Search results

The real estate market has evolved significantly over the past 10 years and has experienced rapid growth throughout the world in its various forms. Many emerging countries witnessed the significant growth in their commercial real estate markets that became a stable sector of their economies. These countries, after developing a reliable commercial real estate base within their economies subsequently developed real estate financial markets. The growth of the real estate investment trusts, REITs, markets in many countries within the past decade helped attract global capital that facilitated additional investments in local real estate developments. Significantly, this period of time may have witnessed a higher degree of integration of real estate with the broader financial markets due in large part to the securitization of mortgages. Yet the general real estate market was also impacted in many parts of the world with rising prices and subsequent price collapses. This section focuses on the various areas of the global real estate market and the changes that it has encountered as examined by researchers of real estate. This chapter also examines the recent trends in global real estate markets and explores how these changes have affected the broader investment community.

Real estate investment has been generally accepted as a value-adding proposition for a portfolio investor. Such an impression is not only shared by investment professionals and financial advisors but also appears to be supported by an overwhelming amount of research in the academic literature. The benefits of adding real estate as an asset class to a well-diversified portfolio are usually attributed to the respectable risk-return profile of real estate investment together with the relatively low correlation between its returns and the returns of other financial assets. By using the regime-switching technique on an extensive historical dataset, we attempt to look for the statistical evidence for such a claim. Unfortunately, the empirical support for the claim is neither strong nor universal. We find that any statistically significant improvement in risk-adjusted return is very much limited to the bullish environment of the real estate market. In general, the diversification benefit is not found to be statistically significant unless investors are relatively risk averse. We also document a regime-switching behavior of real estate returns similar to those found in other financial assets. There are two distinct states of the real estate market. The low-return (high-return) state is characterized by its high (low) volatility and its high (low) correlations with the stock market returns. We find this kind of dynamic risk characteristics to play a crucial role in dictating the diversification benefit from real estate investment.

This chapter aims to examine the linkages between urbanisation, real estate investments and sustainability in Turkey. To do so, theoretical and conceptual frameworks were discussed based on literature review. Through mixed-methods research, primary data were collected via questionnaires from relevant 248 company executives while secondary data were collected from relevant institutions. Data on two case study green buildings were also collected through documents from building owners and project and construction managers. The results show that many urban development, transformation and real estate projects are executed without considering sustainability principles. Thus, nationally, mixed-use real estate and green building projects are limited even though a majority of the companies surveyed (85%) designed and executed projects based on a green structure approach. Generally, the costs of green buildings are higher compared to traditional buildings. There is the need for strategic spatial plans based on reliable cadastre systems, targeting national and regional development in using existing resources efficiently and paying attention to the importance of environmental quality. For the efficiency of real estate markets, advanced real estate market and financing systems and the integration of sustainability principles into decision-making process in planning, design, construction and operation phases of projects should be considered.

Speculative bubbles have been occurring periodically in local or global real-estate markets and are considered a potential cause of economic crises. In this context, the detection of explosive behaviors in the financial market and the implementation of early warning diagnosis tests are of critical importance. The recent increase in Brazilian housing prices has risen concerns that the Brazilian economy may have a speculative housing bubble. In the present chapter, we employ a recently proposed recursive unit root test in order to identify possible speculative bubbles in data from the Brazilian residential real-estate market. The empirical results show evidence for speculative price bubbles both in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, the two main Brazilian cities.

The chapters by Joo, Gerardo del Cerro Santamaría, and Bunnell have shown that UMPs go beyond the local scale regarding development, implementation, and consequences. In fact, as they argue the projects in South Korea, Bilbao, and Kuala Lumpur obey a logic of reterritorialization à la Brenner, whereby the regional or national state actively participates in urban development by designing urban policies and projects which, in turn, exhibit political, economic, and visual dimensions going beyond the frontiers of the urban realm. This tendency has implications for the role of local politics in UMPs. Local political conditions (e.g., a housing shortage or a desire for global visibility) play a prominent role in the implementation of UMPs, as shown by the Bundang and Ilsan new towns in South Korea as well as Bunnell´s recounting of the reimagining of Kuala Lumpur. In Korea, strong central government control over the real estate market led to addressing the housing shortage and preventing real estate speculation; the chronic housing shortage, with the increased economic power of individuals, resulted in distinctive advance-sale and dual-pricing systems for new apartment units. The huge unmet housing demand in Korea during relative economic prosperity quickly filled Bundang and Ilsan’s housing units with new residents, contributing to the new towns’ successful outcomes.

Our objective is to test the consistency between share capital financialization, implementation of responsible restructuring and sustainable development policy, focusing more particularly on the implementation of corporate social commitments. In order to develop a model that puts these three processes (restructuring, financialization and social policy) in perspective, we proceed in two steps: we examine the consequences of financialization on both the restructurings and on HRM practices and then the consequences of restructurings due to financialization on employment, the evolution of labour management and the functioning of HRM as seen in management literature. The methodology used to test this model on the Accor Group case is presented.