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The leading real estate journals in the USA, UK, Asia and Australia are analysed over 1991‐2000 to assess the impact of international real estate research in these journals. It is found that the focus on international real estate has expanded considerably in recent years, with this focus more evident in the leading UK real estate journals rather than the leading USA real estate journals. Reasons for this difference between the USA and UK real estate journals are identified. Issues relating to international authorship are assessed, with the leading international authors and universities identified.

Proposes a reputation‐based model to examine the managerial investment and liquidation decisions regarding real estate projects in developing countries. Unlike investments in domestic projects, foreign investments are subject to noisy monitoring, resulting in a liquidation inefficiency where managers preserve their reputational capital by not liquidating projects likely to fail as long as negative signals are not revealed to the public. The manager’s decision to invest in foreign countries is influenced not only by the difference between foreign and domestic project returns, but also by the change in reputational capital. Shows that reputation‐based utility maximization can lead to an under‐investment in profitable foreign projects. Government support to invest in foreign countries can reduce the under‐investment problem, but it can also increase the liquidation inefficiency.

Provides the first empirical time series analysis of commercial mortgage‐backed securities (CMBS) prices using a proprietary data set of 15 senior tranche securities. Postulates and tests the hypothesis that nonstationary CMBS and corporate bond prices are cointegrated since CMBS are priced analogous to corporate bonds. States that given the emerging status of the CMBS market, price data is limited to less than three years. To overcome the low power of unit root and cointegration methodology for short data sets, appeals to the concept of cointegration in heterogeneous panels advanced by Pedroni (1995). Claims the presence of cointegration between CMBS and corporate bond prices confirms that the stationary first difference in CMBS and corporate bond prices must be modelled in an error correction framework (ECM). Further states the sensitivity of CMBS price changes to changes in the default probability, proxied by the market value of loans to property value, is tested in a simple first order approximation ECM framework. The results suggest that senior tranche CMBS which comprise no more than 70 per cent are immune to the risk from default loss and supports the predictions in Childs et al. (1996).

Introduces the Fuzzy Industry Maturity Grid as an extension of the Industry Maturity Grid for diagnosing an industry, to identify fast‐growing sectors and to map out growth strategies for sectors showing signs of maturity. By incorporating fuzzy set theory and aggregation models in decision making, the conventional Industry Maturity Grid is enhanced from a qualitative analysis to a semi‐quantitative method which captures an expert′s knowledge of the industry, inclusive of his judgement. It does this via using a linguistic scale describing the characteristics under each of the three main dimensions of the IMG to form fuzzy sets; a hierarchical aggregation of information based on fuzzy aggregation operators; and a conceptual cube to determine the rank and ranking size of the prescribed strategies. Illustrates the application of the Fuzzy Industry Maturity Grid with an example on the Singapore banking industry.

Observes that the timely and sufficient provision of industrial space helps to facilitate industrial activities that contribute to economic growth. An understanding of the interactions between the economy and the real estate market is useful to local policy decision makers and developers in ensuring the ready availability of industrial space without incurring unnecessary excess vacancy. This article hopes to build upon existing research by applying cointegration analysis and error‐correction modelling to examine the supply dynamics of Singapore’s industrial property market. The presence of long‐run equilibrium relationships between industrial property supply, economic and real estate variables is tested using cointegration analysis. The persistence profile examines the effect of system‐wide shocks to the cointegration relations to determine whether they are true cointegrating vectors.

Foreclosure risk is a key concern to lenders of real estate mortgages. Using auction data, this study provides the first analysis of mortgage foreclosure in Singapore by examining how macro‐economic variables affect the probability of foreclosure. The foreclosure rate for properties is found to be increasing in the first five years of purchase and decreases as the holding period lengthens. The likelihood of foreclosure increases with unemployment rate, mortgage rate and expenditure and decreases with equity, dividend yield and lending volume at fourth and twentieth quarters lag. Further analysis shows considerable differences between residential and non‐residential properties. However, when the analysis on non‐residential properties is further separated into office, retail and industrial sub‐sectors, the results are relatively similar among the three sub‐sectors. This implies that banks and financial institutions should apply different underwriting standards for residential properties, mainly for owner‐occupation and non‐residential properties for the purpose of businesses and rental income.

This paper attempts to fill two gaps in the homeownership literature identified by Dietz and Haurin: homeownership in less developed countries and the effects of race, ethnicity and income on tenure choice.

United Nations data from 1993 and 1998 are used to offer a cross‐country analysis of the determinants of homeownership rates. Consistent with the previous literature, this study confirms that the price‐to‐rent ratio is an important factor in tenure choice and increases in income are associated with increases in the percentage of consumers who choose to own. However, these relationships seem to hold generally only for higher income developed countries.

In contrast to the previous literature that finds race and ethnicity account for a significant portion of the differences in US homeownership rates, this study finds no evidence that these determinants account for differences across countries. The authors investigate the rule of law and find it is closely correlated with income measures which may indicate that countries with stronger laws encourage higher homeownership rates. Finally, capitalist/(formerly) communist regime differences do not appear to explain cross country differences in homeownership rates.

This research is limited by the scope and quality of the UN data.

The paper offers insights from the international evidence for the potential of selected policies to increase domestic homeownership rates and identifies several avenues for future international homeownership research.

This paper provides an initial empirical analysis on international homeownership in an attempt to fill gaps in the homeownership literature.

Two marketing schemes that provide protection against downside price risk are examined. The buy‐back guarantee allows the property purchaser to sell the property back to the developer at the original purchase price, while the guaranteed appreciation plan assures the buyers of a minimum price appreciation at the end of a specified period. Both plans essentially provide the property purchaser with put options with contingent payoffs that differ in terms of the strike price. This paper examines the value of the buy‐back guarantee and the guaranteed appreciation plan as well as providing a framework for evaluating the put options. The key finding is that the time value of such put options is extremely low if they are too deep in‐the‐money and if expected volatility is low. If so, a careful examination of the terms offered suggests that the buy‐back guarantee is expensive. In contrast, the guaranteed appreciation plan can be regarded as a free option because it provides a strike price that is above the purchase price. Hence, property purchasers react favorably to the guaranteed appreciation plan. Finally, implications for marketing and pricing strategies are examined.

Property investment requires accurate market forecasts. The use of judgemental forecasting to predict property market performance is well established and widely practised. However, the need to deal with a large number of variables and to assess the impact of structural, exogenous and policy changes makes forecasting an inextricably difficult task, given the limitations of holistic forecasting. Proposes the incorporation of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to translate expert judgement into accurate and meaningful market forecasts. Such an approach facilitates communication of expert judgement and at the same time provides feedback for the expert. Provides a 12‐month forecast of the Singapore residential property market to illustrate the expert judgemental‐AHP approach.

There is currently no real estate investment trust (REIT) listed in China. As of date, only two REITs – GZI REIT of Hong Kong and CapitaRetail China Trust (CRCT) of Singapore – have securitised Chinese property assets. The purpose of this paper is to examine the driving forces and the obstacles surrounding China REITs, and evaluate REIT securitisation as an exit strategy for Chinese properties.

The paper analyses the performance of the two cross‐border REITs and investigates whether REITs holding Chinese assets outperform other listed REITs.

CRCT outperforms GZI REIT as well as some of the other Singapore REITs, while GZI REIT ranked second lowest in terms of price performance when compared to other Hong Kong REITs. The limited history of CRCT suggests that when a well‐structured REIT holding Chinese assets can perform very well. We also infer that performance is closely linked to portfolio composition and diversification, growth story and originator reputation.

The study shows that there is indeed a strong local demand for China REITs, and that REITs can provide an alternative source of real estate financing for Chinese developers and promote a better regulated Chinese real estate market.