Real Estate Commons^™

Rethinking Retained Earnings In The Additional Funds Needed Formula, James E. Larsen

Finance and Financial Services Faculty Publication

This paper critically re-evaluates the traditional application of the Additional Funds Needed formula by analyzing alternate interpretations of retained earnings. It illustrates how definitional shifts influence capital forecasts with a more nuanced approach to financial modeling in growth scenarios. The approach emphasizes numerical clarity, policy realism, and adaptability for financial planning. The paper challenges conventional AFN usage by embedding definitional flexibility and temporal awareness, offering decision-makers clearer visibility into funding sensitivity. It reframes AFN as a dynamic planning tool rather than a static formula, with implications for forecasting, policy-setting, and strategic finance.

Redesigning Home Reversion Products To Empower Retirement For Singapore's Public Flat Owners, Koon Shing Kwong, Jing Rong Goh, Jordan Jie Xin Lee, Ting Lin Collin Chua

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper introduces an innovative sell-type home reversion product aimed at monetizing Singapore’s public flats, serving as a new alternative to the existing Singapore Lease Buyback Scheme (LBS). This new product not only retains the LBS’s guaranteed period of residence in the property along with life annuity incomes but also enhances the product features to meet specific homeowner needs, including the ability to age in place, flexibility in retaining part of the property, options for bequests, and guaranteed principal return. By incorporating these additional features, the new product seeks to stimulate greater demand for monetizing public flats among asset-rich but …

Bubbly Booms And Welfare, Feng Dong, Yang Jiao, Haoning Sun

Research Collection School Of Economics

We show the competing effects of a housing bubble on the real economy by developing a multi-sector dynamic model with housing production. On the one hand, firms can sell or collateralize their housing, so a housing bubble helps firms obtain credit to finance their investment and expand production. On the other hand, a boom in the housing sector crowds out labor in the non-housing sector. We show that housing booms can reduce social welfare both in the steady state and in the transitional dynamics only when the production externalities in the non-housing sector are sufficiently large. We quantitatively evaluate our …

Enhancing Sell-Type Home Reversion Products For Retirement Financing, Koon Shing Kwong, Jing Rong Goh, Ting Lin Collin Chua

Research Collection School Of Economics

Loan-type reverse mortgage plans and sell-type home reversion plans for retirement financing are two well-known equity release plans that entitle homeowners not only to release cash from their properties but also to allow them to age in place. Recently, a new hybrid equity release plan was proposed to incorporate the home reversion plan’s features with an option of staying in the property for a fixed period without being subject to survival. This additional option provides flexibility to homeowners to better meet their retirement financial and personal needs by reducing the financial uncertainty of home reversion products. In this article, we …

Essays On Real Estate, Flood Risk, And Political Sentiment, John P. Orellana

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters that investigate how climate change, flood risk, and political sentiment influence outcomes in housing markets.

Chapter 1: This chapter offers a brief review and discussion of several recent and seminal papers at the intersection of flood risk, climate change, and real estate, as well as a critique on some of the literature on the effects of sea-level rise on housing outcomes.

Chapter 2: FEMA flood maps serve two functions: they signal risk to homeowners and mandate insurance take-up. How these information and risk transfer mechanisms affect homeowner relocation decisions remains unknown. Combining real estate …

A Primer: Regulations And The Practice Of Residential Property Appraisal, Owiti A. K'Akumu, James E. Larsen

Finance and Financial Services Faculty Publication

This paper presents a chronology, beginning in the early 1900s, of the regulatory environment faced by residential real estate appraisers in the United States. The presentation informs the reader about two financial crises, the savings and loan crisis and the Subprime mortgage crisis. The conditions that led to each crisis, the response of Congress to address each crisis, and the effect of both on residential real estate appraisers are included in the presentation. Prior to these crises, appraisers were basically self-regulated, but today because of concern that inflated appraisals were a contributing cause of the crises they are subject to …

Essays On Public Finance And International Finance, Deepti Sikri

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The first chapter examines New York State's Fiscal Score Monitoring program to find the effect of two quality labels on school district outcomes: fiscal stress scores, reflecting the budget solvency, and environmental stress labels reflecting economic and demographic conditions. Using the NYS school district data from 2013-22, I employ the regression discontinuity design to find the effect of stress labels, in response to the political pressure on district finances, housing, and school outcomes. I find the effect of fiscal stress label is limited, leading to a decrease in the fund balance ratio and an increase in the tax rate. However, …

Housing Fever In Australia 2020-23: Insights From An Econometric Thermometer, Shuping Shi, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

Australian housing markets experienced widespread and, in some cases, extraordinary growth in prices between 2020 and 2023. Using recently developed methodology that accounts for fundamental economic drivers, we assess the existence and degree of speculative behaviour, as well as the timing of exuberance and downturns in these markets. Our findings indicate that speculative behaviour was indeed present in six of the eight capital cities at some time over the period studied. The sequence of events in this nation-wide housing bubble began in the Brisbane market and concluded in Melbourne, Canberra, and Hobart following the interest rate rise implemented by the …

Airbnb Release Of Latent Economic Value And Return To Equilibrium, Daniel Joseph Trujillo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

We empirically consider Airbnb’s effect on a new variable in Short Term Rental (STR) research, second homes, employing a model pre-Airbnb diffusion (2009), and post-Airbnb diffusion (2019). In doing so we test our hypothesis that second home use will be converted to short-term rentals with the advent of Airbnb. We do so through a natural experiment examining housing stock. We create a schema to segregate tourist and non-tourist counties based on economic variables and deploy these in our research framework observing a shock to housing supply. Notably, we observe a structural change in the use of second homes resulting in …

Essays On Mortgage Portfolio Diversification, Timothy Patrick Dombrowski

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Portfolios of mortgage loans played an important role in the Great Recession and continue to compose a material part of bank assets. The distribution of mortgage portfolio returns, and consequently, the risk of these portfolios, is quite distinct even from other fixed income asset classes. This dissertation contains three essays, each aiming to analyze a specific component of risk in mortgage portfolios and role of geographical diversification in reducing this risk.

The first essay investigates how cross-sectional dependence in the underlying properties flows through to the loan returns, and thus, the risk of the portfolio. In addition to demonstrating this …

Another Look At The Relationship Between Portfolio Returns And Market Multiples, Marlena Akhbari, M. Fall Aininan, James E. Larsen

Finance and Financial Services Faculty Publication

No abstract provided.

Do Real Estate Agents Have Information Advantages In Housing Markets?, Sumit Agarwal, Jia He, Tien Foo Sing, Changcheng Song

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We use a large housing transaction data set in Singapore to study whether real estate agents use information advantages to buy houses at bargain prices. Agents bought their own houses at prices that are 2.54% lower than comparable houses bought by other buyers. Consistent with information asymmetries, agent buyers have more information advantages in less informative environments, and agent buyers are more likely to buy houses from agent sellers. Agent discounts are from both “cherry picking” and bargaining power, and bargaining power contributes more to the agent discounts. Agents’ advantage consists in their information of available houses and previous purchase …

Surviving The Property Market In A Low-Interest And Low-Yield Environment, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

REITs should note current conditions that echo those leading up to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and clean up their balance sheets

Cooling Measures And Housing Wealth: Evidence From Singapore, Wolfgang K. Hardle, Rainer Schulz, Taojun Xie

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Excessive house price growth was at the heart of the financial crisis in 2007/08. Since then, many countries have added cooling measures to their regulatory frameworks. It has been found that these measures can indeed control price growth, but no one has examined whether this has adverse consequences for the housing wealth distribution. We examine this for Singapore, which started in 2009 to target price growth over ten rounds in total. We find that welfare from housing wealth in the last round might not be higher than before 2009. This depends on the deflator used to convert nominal into real …

The Influence Of Publicly-Traded Reits And Market-Based Inflation Expectations On Daily-Priced Private Commercial Real Estate Returns, Tiffany Burns Gherlone

Doctoral Dissertations (DBA)

Investors requiring daily Net Asset Values (NAV) represent a large and growing source of capital for the private institutional real estate asset class. Defined contribution and other daily-valued vehicles are increasing their investments into private, direct commercial real estate through funds that estimate changes to income and values in order to mark a daily NAV. Utilizing nine years of daily data from the NCREIF Fund Index – Daily Priced, we optimize a generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model with generalized error distribution parameterization (GARCH-GED) to better understand the influence of publicly-traded real estate securities and changes in market-implied inflation expectations on …

Could An Alternative Policy Design Have Produced A Stronger Mortgage Modification Outcome For Hamp?, Sean Macdonald

Publications and Research

This paper conducts a study of the relative effectiveness of the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) - the primary federal mortgage loan modification program - from early 2009 through 2016. It evaluates U.S. Treasury Department and other data sources, and reviews the recent literature on the relative success of the program. The analysis suggests that HAMP’s success rate in modifying mortgage loans was likely constrained by its voluntary design, a structure that enabled lenders and servicers to prioritize the interests of investors in assessing the risks of modification. It then considers the economic issues surrounding the foreclosure issue and presents …

Optimal Portfolio Choices And The Determination Of Housing Rents Under Housing Market Uncertainty, Gang-Zhi Fan, Ming Pu, Xiaoying Deng, Seow Eng Ong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study proposes a utility indifference-based model to investigate the pricing issue of house rents under housing market uncertainty. Our model not only allows for the crucial features in the housing market, such as market incompleteness and high idiosyncratic risk, but also the interaction of households’ house tenure choices with their financial asset holdings. Our model provides interesting insights into the hedging of house market risk and determination of housing rents. In addition to the parameters describing the expected changes and volatility on stock and house returns, we also show that individual precautionary savings motive, idiosyncratic risk premium, and the …

The Impact Of The Cost Of Car Ownership On House Price Gradient In Singapore, Naqun Huang, Jing Li, Amanda Ross

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper examines the extent to which a change in the cost of car ownership affects the house price gradient with respect to distance from the central business district (CBD). Theory suggests that if the cost of car ownership increases, then people will shift towards other modes of transportation, thus reducing house prices farther away from the CBD. However, the cost of car ownership is likely to be endogenous and correlated with various unobserved factors that also contribute to a change in the house price gradient. To obtain causal effects, we exploit a unique feature of Singapore’s car registration process. …

A Cross-Sectional Exploration Of Household Financial Reactions And Homebuyer Awareness Of Registered Sex Offenders In A Rural, Suburban, And Urban County., John Charles Navarro

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As stigmatized persons, registered sex offenders betoken instability in communities. Depressed home sale values are associated with the presence of registered sex offenders even though the public is largely unaware of the presence of registered sex offenders. Using a spatial multilevel approach, the current study examines the role registered sex offenders influence sale values of homes sold in 2015 for three U.S. counties (rural, suburban, and urban) located in Illinois and Kentucky within the social disorganization framework. Homebuyers were surveyed to examine whether awareness of local registered sex offenders and the homebuyer’s community type operate as moderators between home selling …

Epic: A Real Property Investment And Management Company, James E. Larsen

Finance and Financial Services Faculty Publication

No abstract provided.

The Liquidity Crisis, Investor Sentiment, And Reit Returns And Volatility, Daniel Huerta, Peter V. Egly, Diego Escobari

Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

The real estate investment trust (REIT) industry experienced a liquidity crisis resulting from reduced access to credit commitments as banks were restoring their balance sheets during the 2007–2009 financial crisis. Employing generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) models, we examine the impact of the liquidity crisis and investor sentiment on REIT returns and volatility over the December 2001 to February 2013 period. We find that the liquidity crisis negatively impacts REIT returns and helps explain increases in volatility; this finding is robust to multiple specifications. We show that investor sentiment is a significant factor in the REIT return-generating process with institutional …

On The Effectiveness Of Housing Purchase Restriction Policy In China: A Difference In Difference Approach, Jerry X. Cao, Bihong Huang, Rose Neng Lai

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The Chinese government imposed the purchase restriction policy to rein in the housing bubble in 2010. Using a two-stage difference-in-difference approach and a comprehensive dataset covering the real estate markets across 70 cities, we find that the policy triggered substantial decline in the property price and transaction volume. Cities having higher reliance on real estate sector for fiscal revenue and economic growth experienced greater decline in housing prices following the policy implementation. However, the policy had no measurable effects on the nationwide construction boom, hinting the ineffectiveness of the policy to correct the housing bubble.

Words Worth Price And Value, Tom Dunne

Articles

TOM DUNNE explains the terms used in relation to the valuation of property, and the need for common understanding among all parties using those terms. -

Parallels Between The U.S. And Asian Property Markets, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

U.S. home prices are on an upswing. What does this mean for the Asian property market?

Government Influence And The Failure Of Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac, Aravind Mohan

Honors Theses

In 2008 two government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were placed into conservatorship due to insolvency. The financial bailout of the two publically traded corporations came at the expense of the American tax payer. This study investigates the relationship between direct and indirect government influence and the increasing risk taking of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from the late 1990’s through their conservatorship in 2008. As government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have many special advantages that other publically traded companies did not possess. These advantages allowed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase their profitability. Theoretical literature …

The Impact Of A Letter Of Map Amendment On Flood Plain Property Value, James E. Larsen

Finance and Financial Services Faculty Publication

Substantial empirical evidence indicates properties across the United States that are located within a Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA) sell at a discount compared to similar properties otherwise located. This result is also true in our sample. Researchers have suggested the price discount equals a combination of the present value of the required flood insurance premiums and the value of uninsurable costs. To identify the portion of the discount applicable to each component, analysts have been required to estimate applicable insurance premiums and to assume a discount rate. The present paper presents a methodology that does not require these prerequisites, …

The Dogs Of The Dow In China, Carol Wang, James E. Larsen, M. Fall Ainina, Marlena L. Akhbari, Nicholas Gressis

Finance and Financial Services Faculty Publication

The unique institutional environment of China's stock markets provides a rich setting to study the relationship between investors‟ behavior and market returns in the case of information inefficiency. This study extends the well documented Dogs of the Dow (Dow Dogs) strategy to China's A share stock market. We find that Dow Dogs portfolios significantly outperform the market benchmark for the period of 1994 to 2009 in China's markets. Further analysis indicates that (1) The fewer Dogs included in the portfolio, the greater the portfolio abnormal returns; (2) In general, the shorter holding period (in months), the greater the portfolio abnormal …

Why The Dogs Of The Dow Bark Loudly In China, Carol Wang, James E. Larsen, M. Fall Ainina, Marlena L. Akhbari, Nicholas Gressis

Finance and Financial Services Faculty Publication

Problem statement: The Dogs of the Dow (Dow Dogs) strategy, which has gained widespread popularity in the U.S., is found to be considerably successful in China’s stock markets. This trading strategy contradicts the well-established efficient market hypothesis. Approach: This study examines the cross-sectional variations in the magnitude of the predictive power of the Dow Dogs strategy using Chinese stocks for 1994-2009. Results: Our results suggest that (1) Significant Dow Dogs effect apply to Class A shares, but not Class B shares; (2) Stocks priced between 1and1and5 demonstrate the strongest Dogs effect among all stock price ranges; (3) Changes in share …

Origins And Resolution Of Financial Crises: Lessons From The Current And Northern European Crises, Finn Østrup, Lars Oxelheim, Clas Wihlborg

Business Faculty Articles and Research

Since July 2007, the world economy has experienced a severe financial crisis that originated in the U.S. housing market. Subsequently, the crisis has spread to financial sectors in European and Asian economies and led to a severe worldwide recession. The existing literature on financial crises rarely distinguishes between factors that create the original strain on the financial sector and factors that explain why these strains lead to system-wide contagion and a possible credit crunch. Most of the literature on financial crises refers to factors that cause an original disruption in the financial system. We argue that a financial crisis with …

Real Estate Mutual Funds: A Style Analysis, Crystal Lin, Kenneth Yung

Finance Faculty Publications

We find that the characteristics of real estate related securities are different from those of the general common equities. To help investors understand better the products offered by real estate mutual funds, we develop style descriptors that are specifically created for real estate related securities. Among the universe of real estate securities, we find real estate funds tilt toward large stocks and favor growth moderately over value. Growth managers outperform value mangers in this sector by 1.51% to 2.30% per year. However, there is evidence of shifts in the investment style among the funds. Our results help investors in evaluating …