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The goal of this paper is to present a roadmap for real estate operating companies (REOCs) to transform themselves into tech-centric enterprises.

This qualitative approach is based on the impact of technology on physical real estate assets and organisational structures as reviewed in industry and academic literature, professional experience and current property technology (PropTech) applications.

New technologies are rapidly changing how investors, tenants and managers use, invest and finance property. The revolutionary change for the industry will be in its organisational and industry structure, away from the traditional hierarchical-mechanistic form to a virtual open-agile-innovative organisational form.

Research limitations come from the lack of real estate companies utilising the hybrid flipped form of organisational structures.

Due to the current state of the economy, effects of the pandemic and rapid adoption of new technologies, real estate companies are likely to radically change the way they are organised, how they add value, innovate and their leadership/management style.

The revolution in real estate technologisation will not come from the application of these technologies but the rapid change in ideological thought and management leadership style and culture.

The introduction of artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML), blockchain, virtual reality, tablets, cell phones, applications, 5G, etc. is putting pressure on real estate organisations to change. These changes are long overdue and the future, modern real estate company will take a hybrid PropTech form – a company focussed on delivering high-quality products and services to its clients in real time.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of real estate weight on Italian manufacturing companies and the effect of occupancy costs on income. The main purpose is to understand whether the ownership of properties, for non-real-estate companies, has an impact on performance.

The empirical research was carried out for a 10-year period (2004-2013) with a sample of 300 manufacturing companies belonging to six sub-sectors of the manufacturing sector. In the second part, a cluster analysis was conducted to identify better and more poorly performing companies. Companies were classified in different clusters according to their ROA, debt ratio and liquidity ratio. The analysis from the first part was repeated to verify the differences between the clusters with respect to their real estate holdings.

First, the authors found that manufacturing sub-sectors do not differ in terms of real estate holdings. They found that real estate holdings affect performance: companies with lower real estate asset weight and higher occupancy costs perform better.

The main contribution of the paper is the finding that most Italian manufacturing companies do not take into account corporate real estate (CRE) decisions and the trade-off between ownership and leasing, thus showing that they are ineffective at CRE management.

It could be wise to pay more attention to the existing trade-off between the occupancy costs and the holdings of real estate as ownership, as a significant negative correlation between the two indicators was found for the best performing companies. However, the level of this correlation was still rather small. Moreover, to increase performance, companies should be able to recognise that maintaining constant investments in CRE is a better solution than increasing these investments and locking more capital into illiquid assets (which have lower returns than the core business), especially during periods of turmoil and financial crisis.

For the first time, the Italian manufacturing sector has been widely investigated.

This paper aims to analyze how a real estate business model innovation developed in a real estate network, with a special focus on the relationship between ego network structure and the innovative development of the business model.

The paper is a single case study of a Swedish real estate network of 38 actors. The data were collected at the individual actor level using multiple sources: 12 semi-structured in-depth interviews, 94 min of meetings and 28 written contracts. The empirical findings resulted in four propositions.

This study demonstrates that it was primarily the building user who was behind the innovative development of the real estate business model innovation, whereas the real estate company acted as a network hub and network resource coordinator. The ego network structures significantly affected the outcome.

Real estate companies should act as hubs, coordinating all the network actor resources the building user needs in the value-creation process. To be effective hubs, the representatives of real estate companies must create extensive personal and open ego networks to acquire central network positions.

Few studies examine business model innovation, particularly in the real estate context. Though large real estate businesses usually operate in the networks of various actors, analyses based on the network perspective are also lacking. This case study builds a valuable understanding of how network processes in real estate networks can be used as tools to foster real estate business model innovation, which in turn can lead to more competitive real estate companies and building users.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify how annual reports of public housing and commercial real estate companies contribute in “doing gender” of the real estate industry in Sweden. How the issue of gender is dealt with in photographs, in two different types of organizations, with different corporate and business strategies, is important as they play a significant role in constructing the industry itself. Are there any differences in how they perceive gender, and what constitutes gender of the industry?

Analysis of photographs in annual reports, 14 public housing companies and eight commercial real estate companies, in the year of 2011.

The paper provides empirical insights about how “gender is done” in annual reports, men alone are shown more often as employees and both women and men are portrayed in stereotypical positions. Women are depicted more often as young and also presented in “token positions”.

Because of the chosen research approach, in studying only one year, a longitudinal study would be recommended for future studies.

The paper includes implications for the development of gender symbols and images representing the industry, in how gender is done in public situations as in annual reports. This is not only important for the industry itself but also to stakeholders involved with the industry.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study how photographs shown in annual reports reveal gender structure.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of leverage on the total shareholder return of European publicly traded real estate vehicles in three periods: Crisis Period (2007-2009), Rebound Period (2009-2014) and the Whole Period.

Cross-sectional analysis is used and the leverage effect on the performance is controlled for seven other independent variables (local market risk premium, size, book-to-market, short-term debt, cash); moreover, regional differences are accounted for.

It is established that during the Crisis Period, leverage levels are negatively associated with performance: this relationship also holds throughout the Whole Period, implying that for real estate securities, the cost of financial distress is larger than the potential gain from taxation, although the economic significance of it is limited. The Fama and French (1992) three factors, including size, book-to-market and local market risk premium, are found to be relevant, which is consistent with the literature. In addition, the UK and Sweden regions are identified as significant.

Even if there is sizeable body of literature on determinants of leverage and determinants of asset returns, little work has been done on how leverage affects the returns of European real estate companies. In addition, this paper takes advantage of observations from a full economic cycle and the possible effects of the crisis period.

This paper aims to contrast the financial costs and benefits of leasing, rather than owning real estate assets.

The main argument is that leasing is beneficial. The hypothesis is tested using a total of 2,343 UK‐quoted companies over the period 1989‐2002, resulting in 14,101 pooled time‐series and cross‐sectional observations.

The results indicate that large and high‐growth companies are likely to lease than to own these assets. Companies that lease are more efficient in using their real estate and that these benefits are compounded in share price valuation as leasing propensity is strongly leasing propensity is not linear, but an inverse U‐shaped, suggesting that the market is also considering the costs of not owning real estate.

The study relied on historical accounting values of real estate rather than market values which are not available in machine readable format, and there was no data on the type of real estate and its location.

The results of the paper provide strong and consistent evidence that the market values the costs and benefits of leasing.

The proportion of real estate in a non‐property company’s asset portfolio has increased to an extent where it has become an asset capable of enhancing corporate wealth. This initial study hopes to establish the foundation and provide background information on corporate real estate holding profiles of listed Singapore business firms. Using financial statement data and firm market values from 1987 to 1996, this paper provides an analysis of real estate holdings in both absolute and relative terms. Real estate holdings by business segment and asset subtype, growth in corporate real estate holdings over time; and key financial characteristics of corporate real estate (eg real estate as a percentage of shareholders’ equity and real estate relative to market value of the firm) are included in the paper.

This paper aims to investigate the repercussions and impact of corporate real estate on the returns of non-real-estate equities in a time-series setting. While the ownership of real estate constitutes a considerable proportion of most listed firms’ balance sheet, in the existing literature, whether or not the benefits outweigh the risks associated with corporate real estate, is the subject of controversy.

The role of corporate real estate ownership in the pricing of returns is examined, after taking well-documented systematic risk factors into account. Employing a data sample from 1999 to 2014, the conditions and characteristics faced by firms with distinct levels of corporate real estate holdings are identified and analyzed.

The findings reveal that corporate real estate intensity indeed serves as a priced determinant in the German stock market. Among other results, the real-estate-specific risk factor shows countercyclical patterns and is particularly relevant for companies within the manufacturing sector.

The findings provide new insights into the interpretation of corporate real estate and expected general equity returns. Thus, the present analysis is of particular interest for investors, as well as the management boards of listed companies.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first paper to investigate the ownership of corporate real estate as a priced factor for German equities, after accounting for the well-documented systematic risk factors, namely, market (market risk premium), size (small minus big) and book-to-market-ratio (BE/ME) (high minus low).

The aim of this paper is to examine how the real estate owner (decision maker) can ensure that the preferred tasks are prioritised. In particular, the incentives to ensure motivation to perform to accomplish the strategic goals of the decision maker are investigated.

This research is based on an interview study of 19 firm representatives, 6 decision makers and 13 management representatives, all from the Swedish commercial real estate sector.

The study concludes that the real estate management organisation in the outsourced management setting is governed by the contract, in detail constituting work tasks, and in the in-house management setting, there is freedom with responsibilities instead of regulations.

The research in this paper is limited to Swedish commercial real estate sector.

The insight in the paper regarding how decision makers create incentives for the real estate management organisation in the different organisational settings can provide inspiration to design incentives for effort.

It provides an insight regarding how the industry, depending on organisation setting, prioritise different work tasks and how incentives are created to enable effort.

The aim of the study is to investigate the implementation of corporate sustainability (CS) in the German real estate sector.

The authors begin by outlining the framework set by the European Union and the German Federal Government for companies wanting to be classified as sustainable. After this, the relevance of sustainability for German real estate companies is discussed. Their empirical section contains an international comparison. Finally, they present an analysis checking the implementation of CS for the main 135 German real estate companies.

The present analysis shows that German real estate companies compare well with their international counterparts, in 2012 representing 15 per cent of all real estate firms reporting on the basis of the Global Reporting Initiative. However, of the 135 companies in Germany surveyed, only a small proportion classify themselves as CS and CSR (corporate social responsibility) enterprises. This number could be rapidly increased by better documentation of companies’ commitment to sustainability.

The study’s importance lies in the overview it provides of CS activities in the German real estate industry. In addition, it provides hints on how companies can improve their documentation to classify as CSR enterprises. Although the analysis concentrates on Germany, the results are also relevant for companies in other European countries.

This is the first study to offer a comprehensive overview of the CS activities of the German real estate industry.