysis highlight the potentially changing context of real estate appraisal in terms of localization of economic and social activity; preferences for distance practices and private sector activities; and implications for investment risk.

Social and Demographic Characteristics and the Contribution of Fireplay to Fire-Related Mortality Among Children in the U.S., 2004–2016

This study seeks to describe the circumstances of fire deaths among children, identify deaths related to fireplay, and compare children whose deaths were related to fireplay with non-fireplay-related deaths. Children aged 1-14 years who died in a fire during 2004-2016 were identified from the National Fatality Review Case Reporting System. Social, demographic, and fire characteristics were described and then compared for children who died in fires caused by fireplay versus non-fireplay-related deaths. Unadjusted ORs and 95% CIs were calculated. Data were collected 2004-2018 and analyzed in 2019. A total of 1,479 children who died in fires were identified. They were predominantly male (54%) and White (47%); 34% were Black. Two or more children died in 54% of incidents. Fires occurred most frequently in single-family homes (52%) and rental properties (37%); 23% were started by smoking materials or candles. Smoke alarm information was largely missing (42%) and noted to be present and working for only 82 deaths. Fireplay was responsible for 175 (12%) of the deaths. Compared with non-fireplay-related deaths, children who died in fireplay fires were more likely to be aged 1-4 years (OR=2.6, 95% CI=1.5, 4.3), male (OR=1.6, 95% CI=1.2, 2.2), have supervision documented as no, but needed (OR=8.8, 95% CI=4.1, 18.8), and have an open Child Protective Services case (OR=1.8, 95% CI=1.1, 3.0). This study provides data on supervision and the role of fireplay in fatal fires among young children, offering information for the development of innovative primary prevention strategies and future research.

Energy efficiency, information, and the acceptability of rent increases: A survey experiment with tenants

Abstract This paper studies the role of imperfect information and attentional biases in the context of energy efficiency investments in rented properties and associated split incentives. We design a multiple price list experiment representing owners' decision to replace the central heating appliance, and employ both within-subject information disclosure and between-subject variation in information provision to quantify how tenants trade off energy efficiency and rent increases. Results show that informing tenants of a CHF 1 decrease in energy bills leads to CHF 1.12 in acceptable rent increase on average. Quantile regressions further indicate that the average treatment effect of information reflects heterogeneous changes along the entire distribution of acceptable rent increases. By contrast, information on energy bills variability dampens acceptable rent increase, and information about CO2 tax payments has no incremental impact on choices. Our results highlight the importance of credible ex-ante estimates of financial savings associated with energy efficiency investments.

International Real Estate Review

This paper develops a theoretical model for equilibrium rent-to-price ratios from the competition between households and investors in the housing market. Households make their housing tenure choice in terms of rent vs. buy such as minimizing the cost of occupying a housing unit. On the other hand, investors choose between investing in rental housing vs. other investment opportunities in order to maximize their net present value. In the face of limited housing inventory, households and investors bid against one another which determines the allocation of the housing units among households (owner occupied properties) and investors (rental properties). We derive the sensitivity of the equilibrium rent-to-price ratio with respect to various market parameters, and subsequently analyze their potential impacts on the homeownership rate in the community. We show that some government mortgage programs subsidize homeownership to increase the affordability of owning a house, but may also provide even more incentive to the housing investors. Unless the government can effectively control the eligibility of borrowers, such affordable mortgage programs could work against their objectives and lead to higher housing prices and lower homeownership rates. Our model framework can be used to analyze the potential impacts of some of the new affordable housing policies on house prices or homeownership rates before adopting them.

Longitudinal study of the housing and mental health outcomes of tenants appearing in eviction court.

Millions of people are evicted from rental properties in the U.S. annually, but little is known about them and their mental health. This study followed a cohort of eviction court participants over time and assessed their housing and mental health outcomes. One hundred and twenty-one tenants were recruited from an eviction court in New Haven, Connecticut, and their housing, mental health, and psychosocial status were assessed at baseline, 1, 3, 6, and 9months following their encounter with the court. Inverse probability weighting was used for missing data. At baseline, 42% of participants had appeared in eviction court before, 28% had experienced eviction, and 44% had been previously homeless. In addition, 39% screened positive for generalized anxiety disorder, 37% for posttraumatic stress disorder, 33% for major depressive disorder, and 17% reported suicidal ideation. At follow-up, participants experienced increased days of housing instability and homelessness over time with some persistent mental health symptoms. Less than one-quarter of participants received any mental health treatment during the 9-month follow-up period. About 54% of participants followed reported that they had to change their residence after their court appearance consistent with court records. Participants who had an eviction-related move experienced greater housing instability over time than participants who did not. Together, these findings suggest that there is a sizable subgroup of adults who present to eviction court with persistent housing and mental health issues who do not receive adequate assistance in addressing these issues.

Affordable Housing Without Public Subsidies

Problem, research strategy, and findings Rental housing affordability is a severe problem for low- and moderate-income families across the United States. While some renters benefit from subsidies or rent regulation, most low-income renters live in unsubsidized, unregulated units, particularly in low-cost 1- to 4-unit properties. Some of these small rental properties are low cost because they are low quality or are in low-demand neighborhoods, but there has long been speculation that many of these units are low cost because their owners set rents below market. However, the extent to which owners set rent below market, which owners do so, and why, is unknown. I conducted a nationwide survey with follow-up interviews of the owners of small rental properties to understand below-market rent setting. I find that nearly half of small rental owners choose to set rents below market. These discounts are substantial, averaging 16% below market. Owners’ rent-setting strategies are diverse, and there do not appear to be sharp distinctions between owners who set rent below market and those who do not. However, there is evidence that some owners’ lack of knowledge of market conditions contributes to discounts, as does owners’ impressions of their tenants’ incomes. Takeaway for practice Most municipalities likely have large stocks of good-quality below-market rental housing in small rental properties. Supporting below-market small rentals could be a means for municipalities to realize their housing affordability goals. However, the right policies to support this part of the stock are unclear and likely vary by jurisdiction. Planners could examine the owners and tenants of small rentals in their area to understand their needs and respond accordingly. Supporting this stock will raise new equity questions, particularly regarding who gets to rent these units and practical issues about how the public sector can productively engage with nonprofessional landlords.

Housing Stability, Evictions, and Subsidized Rental Properties: Evidence From Metro Atlanta, Georgia

ABSTRACT Evictions cause substantial harm to lower income families. Housing subsidy might be expected to reduce eviction rates and provide greater stability. However, little research has examined the eviction rates of subsidized, affordable rental properties. We examine eviction filings for multifamily rental buildings in five-county metropolitan Atlanta, using a data set of eviction filings, property characteristics, and ownership information. We find that senior, subsidized multifamily properties have substantially lower eviction rates than market-rate properties do. A senior, subsidized multifamily rental building is expected to have an annual eviction rate that is 10.7 percentage points below that of a nonsenior, market-rate property; this result is significant (p < .01) and compares with a mean eviction filing rate of 16.3% (16.3 evictions per 100 rental units). On the other hand, a nonsenior subsidized building is expected to have an eviction rate that is 1.4 percentage points lower than a nonsenior market-rate building; this result is not statistically significant. We do not have data on the economic characteristics of tenants, and that may account for some of the relatively high eviction rates of the nonsenior-affordable properties. We discuss the implications of these findings for research and housing policy and practice.

The rental property market for commerce and services in historic centers in Brazil: the implications of innovative conservation and annilihating destruction on the prices of heritage assets

In view of the importance of the rental real estate property sector intended for tertiary activities in historic centers in Brazil, the intention of this article to draw an interpretative schema of the manner in which this market functions, based on the historic center of Recife, in the state of Pernambuco. This has been undertaken through an investigation into the conduct of its agents, who, at times, acted as though driven to preserve the historical values of heritage assets (innovative conservation), while at others, to destroy them and, thus, annihilate the values contained within them (annihilating destruction). For this, a need was perceived to analyze the relevance of land rent; the characteristics of the goods traded regarding heterogeneity and the prospects for increasing supply; the profile and level of information held by the agents, and their conduct in relation to these real assets and the rent prices offered on the market.