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In the last decade, apparel companies mainly focused on achieving the best FOB (freight on board) price, the best quality, and the shortest lead time for their products in order to achieve commercial success. As a result they sourced globally to optimise their costs. However, there arose a growing awareness of different sourcing criteria in the textiles and apparel industry. For instance, human rights issues and environmental requirements emerged as crucial factors in the selection of business partners. Addressing consumer concerns has recently become a very important strategy for apparel companies. They are therefore more concerned about products sourced from the Third World whose manufacture violates human rights and causes environmental damage. As a result, ethical and green consumerism will become the trend in the future. An increasing number of people prefer to buy products and services from companies that are socially responsible, and they are willing to pay a premium for them. Concurrent with the changes in individual purchasing behaviour under the influence of ethical and green consumerism will be the increasing collective consumer pressure on producers of goods and services to produce ecologically friendly products using ecologically friendly materials and processes which do not violate human rights or use child labour. The increased awareness of these issues has forced apparel companies, especially those with brands, to develop specific guidelines or a code of conduct to ensure that their business partners comply with these newly established requirements. In the research under discussion, an industry survey was carried out to identify the essential criteria for selecting and evaluating business partners. Subsequently, evaluation models were derived for the selection of business partners. Feedback from the industry highlighted the fact that there is a need for a standardised, recognised evaluation method to be developed. If such a method were widely adopted, ethical standards would be raised and ultimately the quality of life of the communities in which garments are manufactured, sold and worn would be improved.

In the light of the property relativist theory, the purpose of this paper is to review the impact of radical amendments to strata legislation in Singapore in 1999 which, together with changes to the planning framework, stimulated private‐sector led redevelopment in Singapore. This was achieved through the introduction of majority rule (rather than unanimity) in collective sales (CS) of strata developments. The paper also addresses the issue of how a balance can be achieved between the property rights of majority and minority strata owners.

The paper uses case‐studies, planning provisions, and data on property transactions to analyse the effectiveness of the measures taken to address Singapore's land‐scarcity problem. Legal terms and their significance are addressed in a manner that will also be comprehensible to a non‐legally trained readership.

The cases demonstrate attempts by the authorities to clarify, and to provide a better balance to, the position of those whose property rights had been sacrificed at the altar of redevelopment and urban rejuvenation in Singapore. Nevertheless, there still remain numerous pockets of resistance to CS. These still need to be addressed to reassure the minority in the context of the property relativist theory.

The continued groundswell of protests against collective sale means that there are further issues that need to be addressed to mitigate the plight of the minority. The response of parliament has been reactive, but it remains to be seen whether the minority's concerns have been adequately addressed.

The analysis of the cases, whose decisions turned on the authorities' interpretation of the controversial legislation, is instructive. These can provide valuable pointers for policy makers in other jurisdictions contemplating urban rejuvenation. The twin issues that are dealt with relate to how private‐sector redevelopment can be incentivised through planning measures, without riding roughshod over individuals' private property rights.

This paper aims to construct rental housing indices and identify market segmentation for more effective property-management strategies.

The hedonic model was employed to construct the rental indices. Using the k-means++ and REDCAP (Regionalisation with Dynamically Constrained Agglomerative Clustering and Partitioning) approaches, the authors conducted clustering analysis and identified different market segmentation. The empirical study relied on the database of 80,212 actual rental transactions in Beijing, China, spanning 2016–2018.

Rental housing market segmentation may distribute across administrative boundaries. Properly segmented indices could provide a better account for the heterogeneity and spatial continuity of rental housing and as well be crucial for effective property management.

Residential rent might not only vary over space but also interplays with housing price. It would be worth studying how the rental market functions together with the owner-occupied sector in the future.

Residential rental indices are of great importance for policymakers to be able to evaluate housing policies and for property managers to implement competitive strategies in the rental market. Their constructions largely depend on the analysis of market segmentation, a trade-off between housing spatial heterogeneity and continuity.

This paper fills the gap in knowledge concerning segmented rental indices construction, particularly in China. The spatial constrained clustering approach (REDCAP) was also initially introduced to identify regionalised market segmentation due to its superior performance.

This paper aims to empirically examine the relationship between macroeconomic factors and housing prices in Malaysia from 1991 to 2016.

This study was based on annual macroeconomic data from 1991 to 2016. For the model that was constructed, house prices were treated as the dependent variable and other variables, namely, the interest rate, the gross domestic product (GDP) and the consumer price index (CPI) as explanatory or regression variables. All these data come from the annual publication of the World Bank’s statistical report. In the meantime, data on house prices have been obtained through the publication of the National Property Information Centre in the form of an index. In the study, the bounds testing approach for cointegration was used because the Engel Granger cointegration tests can be used only if all the series are stationary at first difference. And it is against this background the author could not use it because our variables are a combination of series integrated of orders I (0) and I (1).

The results of this study revealed a positive equilibrium relationship in the long run between interest rate, CPI and housing prices and negative for the GDP. In addition, in the short run, housing prices were shown to have a positive relationship with GDP and CPI, but no relationship with the interest rate, based on the assumption that “all other things being equal”.

The data on economic factors (GDP, RI and CPI) used in this study are secondary and not from the Malaysian Department of Statistics and Economic Studies. Furthermore, the result of this research only reflects the Malaysian reality, and therefore, cannot be generalised to the entire housing market worldwide.

The result of this study can be used for housing valuation by Malaysian property market players, investors and especially policymakers.

This study’s findings can help Malaysian policymakers to limit the high price fluctuation in the housing industry and help Malaysian citizens to buy their own homes at a reasonable price.

The contributions of this study are structured around two points. The first is the contribution to the body of knowledge, where the results of the study will contribute to the growing number of literature in the housing sector. Moreover, the second contribution of this document is the strength of its recommendation to policymakers. This is because it analyses only the main macroeconomic determinants (IR, GDP and CPI) that are essential to better influence the housing sector as quickly as possible, as opposed to those that use many variables that could lead to possible specification errors.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how design of housing development affects a sense of neighbourhood.

Questionnaire surveys were carried out in two residential communities in Hong Kong with very different design concepts and the results were analysed by ANOVA model.

The residential community with substantial open space allocation creates a greater sense of neighbourhood, even though this community is located in a rather remote part of the city.

The sample size is relatively small and in the future more communities should be included. In addition, international comparison can be made, especially with other Asian cities.

The findings provide a new perspective to the private developers in their design practice. To the government, more encouragement should be given to the private sector in promoting good community design,

This is one of the few papers that looks at the correlation between housing design and residents' feelings of their neighbourhood in Asia.

The purpose of this study was to investigated the importance of environmental attributes for office building adaptation and whether the importance of environmental attributes for adaptation has changed over time from 1998-2008 to 2009-2011. With 1-2 per cent added to the total stock of buildings each year and the need to take action to mitigate the impacts of predicted climate change (IPCC, 2013), it is necessary to focus efforts on adaptation of existing buildings.

This research adopted a quantitative approach, using a database of office building attributes and applying principal component analysis to ascertain the respective importance of various building attributes in adaptation. Using two databases; the first dating from 1998 to 2008 and comprising 5,290 adaptation events and the second covering the period 2009 to 2011 and comprising 1,272 adaptation events, a comparison of results was undertaken.

The findings indicate the importance of some environmental attributes in building adaptation has changed and that legislation and changes market perceptions towards to promote built environment sustainability may be having a positive impact. The research demonstrates that different property attributes vary in importance over time and used existing buildings in an international city to confirm application to urban settlements elsewhere where existing buildings can be adapted to reduce the effect of climate change.

The databases are limited to Melbourne, Australia and to these specific points in time. It is possible that other cities are seeing changes in adaptation practices to accommodate increased awareness and the growing importance attributed to environmental issues; however, additional studies would be required to ascertain whether the level of importance was stronger or weaker than that found in Melbourne.

The impacts of the mandatory The National Australian Built Environment Rating System energy rating tool and the Green Star voluntary tool provide actionable data for property stakeholders and the academic community. Policy-makers can see that building owners are integrating environmental attributes into their stock and that the market is shifting towards increased sustainability. This study uses real world data to feed the scholarship process, with real economic and commercial impacts. New buildings account for about 1-2 per cent of the total building stock annually and existing buildings must be adapted, and thus the questions of the success of voluntary or mandatory measures are essential to future environmental decision-making.

This research reports on data covering all office building adaptation conducted from 1998 to 2011 in the Melbourne CBD. As such, it is a comprehensive analysis of all works undertaken and how the significance of different physical, social, economic and environmental attributes is changing over time.

The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the Pygmalion hypothesis is supported in the housing market and the hypothesis that investors are, all too frequently, unrealistically over‐optimistic cannot be rejected.

The methodology in the paper relies on a cross‐sectional questionnaire survey and a longitudinal telephone survey.

The findings in the paper demonstrate that self‐fulfilling prophecies occur in property markets. The effect of self‐fulfilling expectations is common and more powerful than rational real estate fundamentals. The consistent pattern of significant over‐forecasting of housing prices suggest that the hypothesis that investors are, most of the time, over‐confident cannot be rejected.

In the longitudinal survey in this paper, only limited samples were secured. The developmental change of attitudes and buying behaviors over time was not observed. People's price expectations might be different from those reported in the first three waves of survey, as real estate fundamentals change from time to time.

In the paper a forward looking approach is used to solicit people's views on current and future housing prices, investment considerations and sentiment over time. An increase in property price being simply the outcome of self‐fulfilling expectations – the Pygmalion Effect will be signaled to housing participants. Studying people's confidence and sentiments helps understand speculative enthusiasm or ‘bubble”.

The longitudinal survey in the paper on people's price expectations is the first of its kind in Hong Kong. The results are beneficial to policy makers, homeowners, potential homebuyers and investors. Housing decisions of potential homebuyers can be made more rationally and Government officials can have more reliable property information and data for policy formulation.

This paper seeks to examine the contributions of rehabilitation and redevelopment projects to the labour force of the construction industry in Hong Kong. Major projects from the private and public sectors were critically examined and the manpower requirements and the tangible benefits in terms of wages arising from urban renewal were forecast.

The forecast of the expected persons to be engaged in the construction industry is based on trend regression model. Time series data of construction sites, both private and public, and persons engaged in the past ten years were forecasted for linear trend process for the next three years. From this, a reasonable estimate of man‐days to be engaged and wages to be incurred in the construction industry in the future can be obtained.

The results provide evidence that the impacts are positive. About 19.4 million man‐days and an income of HK$16.4 billion (3.8 per cent of the nominal GDP of Hong Kong in 2008) are anticipated in the short run. To meet urban regeneration needs, the Government should develop various vocational skills and enhance motivation and job search.

There are potential risks of error arising from the use of assumptions, limited sample size and data from the secondary resources.

Urban renewal works can generate more jobs. The ratio of development projects to rehabilitation works in terms of producing job opportunity by the same amount of budget is about 1 to 4.7. To meet urban regeneration needs, the Government should develop various vocational skills and enhance motivation and job search for renewal works.

Urban renewal attracts and stimulates investment, creates employment opportunities and improves the built environment of cities. Also, public rehabilitation works can play a moderate role in stabilizing the economy and the labour market.

The major contributions of this paper are: the estimated labour and financial resources to undertake such renewal works; and the more significant impact of rehabilitation work identified.

The long‐standing urban decay problem in Hong Kong continues to receive attention from the government and concerned organisations. However, little attention is paid to the financial benefits that can be achieved after old buildings are rehabilitated. This study seeks to evaluate and quantify the value enhancement of aging buildings resulting from rehabilitation.

Using the direct sales comparison method, the study critically examines over 80 sample buildings across Hong Kong. Residential properties with rehabilitation completed in the public sector are chosen as samples for numerical analysis.

The results show that: the capital value of the sample buildings after rehabilitation increased by an average of 35.6 percent; the overall appreciation rate of the sample buildings (35.6 percent) exceeds that of other buildings in the same district (20.8 percent); the average price increase of the sample buildings (25.7 percent after adjustment) is greater than that of Type B (40‐69.9 square meters) buildings (18.9 percent) in Hong Kong; positive growth in transaction volume is evidenced from the sample buildings in four districts; and, on average, the benefit to cost ratio of rehabilitation per unit is 10.9 and the net benefit per square foot is HK$461.4 (or US$59.2).

There are potential risks of error arising from the use of assumptions, price adjustments, limited sample size and data from the secondary source.

The analysis is of relevance in confirming the value enhancement arising from rehabilitation and the findings provide a motive for the industry and public for rehabilitation.

The significance of this study is the quantification of the positive effect of rehabilitation.

Investigates primarily the role of interest rates on housing prices from expectation perspectives. It quantifies the impact of interest rates on price movements from 1981 to 2001 in Hong Kong. The principal finding is that housing prices display a moderately high correlation with interest rates in the deflationary 1998‐2001 period. Reduced interest rates are linked to higher housing prices until 1997, thereafter, such inverse relationship appears to be non‐existent. The impact of interest rates tends to be significantly positive in the inflationary pre‐1997 period. But most of the fall in housing prices since early 1998 can be attributed to low hope‐led price expectations. The results indicate that interest rates do not “Granger‐cause” housing prices, and that the positive interest rate effect in deflationary periods seems to have been negated by anticipated capital losses.