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This study aims to identify the pandemic’s impact on house rents by applying a rental gradient analysis to compare the pre-and post-COVID-19 periods in Auckland. The micro-level household census data from the Integrated Data Infrastructure of Statistics New Zealand is also applied to scrutinise this WFH trend as a robustness check.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, work-from-home (WFH) and e-commerce have become much more common in many cities. Many news reports have contended that households are leaving city centres and moving into bigger and better houses in the suburbs or rural areas. This emerging trend has been redefining the traditional theory of residential location choices. Proximity to central business district (CBD) is no longer the most critical consideration in choosing one’s residence. WFH and e-commerce flatten the traditional bid rent curve from the city centre.

The authors examined micro-level housing rental listings in 242 suburbs of the Auckland Region from January 2013 to December 2021 (108 months) and found that the hedonic price gradient models suggest that there has been a trend of rental gradient flattening and that its extent was almost doubled in 2021. Rents are also found to be increasing more in lower-density suburbs.

The results imply that the pandemic has accelerated the trend of WFH and e-commerce. The authors further discuss whether the trend will be a transient phenomenon or a long-term shift.

Suppose an organisation is concerned about productivity and performance issues due to a companywide ability to WFH. In that case, some standard key performance indicators for management and employees could be implemented. Forward-thinking cities need to focus on attracting skilful workers by making WFH a possible solution, not by insisting on the primacy of antiquated nine-to-five office cultures.

WFH has traditionally encountered resistance, but more and more companies are adopting WFH policies in this post-COVID era. The early rental gradient and the micro-level household data analysis all confirm that the WFH trend is emerging and will likely be a long-term shift. Instead of resisting the change, organisations should improve their remote work policies and capabilities for this WFH trend.

So far, empirical studies of post-COVID urban restructuring have been limited. This study aims to empirically test such an urban metamorphosis by identifying the spatial and temporal impacts of COVID on house rental gradients in the Auckland Region, New Zealand. The authors apply rental gradient analysis to test this urban restructuring hypothesis because the method considers the spatial-temporal differences, i.e. a difference-in-differences between pre-and post-pandemic period against the distance measured from the city centre. The method can control for the spatial difference and the endogeneity involved.

Achieving a balanced tenant mix is a long-standing discourse in the retailing and consumer marketing literature. From the perspective of marketing mix planning, the diversity of tenants is beneficial to the performance of shopping malls. This paper aims to use a revealed preference approach to study empirically the effect of retail tenant mix planning on the rents of shopping malls.

This study adopts a cross-disciplinary approach to develop the Island-Species-Area-Energy model to study the shopping mall marketing and management framework. The empirical data are obtained from the 129 major shopping malls in the UK.

The results confirm that the retail tenant mix is positively associated with mall size and shopping district purchasing power, implying a tenant mix equilibrium. Any deviations from the tenant mix equilibrium will impose a negative impact on total retail rents. Further, five factors, i.e. tenant mix equilibrium, building quality, locational convenience, leasing strategy and anchorage, are found to be contributing factors to retail rents.

The findings contribute to the current body of marketing knowledge from two perspectives: first, tenant mix effects on retail rents are empirically analysed based on the biogeography theory, which shows a tenant mix equilibrium for retail marketing planning. Second, a five-factor model on shopping mall marketing and management mix framework is developed and tested for the performance of shopping malls.

The repeat sales house price index (HPI) has been widely used to measure house price movements on the assumption that the quality of properties does not change over time. This study aims to develop a novel improvement-value adjusted repeat sales (IVARS) HPI to remedy the bias owing to the constant-quality assumption.

This study compares the performance of the IVARS model with the traditional hedonic price model and the repeat sales model by using half a million repeated sales pairs of housing transactions in the Auckland Region of New Zealand, and by a simulation approach.

The results demonstrate that using the information on improvement values from mass appraisal can significantly mitigate the time-varying attribute bias. Simulation analysis further reveals that if the improvement work done is not considered, the repeat sales HPI may be overestimated by 2.7% per annum. The more quality enhancement a property has, the more likely it is that the property will be resold.

This novel index may have the potential to enable the inclusion of home condition reporting in property value assessments prior to listing open market sales.

The novel IVARS index can help gauge house price movements with housing quality changes.

This study hypothesises that sale and leaseback (SLB) cap rate is lower than the market cap rate in emerging economies, and the difference is due to institutional cost and vacancy risk. This study aims to provide a novel SLB-Cap-Rate Model to assess the performance of SLB transaction (SLBT).

SLBT data are generally not publicly available in developing countries. This study collected data from 31 SLBTs by conducting semi-structured interviews with stakeholders in Vietnam in 2019. The market cap rates were collected from consultants' reports. The hypotheses are tested by three regression models.

The results show that the SLBT cap rate is significantly less than the market cap rate in Vietnam, and most of the cap rate discount can be explained by institutional and risk factors. This suggests that SLBT helps to reduce search costs for tenants and vacancy risks. It explains why SLBTs are becoming more common in emerging countries.

The study has a strong practical implication for assessing the performance of SLBT for both buyers and sellers. It introduces a novel model for analysing the cap rates and potential risks of SLBT to facilitate property investment decisions.

This paper is one of the studies that contains new knowledge on SLBs in a developing country specifically Vietnam.

The classical land market model assumes a one‐workplace scenario. However, with the globalization trend, travel between two workplaces is becoming more and more common. This paper therefore aims to study the housing price gradient changes between Macau and Hong Kong to test the two workplaces hypotheses.

The temporal‐spatial difference of housing prices between the two neighboring cities are studied by using a two‐workplace residential location choice model.

This paper found that housing price gradient from Macau to Hong Kong is flattened when more non‐resident workers traveled from Hong Kong to Macau (ceteris paribus).

The results have important implications for polycentric city models and provide a novel method to study neighboring city effects on housing price.

The purpose of this paper to identify the asymmetric effect of real interest rate on housing return.

It tests empirically the impacts of positive and negative real interest rate on housing return in Hong Kong by time series regression analyses on series from 1984Q1 to 2009Q2, keeping other macroeconomic factors constant.

It shows that negative real interest rate imposes a much stronger, negative and significant effect on housing return than a positive one.

The results imply that the two housing bubbles in Hong Kong could be largely explained by the negative real interest rate. Although it is theoretically sound, empirical evidence on this asymmetric effect of real interest rate on housing return has seldom been found, because negative real interest rate is very rare in other countries in the past.

It provides a good signal for housing bubbles in the future and helps understand the underlying causes of housing bubbles.

The currency board arrangement in Hong Kong enables the first empirical study on this issue.

To identify a distinctive knowledge‐base of facilities management (FM) based on a conceptual framework of the market‐and‐firm dichotomy.

By reviewing literatures in classical management and project management, the evolution of the management theories and FM discipline highlights the identity of FM.

Recognize the lack a distinctive knowledge‐base in FM discipline. This paper puts forward a conceptual link among FM, strategic management and project management from a market‐firm perspective. Four strategic roles of FM are identified for future research, namely the sourcing of services, the sourcing of workspace, the sourcing of funds from infrastructure facilities; and the sourcing of performance.

This conceptual framework paves the road to establish a distinctive knowledge‐base of FM.

To revamp the concepts of FM and to make the discipline sustainable.

To establish an identity of FM and to channel resources to some research domains.

The purpose of this paper is to study empirically the effect of a pedestrianisation scheme on retail rent, in a case study in Hong Kong.

Most of the previous studies on the impacts of pedestrianised areas on the environment were qualitative ones, and without controls. This study, in contrast, uses panel market data in Hong Kong to estimate the effect in a two‐street‐two‐period controlled model.

The results show a net 17 per cent increase in rental value of retail shops in the pedestrianised area is achieved, ceteris paribus.

Sample size and number of case study are not large enough to make robust conclusions; some other uncontrollable variables may well be attributed to the increase in rents.

Retail rent is found empirically to be dependent of the external environment.

Shoppers' preference for pedestrianisation schemes can be indirectly quantified by the change of retail rent.

This paper presents the first two‐street‐two‐period panel empirical test on the effect of pedestrianisation scheme on retail rent.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a novel tenant mix model for shopping malls based on an analogy from ecological theories.

This study empirically investigates the tenant species‐area relationship and tenant species‐abundance distribution in shopping malls. In this study, the tests on species‐area relationship and species‐abundance distribution in shopping malls are derived from ecological theories. Empirical tests by a sample of 18 shopping malls for the species‐area relationship and of five malls for the species‐abundance distribution are carried out in Hong Kong

It shows that, in line with the findings of biogeography, the tenant species‐area relationship follows a power law of exponent of about 0.20. Furthermore, the species‐abundance distributions of the five large‐scale malls are found to be closely in track with a geometric distribution as commonly found in ecology. These results imply that tenant mix strategies are governed by two principles: the number of tenant species is related to the mall size; and the shop area allocation follows a geometric distribution.

The study provides the first quantitative tenant mix model on the number of tenant species in a particular mall size, and on the tenant species abundance distribution pattern. These results provide far‐reaching implications for research and practice, including a quantitative benchmarking of tenant mix strategy and an optimal design of shopping malls.

The model is the first tenant mix model for practitioners to formulate quantitative tenant mix strategy, and evaluate the effects of tenant mix on the performance of a shopping mall.

It is the first quantitative model for tenant mix, and would open up a novel agenda for research on tenant mix strategies.

In Hong Kong, a balcony is often perceived as a “green” provision in modern residential buildings. However, how the market values the benefits of balconies is seldom studied due to the difficulty in separating such benefits from other associated effects such as view enjoyment and security concerns. This paper attempts to study the implicit value of a balcony, the green effects of balconies on the prices of residential properties, and the effect of security concerns on balconies situated on lower floors. A sample of transactions in a private housing estate in Hong Kong has been studied. The sample contains apartments with and without balconies. A balcony is found to have a positive effect on the value of a property irrespective of the quality of the view. The negative effects of air and noise pollution on property prices are also found to be highly significant. Although security concerns are found on the low stories of a building, the provision of a balcony does not aggravate the hazard. Finally, the log‐linearity assumption in the empirical price model is relaxed by applying the Box‐Cox transformation to the continuous variables.