Search results

One of the curious features in the literature of property valuation is the lack of concern for general issues of valuation. The most obvious deficiency is the absence of serious discussion on risk‐adjusted discount rates, but another important and neglected issue is the analysis of leases as an investment decision from the lessee's viewpoint.

Institutional investors—insurance companies, pension funds, investment trust companies and unit trusts—have increased significantly and persistently their ownership of British industry. At the end of 1977 they owned approximately 46 per cent of the ordinary shares in UK quoted companies and in recent years have accounted for over 50 per cent of stock market turnover in UK equities. Their presence in the stock market has been associated with their ability to influence share prices, decide the outcome of takeover battles, and trade outside the London Stock Exchange. As major shareholders in public companies they have been encouraged to participate in managerial decision‐making. For corporate management, the growth of institutional shareholdings provides opportunities to utilise their voting power in takeover situations, encourage their support for the market value of the company, and use financial institutions as sources of new capital.

Although the focus of this issue is on investment in British industry and hence we are particularly concerned with debt and shares, the transactions and holdings in these cannot be separated from the range of other financial claims, including property, that are available to investors. In consequence this article focuses on an overview of the financial system including in Section 2 a presentation of the flow of funds matrix of the financial claims that make up the system. We also examine more closely the role of the financial institutions that are part of the system by utilising the sources and uses statements for three sectors, non‐bank financial institutions, personal sector and industrial and commercial companies. Then we provide, in Section 3, a discussion of the various financial claims investors can hold. In Section 4 we give a portrayal of the portfolio disposition of each of the major types of financial institution involved in the market for company securities specifically insurance companies (life and general), pension funds, unit and investment trusts, and in Section 4 a market study is performed for ordinary shares, debentures and preference shares for holdings, net acquisitions and purchases/sales. A review of some of the empirical evidence on the financial institutions is presented in Section 5 and Section 6 is by way of a conclusion. The data series extend in the main from 1966 to 1981, though at the time of writing, some 1981 data are still unavailable. In addition, the point needs to be made that the samples have been constantly revised so that care needs to be exercised in the use of the data.

A previous paper in this journal discussed how to estimate the appropriate rate that should be used to evaluate investment projects. In this paper, the same theme is extended to discuss why projects might attract hurdle rates that are higher than the cost of capital. The answer involves discussion of the topic of real options, which may provide a rigorous explanation of how companies can value flexibility in capital budgeting. This paper discusses the gap between the hurdle rate and the cost of capital and explores possible explanations for the rational use of additional barriers before accepting capital projects.

Presents results of an investigation of the inflation‐hedging characteristics of UK property. Evaluates the various methods of decomposing inflation into its “expected” and “unexpected” components, using new time series data on inflation expectations produced by a questionnaire survey of informed market participants. Utilizes the power and suitability of causality and cointegration analysis to examine the relationship between inflation and property returns. Analyses the sensitivity of the results about the hedging capabilities of property to the removal valuation induced “smoothing” from property returns. Concludes that property is best seen as offering hedging characteristics that are only revealed in the long run.

This paper models the lessee's default options and estimates the economic value of the options for a lessee using a discrete time binomial American option pricing model. Results show a positive relationship of the option premium with the original rent and a negative relationship with the relocation costs. Finds that the default probability is higher for lessees who are more sensitive to rental changes and place less emphasis on the fitting‐out quality. Suggests that rental volatility and rental growth rate are two significant factors that have positive relationships with the default option values. The risk‐free rate, on the other hand, has an inverse relationship with the default option values because a higher risk‐free interest rate reduces the present value of rental savings. Lease term length to expiration has a positive effect on the default option value, implying that the default option premium will decay as the term to expiry is shortened.

The purpose of this research is to examine the way uncertainty plays a role in built land prices. This paper provides basic real option pricing models of land prices on the demand side in central Tokyo. The model in this research analyzes micro land prices covering individual lot data provided by the Land Price Index. Since land prices are determined by both macro economic environment and micro lot‐specific attributes, this paper utilizes both time‐series economic data and cross‐sectional lot‐specific data. The model incorporates both time‐series (macro) and cross‐sectional (micro) data including uncertainty terms. In addition to the total uncertainty in asset prices over years, this research also gives some ideas of cross‐sectional uncertainty in land price variations by utilizing cross‐sectional amenity variables. These cross‐sectional and time‐series variables including the two uncertainty variables are arithmetically combined and the OLS method is conducted. The data set consists of 4,368 land price data from 1985 through 2000. The results from the option‐based models favor the application of the real option theory in land prices. The total uncertainty with respect to built asset return has a substantial effect on increasing land prices, which implies that an increase in uncertainty leads to an increase in land prices.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the levels and determinants of net asset value (NAV) premiums/discounts for publicly traded Australian Real Estate Investment Trust (A-REIT) market during the last decade. A-REITs were severely affected by the global financial crisis as S&P/ASX 200 A-REIT index-listed property stocks experienced 47 per cent discount to NAV, on average, in 2008–2009 crisis. Since 2013, A-REIT sector has exhibited a strong recovery from the financial crisis and traded at high premiums to date. Understanding the relationship between pricing in the public and private real estate markets has taken on great importance as A-REITs continue to trade at significant premium to NAV unlike their counterparts in the USA and Europe.

This paper follows a rational approach to explain variations in NAV premiums and explores the company-specific factors such as liquidity, financial leverage, size, stock price volatility and portfolio diversification behind the A-REIT NAV premiums/discounts. The study specifies and estimates a model of cross-sectional and time variation in premiums/discounts to NAV using semi-annual data for a sample of 40 A-REITs over the 2008–2018 period.

The results reveal that A-REIT premiums to NAV can be explained not only by the liquidity benefit of listed property stocks but also positive financial leverage effect. During the past decade, A-REITs have followed an aggressive approach in financing their growth by using borrowed funds to purchase assets as the income from the property offsets the cost of borrowing and the risk that accompanies it. Debt-to-equity ratio has to be considered as an important source of NAV premiums as highly geared A-REITs that favoured debt financing over equity financing traded at significant premiums to NAV of their underlying real estate assets.

The paper includes implications for the REIT market investors. The regression analysis shows that specialty A-REITs with a focus on creative market niches traded at higher premiums compared with other property stocks, especially in the post-GFC recovery period. Specialty REITs are more highly valued by the market than their traditional specialised counterparts (e.g. office and retail REITs), and those pursuing a diversified strategy.

This paper presents an Australian case study as the A-REIT market provides a suitable environment for testing the effect of financial gearing on the REIT premium to NAV. The study provides empirical evidence supporting the importance of debt-to-equity ratio in explaining the variation in A-REIT NAV premiums.

Option to review land rents to prevailing market rents and option to renew leases for another term are two important options embedded in the public industrial land leases in Singapore, managed by the Jurong Town Corporation (JTC). The land rents of JTC leases are reviewed every year subject to a cap on the land rent increase. The rent cap, which is historically lower than the prevailing market growth rate, widens the gap between the contract rent and the prevailing market rent as the lease progresses. This creates disincentives to the lessor for not exercising the rent review option, because the option is in‐the‐money. The rent gap, on the other hand, is also translated into substantial profit rents for lessees who hold onto the leasehold interests of industrial lands. By assuming two different probability distributions for the ex‐ante prevailing market rents, the profit rents were simulated to derive at the values of a hypothetical 30‐year lease, which range from US$47.93 (S$86.45) per square meter (psm) (Sungei Kadut, Kranji) to US$236.05 (S$425.74) psm (West Coast Highway). Based on these simulated 30‐year leasehold values and assumptions of other input parameters: equated yield (e = 10 percent), risk free rate (R_f = 4.52), volatility of leasehold value (σ = 15 percent), term of lease (T = 30 years) and rental growth cap (g = 7.6 percent), the premiums for the lease renewal options were estimated to be in a range of US$4.55 (S$8.21) psm to US$22.26 (S$40.15) psm.

It is conventional to assume that property investments in the UK are priced on the basis that investors require a total return approximately 2 per cent above the current redemption yield on long dated gilts. Some yield premium seems intuitively appropriate due to certain apparent disadvantages of property relative to gilts, eg higher risk, poorer liquidity and greater transfer and management costs. However, the purpose of this paper is to illustrate that such apparent demerits are largely illusory, and to promote the view that investors in growth freeholds need require no yield premium, and indeed may justifiably accept a discount on yields available from long dated gilts valued around par.