This basic primer covers the nuts and bolts of developing all types of real estate, including multifamily, office, retail, and industrial projects. Thoroughly updated, this new edition includes numerous case studies of actual projects as well as small-scale examples that are ideal for anyone new to real estate development.
"This book aims to present the arguments of the increasingly well-known French Marxist philosopher, sociologist and pioneer of urban studies, Henri Lefebvre, in order to develop a guide to practical action for urban planners, investors and even developers to influence the future of global real estate"--
Decision making in real estate development projects has generally undergone a number of important changes over the last decades. This transition represented a shift from governmentally dominated top-down spatial planning to bottom-up, public-private engagement schemes in real estate development (Tam et al. 2009). The new policy implies pluricentric network steering – in which several public and private parties play a role – instead of traditional hierarchical top-down governmental steering.
On 24 April 2013, Rana Plaza, a nine-storey building that housed five garment factories, a commercial bank and several retail shops, collapsed, killing more than 1,100 people. Had Bangladesh's well-regarded building code been enforced, the tragedy would never have occurred. Through an exploration of the process by which real estate development projects are approved and building construction overseen, this article attempts to provide an explanation for why there is such a wide gap between formal policy and actual implementation. Following such tragic events, elected officials come under considerable pressure from civil society groups and citizens to pass stronger legislation, and Bangladesh's political system, which concentrates power in the majority party and that party's leadership, allows for the relatively easy passage of legislation. Nonetheless, dramatic population growth and limited availability of land create powerful incentives for developers to evade these regulations. Collusion between developers, the regulator and high-level government officials responsible for overseeing the regulator has ensured that both the laws and court orders are unenforced.
It is well known that the traditional net present value (NPV) approach fails to take account of the multiple effects arising from the interactions of the operating and strategic flexibility during the course of a project. Option pricing theory (OPT) has been successfully applied in the valuation of both financial and real investments in the last two decades. However, it is still a relatively new approach in the valuation of real estate investments. This paper thus attempts to extend the application of OPT to the valuation of real estate development projects, providing insights into rectifying the limitations of traditional approaches. The paper starts with an overview of the development of OPT relating to real estate investments. It then examines the appraisal method adopted by the Government for Hong Kong Disneyland and explores the real options that may create added value to the project. A binomial option pricing model is proposed that estimates the potential values of the project with those options available. The study concludes that OPT is superior to NPV approach on the valuation of real estate investments in that it enhances upside potential as well as reducing downside risk.
This paper recasts the land development problems of Williams (1991) and Quigg (1993) by explicitly dealing with the effects of scale elasticity of unit rental and unit construction cost in a real estate project. Two different diseconomies of scale constraints are imposed on the rental and cost variables. We assume a concave function for the rental variable with respect to the scale of development. Whereas, on the cost side, the diseconomies of scale effect of the variable component of the construction cost is incorporated via a elasticity of scale factor that is larger than unity. The comparative statics simulated positive relationships between the premium that keeps the option of waiting to develop alive and the volatilities of the unit rental and unit construction cost. It was also found that the cost elasticity of scale and the financing cost are factors that increase the premium of the waiting option, whereas, the rental yield factor reduces the incentive of waiting. A high rental yield tends to expedite a development project because the opportunity cost of not developing the land is high. In the case analysis involving a vacant land of 8,000 square meters at Spitafield, East London, a unit rental of £267.2 per square meter (psm) is obtained, which would breakeven a cash flows of the project when the traditional "invest now or never" assumption is made. Compared with the optimal unit rental of £677.0 psm estimated by the real option model, the traditional DCF results tend to accept the feasibility of the real estate project too early and at too low a cut‐off rental.
Real estate developers often operate in oligopolistic environments. Pricing strategies must be made in an interactive framework that makes empirical evaluation difficult. This study appeals to economic experiments to examine how developers price their properties, especially when there is an option to market pre‐completed units. In addition, the interaction between bidding for land and pricing the end product is examined. The results indicate that competitor actions are important considerations in pricing decisions. In particular, the profit maximizing pricing strategy depends critically on being competitive, not necessarily being the most aggressive. Interestingly, pre‐completed units sell only at prices that incorporate future price expectations, and successful bids tend to precipitate more aggressive pricing. Finally, competitive bidding and pricing strategies appear to the best profit maximizing strategy.
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to introduce a novel decision‐making approach to risks assessment in commercial real estate development against social, economic, environmental, and technological (SEET) criteria. It therefore aims to describe a multiple criteria decision‐making model based on analytic network process (ANP) theory, and to use an experimental case study on an urban regeneration project in Liverpool to demonstrate the effectiveness of the ANP model.Design/methodology/approachThe paper commences with a description about risks related to commercial real estate development, and provides a list of risk assessment criteria based on literature review and experience in related areas. The ANP is then introduced as a powerful multicriteria decision‐making method. An experimental case study is finally conducted with scenarios and assumptions based on a real urban regeneration project in Liverpool.FindingsThe paper defines a group of risks assessment criteria against SEET requirements directly related to commercial real estate development. An ANP model is set up with 29 risks assessment criteria, and results from an experimental case study reveal that the ANP method is effective to support decision‐making based on risks assessment to select the most appropriate development plan; and therefore it is applicable in commercial area.Originality/valueThis paper defines SEET criteria for risks assessment in regard to SEET requirements to emphasise sustainable development; while the ANP is introduced to assess risks in commercial real estate development. The ANP model provides a platform for decision makers in commercial real estate development to evaluate different plans based on the degree of interactions among risk assessment criteria.
PurposeVolatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity (VUCA) are terms the military have coined to describe the environment they often operate in. This paper examines how this decision-making framework can be used to better inform real estate investment and development. In celebration of this journal's 40th anniversary, we also explore how VUCA can be related to and expand on the teachings of Dr. James A. Graaskamp who published his seminal piece on the Fundamentals of Real Estate Development (1981) the same year. In that piece, he highlights the importance of paying attention to the human factor, the consumers of real estate.Design/methodology/approachThis is a thought piece on an alternative decision-making framework that can help capture the dynamic environment that commercial real estate investors and developers are currently working in. VUCA captures the difficulty of predicting the future in a world of accelerating, unpredictable change. This is particularly important in today's rapidly changing world caused not only by the current COVID-19 pandemic but also the exponential growth of the proptech industry as well as the increasing risks and opportunities associated with climate change that continues to impact the built environment.FindingsThis is not a traditional research project with empirical findings. We are presenting an alternative framework for thinking about making investment decisions in these current volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous times today and in the future. In addition, the importance of multidisciplinary training and the human factor are stressed.Research limitations/implicationsThere are no limitations to this research as it is the ideas of the authors. Implications are to help real estate investors, developers and educators better understand the environment that they are working in.Practical implicationsVUCA captures better the dynamic nature of real estate investments compared to traditional analysis. It helps one better analyze the risks and returns but also to acknowledge that there is a lot you cannot predict and there are many exogenous variables that can, at times, completely change the rules of the game. Flexibility and adaptability are essential tools for working in a VUCA environment. In addition, the human factor plays an increasingly important role and real estate investors and developers that clearly understand this and focus on the consumer will likely be more successful.Originality/valueWe believe that this is the first time that VUCA has been used in the real estate academic literature.