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With strategies including flexible work practices, tenants are increasingly seeking flexibility in their physical office space and layouts. The purpose of this paper is to examine to what extent investors address tenants’ changing demand for office space with reference to layouts in new and existing office buildings.

A qualitative study comprising in-depth individual interviews with senior portfolio managers of all listed property trusts investing in the office sector in New Zealand was undertaken.

The findings confirmed property investors incorporate several adaptive and flexible space design and specifications in their modern office buildings to enhance space flexibility and functional efficiency. These include adaptive building structures, efficient floor plates, flexible building services, advanced IT networking, high-quality building amenities and modern building materials. Building structures and layouts are designed to be modified quickly and cost effectively to address tenants’ changing needs. Implications affecting tenant demand for flexible spaces on their lease contracts were also identified.

The findings from this research have implications for management of office space. Although the data were sourced with reference to buildings located in New Zealand only, the findings are applicable to office buildings in other countries.

The study provides an insight into design strategies adopted in modern office buildings to enhance space flexibility and functional efficiency. These findings are of practical application to professionals involved in the design, development, investment and valuation of modern office buildings.

The paper provides in-depth insights into how investors meet tenants’ changing demand for physical space which is linked to delivering improved and stable market-driven returns to investors.

Office buildings in the City of London accommodate a wide variety of tenant organisations whose business characteristics and property requirements differ. Physical design/quality attributes also differ between buildings and, therefore, either constrain or support specific business activities. The results of a survey carried out using a sample of investment properties and their tenants within the City illustrate the existence of these variations. In particular, the difference between tenant organizations’ perceived supply and demand for individual building design/quality factors is highlighted showing areas of general under‐performance. The owners of City of London office buildings, typically the financial institutions, are concerned with the functionality of their properties which influence the short‐ and long‐term returns of this particular type of asset. Information originating from the utilisation of building appraisal techniques is of considerable use within any property management decision‐making process and in particular the identification of potential problems associated with building obsolescence.

Hong Kong has developed one of the world’s largest initiatives of user participation in public service in the public rental housing sector. This paper analyses the development and the impact of such an initiative in tenant participation. Whilst the housing managers and tenant representatives were by and large receptive of such an initiative, tenants were in general more apathetic. Involving tenants in public housing management can also be perceived as a strategy of the landlord in bridging the gap between expensive paternalistic management and the legitimate expectation of the tenants. It can also be viewed as a measure to mitigate the internal conflicts within the Housing Department as a tool to enhance the effectiveness of the management service. Yet, recent development in the public housing sector in Hong Kong may bring fundamental changes in both the provision and management of public housing. This creates uncertainty regarding the further development of tenant participation.

The purpose of this paper is to increase awareness of the value that can be derived from embracing customer service and ensuring tenant satisfaction.

This literature review synthesizes the results of research conducted around the world to examine the value proposition of customer-focused property management. The literature was identified through a search of academic journal articles and industry publications, together with the authors' experience of working with industry practitioners. Drawing on these sources, the authors identify five emerging trends that are likely to make customer service an even more critical part of property managers' jobs and propose best practices to help property managers actualize the benefits.

Three themes emerge from the literature. First, property managers can add significant value to real estate portfolios by delivering high-quality customer service to tenants. Second, emerging trends in the real estate industry are creating new opportunities for property managers to participate in the value creation process. Third, there are a number of steps property managers can take to leverage customer service to benefit the real estate investors they represent.

Real estate investors, and the property managers working on their behalf, can realize the advantages of customer-focused property management by adopting a series of straightforward best practices, which are discussed in the paper.

The trends identified and practical steps proposed are likely to be all the more relevant in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.

This research should increase awareness of customer-focused property management and the mechanisms through which it can affect real estate returns. The ten best practices proposed should help property managers deliver effective service to tenants and achieve the associated financial benefits for investors.

Dublin, Wednesday, 1 a.m., Aug. 9, 1882.

Rising occupational costs, unit shop oversupply and falling retail sector profits have generated demands for changes to the current valuation and leasing procedures. Tests the accuracy of rental value estimation at review by identifying the actual residual value of occupation to existing tenants, and quantifies demand volume requirements at different levels of rental increase so that the interpretation of transactional evidence can be set in an actual demand volume context by selecting two shopping centres – Brent Cross and MetroCentre – for audit. Concludes that the long‐running dispute between landlords and tenants over rent review valuations is a market information problem that can be resolved only by the release of local sales data.

This paper aims to investigate the drivers and barriers for green leases and tenancies in sustainable “Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method” (BREEAM) and “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design” (LEED) certified office and office buildings in Norway, the UK and the USA. This study focuses on the differing perspectives between owners and tenants. It is then considered as to how these issues are dealt with during different phases of a buildings life cycle. This research is based on existing literature and semi-structured interviews that studied qualitative and quantitative elements in the context of ownership and tenancy of single and multi-tenanted sustainable office buildings.

Using a mixed-method approach involving semi-structured interviews with both qualitative and quantitative elements along with desk research, this paper evaluates how green leases and tenancies in offices and office buildings that are BREEAM and LEED certified require a reconsideration and re-evaluation of the acquisition, operation and disposal of office buildings by building owners and their tenants. These stakeholder relationships are supported theoretically using a theoretical model that outlines the interrelation between the sustainable building and the relationships of the building owner, the user and the FM service provider.

The data gathered from the interviews justify and partly contradict some of the statements within existing literature, diminishing the importance of cost and the barrier of split incentive but instead illuminate the importance of less tangible considerations such as company policy or a sustainability strategy. The results also note the realisation of a changing market for commercial real estate driven by the sustainable business needs of tenants for the occupation of workspaces.

These findings have the potential to further develop theories and provide an insight into how the relationships between actors from a business, procurement and contractual perspective need to be developed to ensure more proactive development of green leasing of new and existing sustainable office buildings, along with where strategic attention is required during the building design, construction, operational and use phases.

This paper is based on original research through interviews and literature studies supported by an existing theoretical model. The results have been partly presented and initially discussed at the WBC World Congress 2016 in Tampere, Finland.

In order to fully appreciate the issues within this paper, a definitive framework is necessary so as to ensure clear semantic interpretation. Estate refers to property, possessions, capital or the collective assets and liabilities of a person and refers to large landed property. Investment is the giving up of a capital sum now in exchange for benefits to be received in the future. These will usually take the form of an income flow and/or capital gain (Enever, 1989). Real property is by definition essentially tangible. It is a legal interest in land and buildings classified as residential, commercial and including land (Littlefair, 1991).

The aim of this paper is to develop a theory of sharecropping with cost sharing after allowing for an explicit role of a creditor. In the tenancy literature, the prevalence of sharecropping has remained an important issue. While most contributions have focussed only on output sharing, very few have studied the issue of cost sharing. Besides, the existing models have considered interactions only between a landowner and a tenant. The purpose of this paper is to extend this setup to a third player – creditor.

The authors adopt a static contract approach with full information and no uncertainty and model possible credit‐cum‐tenancy arrangements among a money‐lender, a landowner and a tenant under the restrictions that the money‐lender cannot charge a lump‐sum fee and the input choices are left with the tenant.

It is shown that all Pareto optimal arrangements between a creditor, a landowner and a tenant must involve interest rate discrimination between the tenant and the landowner and a share tenancy with cost sharing, or a fixed rent tenancy with cost sharing, or a mixture of the two. None of the polar contracts – wage or rent – is possible. Lending schemes that feature credit rationing or credit delegation can implement some Pareto efficient outcomes.

The model developed in the paper presents a framework for studying various tripartite arrangements observed in rural economies of developing countries. Also, it provides a benchmark for studying contracts under asymmetric information and uncertainty.

Investment returns from property derive from rental income and change in value, and a property's value is a function of the current rent and the expected future rent. So, ultimately, investment returns derive from rent, and successful investment will depend on an understanding of the principles and forces which explain the market's determination of rental value. This paper explains the significance of supply elasticity to the determination of rental value and investigates the probable elasticities of the four main types of investment property. It concludes that, due to the very inelastic supply of farmland and prime High Street shops, trends in rental growth will reflect the profitability of occupation whereas, in general, the rental value of office and industrial property will tend to reflect development costs, due to their relatively elastic supply. The article investigates how far such predictions appear to be supported by evidence and briefly discusses the relative impact of obsolescence on the four property types.