Thesis Research
2010 Theses
Following are a selection of theses abstracts by members of the Class of 2010. Alums and Partners, join MITREX (The MIT Real Estate Exchange) to download complete theses. For non MITREX members, theses can be purchased from the MIT Libraries.
Can We Use Cap Rates to Better Allocate Investments in Commercial Real Estate in a Dynamic Portfolio?
Stylianos Avramidis
Abstract
International Diversification Opportunities for Real Estate Investment Portfolios: A Fresh Look Focusing on Private Real Estate After the Great Crash
Onousa Boontanorm
Abstract
Volatility of Hotel Market Fundamentals and the Determinants of Variations Between Markets
Brian Cason
Abstract
Property-Level Proformance Attribution: Demonstrating a Practical Tool for Real Estate Investment Management Diagnostics
Tony Feng
Abstract
Determinants of Private Real Estate Fund Proformance 2004 - 2010: The Roller Coaster Ride
Andrew Gallinaro
Abstract
An Analysis of Sovereign Wealth Funds and International Real Estate Investments
Yoohoon Jeon
Pulkit Sharma
Abstract
Examination of the Real Estate Market Risk and Volatility Focusing on the U.S. Office Property
Hyunjae Kim
Abstract
Agency Risk in CMBS Default Resolution - A Case Study of the Peter Cooper Village - Stuyvesant Town Mortgage Loan
Hengwa Lai
Abstract
Resort Real Estate: An Economic Analysis of Second Home Pricing Behavior in Park City, Utah
Brady Larsen
Abstract
Frontier Market Analysis and Investments: A Case Study of Iraq's Real Estate Industry
Steven Watkins
Abstract
Can We Use Cap Rates to Better Allocate Investments in Commercial Real Estate in a Dynamic Portfolio?
Stylianos Avramidis
Advisor: Walter N. Torous, Visiting Professor, Center for Real Estate
This thesis has a two-fold objective, namely to explore the role of cap rates in predicting the returns to commercial real estate, and to identify how cap rates can be used to improve the allocation of real estate in a dynamic investment portfolio.
Seeking an answer to the first question, we run predictive regressions using data for real estate “All Properties” and for all four major property types, examining the predictability power of cap rates for a forecasting horizon from one to four quarters in the future. Moreover, we examine whether or not stock dividend-price ratio can predict real estate returns, and examine the predictability of stock returns by cap rates and dividend-price ratio.
The analysis confirms that both cap rates and the dividend-price ratio can predict real estate “All Properties” returns for up to one year in the future. Concerning the analysis per property type, the results vary from property type to property type, and for different forecast horizons. Moreover, the analysis shows that stock returns can be predicted by the dividend-price ratio at all forecast horizons, whereas the cap rates seem to have somewhat limited predictive power regarding the stock returns.
We approach the second question by following the dynamic portfolio allocation methodology proposed by Brandt and Santa-Clara (2006). We expand the existing set of “basis” assets comprised of stocks and real estate to include “conditional” portfolios, and then compute the portfolio weights of this expanded set of assets by applying the Markowitz solution to the optimization problem. We apply this methodology to three different portfolio rebalancing horizons. Moreover, we work with three cases for each portfolio, i.e. with the unconditional case, with the case where the dividend-price ratio is the only conditioning variable, and with the case where the cap rate is the second conditioning variable.
In almost all instances the results confirm that, by adding the cap rate as an additional state variable, the performance of the portfolios increases significantly. The same conclusion stands when we impose a “no shorting” restriction to real estate, although now the role of cap rates seems somewhat less significant.
International Diversification Opportunities for Real Estate Investment Portfolios: A Fresh Look Focusing on Private Real Estate After the Great Crash
Onousa Boontanorm
Advisor: David Geltner, Professor, Real Estate Finance
This thesis explores the topic of diversification opportunities in international real estate, with focus on private real estate markets in developed countries. In examining the characteristics of returns and interrelatedness between international real estate, stocks and bonds markets from the time period spanning 2000 to 2009, we find that 2008 was the only year within the past decade in which several countries saw synchronized negative returns on a calendar year basis in the stocks and real estate markets, and even so the synchronized negative returns was only experienced by half of the countries within the 10-country opportunity set. The amplitude of the peak to trough drop in the cumulative value of the assets was small in real estate on average relative to that of stocks. These findings suggest that investors’ should benefit from holding international real estate within their portfolios, even in an extreme down market.
Modern portfolio theory is used to analyze and compare ex-ante diversification opportunities in international real estate, stocks and bonds and domestic diversification opportunities for the three asset classes from the perspectives of U.S. and European investors. We project expected returns for each of the markets and used historical risks (volatility) from the 2000-2009 period as estimates for volatility. When returns are calculated in local currencies, international diversification in the real estate portfolio (diversified within a 10-country opportunity set) should help U.S. investors substantially improve their portfolio risk-return efficiency relative to domestic diversification (within a 6-metropolitan area opportunity set), as the markets within the U.S. domestic opportunity set provide unattractive risk-return efficiency and their movements are highly correlated. By contrast, European investors will benefit less from the same international diversification strategy relative to domestic diversification (within 5 Eurozone countries) as several Eurozone markets are able to provide considerable risk-return efficiency and low correlations can be found in some pairs of markets.
Applying home bias and limits on exposure to any single country i.e. country caps to the portfolio allocation helps to balance the allocation weights for the investor’s portfolio but also significantly limits the investor’s ability to take advantage of diversification opportunities provided by the international markets. When returns are calculated in the investors’ domestic currencies, additional currency risk increases the portfolio volatility without providing additional expected return, reducing diversification benefits of international real estate. Even so, international diversification potential to U.S. investors should still be considerable, while that to European investors’ should be minimal.
Volatility of Hotel Market Fundamentals and the Determinants of Variations Between Markets
Brian Cason
Advisor: William Wheaton, Professor, Department of Economics
This thesis explores the topic of diversification opportunities in international real estate, with focus on private real estate markets in developed countries. In examining the characteristics of returns and interrelatedness between international real estate, stocks and bonds markets from the time period spanning 2000 to 2009, we find that 2008 was the only year within the past decade in which several countries saw synchronized negative returns on a calendar year basis in the stocks and real estate markets, and even so the synchronized negative returns was only experienced by half of the countries within the 10-country opportunity set. The amplitude of the peak to trough drop in the cumulative value of the assets was small in real estate on average relative to that of stocks. These findings suggest that investors’ should benefit from holding international real estate within their portfolios, even in an extreme down market.
Modern portfolio theory is used to analyze and compare ex-ante diversification opportunities in international real estate, stocks and bonds and domestic diversification opportunities for the three asset classes from the perspectives of U.S. and European investors. We project expected returns for each of the markets and used historical risks (volatility) from the 2000-2009 period as estimates for volatility. When returns are calculated in local currencies, international diversification in the real estate portfolio (diversified within a 10-country opportunity set) should help U.S. investors substantially improve their portfolio risk-return efficiency relative to domestic diversification (within a 6-metropolitan area opportunity set), as the markets within the U.S. domestic opportunity set provide unattractive risk-return efficiency and their movements are highly correlated. By contrast, European investors will benefit less from the same international diversification strategy relative to domestic diversification (within 5 Eurozone countries) as several Eurozone markets are able to provide considerable risk-return efficiency and low correlations can be found in some pairs of markets.
Applying home bias and limits on exposure to any single country i.e. country caps to the portfolio allocation helps to balance the allocation weights for the investor’s portfolio but also significantly limits the investor’s ability to take advantage of diversification opportunities provided by the international markets. When returns are calculated in the investors’ domestic currencies, additional currency risk increases the portfolio volatility without providing additional expected return, reducing diversification benefits of international real estate. Even so, international diversification potential to U.S. investors should still be considerable, while that to European investors’ should be minimal.
Property-Level Proformance Attribution: Demonstrating a Practical Tool for Real Estate Investment Management Diagnostics
Tony Feng
Advisor: David Geltner, Professor, Real Estate Finance
Real estate investment firms have the ever increasing need for understanding their firm’s strengths and weaknesses, their performance relative to their peers and competitors, and for developing assessment tools for facilitating more informed investment and management decisions. One potentially very useful tool to further these objectives, a tool that is so far underutilized and underappreciated, is investment performance attribution analysis. Such performance attribution may be broadly characterized as the partitioning of the total investment return of a particular manager or portfolio in order to quantify and help to understand and assess the components and determinants of the overall investment performance.
Traditional investment attribution analysis, adopted from the securities investment industry, has focused primarily on the portfolio level, where property selection and allocation factors are the two primary attributes of total return that can be parsed and benchmarked. In the case of real estate investments, property-level investment functions such as operational management and asset transaction execution, which are not captured by a traditional attribution analysis, also play a major role in the overall investment returns.
During the past two decades a system to drill the investment performance attribution down to a deeper level, separating the asset “selection” component into further breakouts, including income return and components of the capital return (cash flow change and yield change), have been propounded by influential firms such as the Investment Property Databank (IPD) based in the UK. In a 2003 article David Geltner proposed a system for property-level performance attribution (PPA) based on the since-inception IRR of each individual property investment.
This thesis furthered Geltner’s work on PPA by an in depth exploration of the application of the IRR-Based Property-Level Performance Attribution analysis based on a large-scale, real-world-based case study of a complete set of actual core-asset round-trip transactions completed by several internally managed funds in the institutional investment industry. Furthermore, this thesis explored the use of PPA for organizational management diagnostics, and thereby demonstrated the potential of using the PPA analysis as an investigative tool for developing plausible hypotheses about a firm’s investment management strengths and weaknesses.
Determinants of Private Real Estate Fund Proformance 2004 - 2010: The Roller Coaster Ride
Andrew Gallinaro
Advisor: David Geltner, Professor, Real Estate Finance
The National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF) real estate fund database was analyzed for the time period 2004-2010. Real Estate funds were grouped in to three categories: core, value-add and opportunistic. The thesis explores several possible determinants of fund performance during the time period which was examined. Ultimately, the analysis indicates that there was generally no systematic indication that a given fund’s characteristic(s) would portend either better or worse performance. The analysis did however yield the conclusion that in general core funds displayed a negative correlation between returns and leverage ratio. Finally, the thesis demonstrates the material difference in measured absolute and relative performance of opportunity funds when two different metrics are used: Time Weighted Return (TWR) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR).
An Analysis of Sovereign Wealth Funds and International Real Estate Investments
Yoohoon Jeon
Pulkit Sharma
Advisor: William Wheaton, Professor, Department of Economics
In recent times Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) have become an important source of international real estate investments. A number of reports predict the swelling of SWF combined assets from its current figure of $3-4 trillion to $8-12 trillion by 2015. It is also expected that a continuous growth in fiscal surpluses and accumulation of wealth by SWF nations may soon make the combined size of SWFs bigger than other capital market segments such as mutual funds and pension funds. This phenomenal projected growth in SWF assets has created an indispensable need to create and manage a diversified and robust international mixed-asset portfolio. This thesis investigates the relevance of real estate in the SWF portfolio from an execution strategy and portfolio hedging perspective.
The real estate strategy section introduces SWFs and their real estate investment behavior and trends. The authors collected execution strategy data by conducting open-ended interviews with real estate leaders of four major SWFs that invest in real estate and nine senior executives representing global real estate investment management and consulting firms. The interview responses are used to understand several topics ranging from the investment objectives and risk spectrum to future trends in SWF real estate investments. The thesis findings reveal the synergies and differences in the views of the two communities and also describe the execution preferences of SWF investors from the purview of their international real estate portfolio.
The portfolio-hedging section uses a macro-economic time series model based on long-term asset returns to determine the best hedges for four SWFs (Oil-based, China, Singapore and Korea) in three foreign destinations namely the UK, the US and Japan considering real estate and stocks as the two asset classes. The vector auto-regression (VAR) model presents an extended time series analysis that tests correlations, Granger causality and impulse responses between different home asset and foreign destination pairs. The thesis further illustrates through a simple stylized sub-portfolio analysis the optimal asset allocation between stocks, long-term bonds and real estate for the above combinations. The results show evidence that foreign real estate is an effective hedge against the changes in the home source of wealth for most SWFs. The time series hedging model is fed by long-term asset return data and can be replicated for other SWFs to determine their unique investment strategy. Further, the findings challenge the low allocations given by SWFs to real estate in their global portfolio.
Examination of the Real Estate Market Risk and Volatility Focusing on the U.S. Office Property
Hyunjae Kim
Advisor: William Wheaton, Professor, Department of Economics
The high risk and volatility in the current real estate market has sparked investor interest in understanding what determines real estate market volatility. This study examines the U.S. office markets' overall and decomposed volatilities in vacancy and revenue across 45 metropolitan areas from 1987 to 2010. The relationships of the volatilities with economic and physical market characteristics are also analyzed. The study examines five overall or decomposed market volatilities: volatility in vacancy, volatility in revenue, demand-oriented vacancy change volatility, occupancy-oriented revenue change, and covariance of occupancy rent change. The linear regression analyses are used to explain the movements of the volatilities with market determinants, which include market size, employment growth, jobs in specific industries, submarket structures and geography. This study finds that geographical land availability and employment growth are significantly important for predicting market volatilities. Market size does not affect the decomposed volatility, but it reduces overall vacancy change volatility. Moreover, submarket structure becomes more meaningful when the revenue change volatility is decomposed into occupancy and rent changes. This study gives developers some tools for strategic decision-making in office property development issues.
Agency Risk in CMBS Default Resolution - A Case Study of the Peter Cooper Village - Stuyvesant Town Mortgage Loan
Hengwa Lai
Advisor: W. Tod McGrath, Lecturer, Center for Real Estate
Between 2010 and 2018, approximately $410 billion of maturing CMBS loans are expected not to able to refinance; that is, they are in high risk of default. The current real estate downturn has not only pushed delinquencies to a historic high but has also inflicted losses to bondholders. When losses are realized through foreclosure, junior bondholders can have the face amount of their investment significantly reduced with no cash payment, while the senior bondholders receive partial repayment of their investment at par. Alternatively, loan modifications, or workouts, yield different outcomes which are more favorable to the junior bondholders. The rising tide of loan defaults and loan workouts will certainly exacerbate the ongoing "tranche war" among the CMBS bondholders. Consequently, it is imperative to understand how the CMBS servicing structure governs default resolution and loan workouts. By analyzing the recent default of Peter Cooper Village-Stuyvesant Town, this study will examine the case of the largest commercial real estate default in the US history as a real life example to illustrate whether the overlapping role of B-Piece buyer and Special Servicer adversely affects workout prudence. Through interviews with industry professionals and a review of the Pooling and Servicing Agreement (PSA), and a review of the transcript of the CMBS Investment Grade Bondholder Forum in June, 2010, the study proposes structural changes that could potentially mitigate agency risk inherent in the current servicing structure.
Resort Real Estate: An Economic Analysis of Second Home Pricing Behavior in Park City, Utah
Brady Larsen
Advisor: William Wheaton, Professor, Department of Economics
The purpose of this research project is to examine the market pricing behavior of vacation homes in resort property markets. To accomplish this a price index is constructed to track real price fluctuations from 1981 to 2010 for the 3 localized ski resort markets in Park City, Utah. The resulting price indices reveal a history of cyclical price movements, and surprising long-term real price depreciation of 12% to 25% between 1981 and 2010.
To determine the causes of the cyclical movements in the price indices, time series analysis is performed, and a model created to predict market behaviors based on past levels of price, construction, and skier days.
The results of this exercise reveal that the number of annual skier days in the area is an effective representative of demand for housing, and that the local ski business has a considerable effect on real estate prices. Additionally, it is revealed that Park City’s ski business is largely affected by national economic conditions, more so than by both regional economical conditions and local snowfall.
The analysis concludes that despite the thirty year decline in real prices, the Park City resort market behaves as a well functioning, healthy market. The model indicates that while increases in prices do stimulate new construction, the growth in the total number of dwelling units reveals a relatively inelastic supply market. This suggests that any growth in demand should be accompanied with long-term price appreciation. Market forecasts based on various demand scenarios indicate that except in the most pessimistic cases, prices in Park City should experience healthy appreciation in the near to mid future.
It is believed that these findings can be applicable to various resort markets.
Frontier Market Analysis and Investments: A Case Study of Iraq's Real Estate Industry
Steven Watkins
Advisor: John Kennedy, Lecturer, Center for Real Estate
Success in frontier markets could mean high returns for real estate developers and investors. In order to succeed, companies must determine how to provide their products or services in an environment that may not necessarily adhere to familiar institutional, legal or even ethical norms.
Strategists may never feel informed enough to make educated decisions because there is not enough data to populate sophisticated financial models. However investors and multinationals have a growing desire to gain exposure to underdeveloped markets. This leaves managers with the challenge of evaluating frontier investment markets and navigating risky foreign business environments. This thesis attempts to answer the following question: to what extent can a researcher establish a viable framework to strategically plan for and operate in frontier market built environments?
To answer this question, this thesis shall first address the nature of “frontier markets,” then proposes a framework for entrepreneurs or multinationals intending to penetrate a frontier market’s built environment through either direct investing or real estate development. The framework is a qualitative model, a compilation of analysis tools used by scholars, economists, political scientists, and investors working with and in emerging markets. The framework assesses markets on a broader, strategic echelon as well as an operational business management level. 4 Frontier Market Analysis: Iraq’s Real Estate Industry
Lastly, we populate the framework with current information from Iraq, one of the most challenging and interesting frontier markets in the world today. The conclusion assesses the utility of the framework by highlighting information voids as well as potential business opportunities.
The conclusion articulates that frontier market analysis will never be as valid as analysis of the developed markets because frontier markets are inefficient and information is difficult to ascertain, thus satisfying the definition of “frontier market". The analysis framework will not yield empirical findings like accurate forecasts of NPV, PV, IRR, etc. It will return, qualitatively, institutional voids in potential business opportunities.
