This thesis considers the (over)promotion of formal home ownership, and the parallel neglect of rental housing, in international development policy and practice. Using a qualitative methodology, which incorporates policy analysis, as well as interviews and focus groups with key informants and informal residents, this research has moved beyond broad, singular conceptualisations of the ‘slum’. Instead, this study offers an insight into the multiple lived experiences of informal urban housing, in the context of a tenure-biased policy landscape. Research with informal residents was carried out exclusively with members of community-led groups who are in the process of resettling to formal plots on the margins of Dar es Salaam city. Drawing upon Foucaultian governmentality scholarship, the findings of this study highlight the centrality of housing tenure in notions of being counted, recognition and urban citizenship. The research findings highlight the complexities of informal urban housing, drawing particular attention to the everyday realities of renting shelter in the urban private rental market. In exploring the lived realities of informal housing in Dar es Salaam, this thesis uncovers the everyday realities of a wholesale neglect of the private rental sector in policy and the lack of recognition of private renters by the Tanzanian state. Using two distinct case-studies of forced eviction in Dar es Salaam, this thesis interrogates the process and management of eviction, demonstrating the centrality of tenure in determining the validity of claims for state support and recognition and in shaping state-citizen relations. In engaging with members of community-led groups that are resettling, and have resettled, to formal plots on the urban fringe, this thesis further scrutinises the positioning of individual, formal home ownership as a universal normative ideal. This research considers resettlement as a considered strategy by informal residents to achieve a sense of belonging in Dar es Salaam, a performance of citizenship. Yet, this thesis questions ‘resettlement’ as an optimum strategy for securing an officially recognised place in the city. This thesis will consider the complex hopes, dreams and trade-offs made in decisions to resettle and consider the implications of resettlement for notions of a right to the city.

Servitization strategy has become more popular recently within academic literature. Achieving sustainable competitive advantage, based upon services provision, is claimed to be a viable proposition for modern businesses. A strategic view emerging from the literature is that offering services enables closer and longer-term customer relationships. This relationship directs organizations‘ marketing offerings toward customers‘ needs, and promotes a prompt response to dynamic changes in the business environment. There has, however, been little evidence captured on the application of aspects of servitization within real estate development. Prompted by the expected outcome of a servitization strategy, this research is conducted to investigate servitization in the context of the Jordanian real estate development to identify the prospects and challenges of servitization for the real estate development industry, and to examine the role of servitization as a source of competitive advantage through the lens of the Resource-Based View Theory. A qualitative case study research is adopted, and the principles of the Delphi study have been applied. The research examines eight real estate development companies managing multiple building projects in Jordan. Data was collected from the case studies in incremental multiple stages. The primary data was collected using a series of open-ended questions based on three rounds of Delphi: 42 interviews were carried out in the first round, followed by 23 interviews in the second round and 11 interviews in the third round. The findings indicate that service provision has become an essential element of the real estate development project. The output of the real estate development industry becomes systems of both project components and added services. These systems are the result of servitization strategies in the real estate development industry that shifts its focus from only designing and selling a physical output to delivering systems of services integrated to the project, which together are capable of adding more customer value. The research identifies several types of services, which are used to develop the four categories of servitization in the real estate development industry. These categories are referred to as project-oriented, product-oriented, customer-oriented and service-oriented. The research develops the value chain of servitization strategy and it was found that offering services in real estate development is an incremental process (e.g. based upon circular, iterative and on-going development). Offering basic services such as project-orientated services and product-orientated services adds more value for customers and makes the project more valuable. Providing these basic services has become one of the project performance dimensions to fulfil the market ―order qualifier‖ criteria. However, offering basic services will not ensure competitive success. More advanced services such as customer-orientated-services need to be provided to enhance the project‘s competitive advantage. Offering advanced services tailors the project toward customer needs and enhances customer satisfaction. These advanced services are considered the base of order-winner criteria to win the contract. Still, real estate development projects need to consider the longterm life of a project‘s outcomes. This long-term nature of projects requires service provision that supports project functionality and assures product stability. Offering after-sale services builds customer trust, inspires customer confidence and assures customers of reliable long-term support. It is these system solutions that shape the order-winning criteria. Realizing the important role of services, this research develops a model to put servitization strategy into action in the context of the real estate development industry. The research supports the application of the Resource-based View Theory. Offering services develops distinct capabilities necessary to achieve competitive advantage. This competitive advantage is achieved by adopting three main aspects; i. offering a comprehensive approach of project-service systems; ii. linking the strategic decisions of service provision to project operations management, and iii. collecting data and information that provide the organization with unique market insights. This research extends existing literature on servitization and its implication for building projects and providing insights to support future decision-makers in providing services in real estate development. Also, the research provides a comprehensive review of servitization strategy in the building sector and a platform base on which more indepth research into more focused topics of the servitization phenomenon could be carried out. Furthermore, the research has potential to contribute to other project-based businesses and develops cross-industry knowledge.

This doctorate explores key aspects of the economics of housing by examining Ireland's housing market bubble of the early 2000s. For earlier chapters, the main source material is a previously unused dataset of almost two million property listings, covering the entire country from 2006 until 2012, maintained by property website daft.ie. An initial chapter outlines stylised facts of Ireland's housing market 2007-2012, including a greater spread of prices over property size in the crash but a narrower spread of rents. In contrast, the geographical spread of prices and rents was largely unchanged. The spread of rents was constrained relative to the spread of prices, suggesting either renter search thresholds or buyer "lock-in" effects. To examine which was at work, the daft.ie dataset is combined with information on a range of amenities, including landscape, transport, education, social capital and market depth. Overall, there is clear evidence that the rent effects of a range of amenities are smaller than the price effects. There is limited evidence of procyclical amenity pricing, which would indicate "lock-in" effects, with the analysis suggesting instead countercyclical pricing, or "property ladder" effects during the bubble. Results from these analyses are based on listed price and rents, rather than transaction prices. The relationship between the two is examined in a separate chapter, using an additional Central Bank of Ireland dataset on mortgages. The spread between list and sale prices gap that exists between the two is decomposed into four parts, a selection spread, a matching spread, a counteroffer spread and a drawdown spread. A selection spread of up to 10% emerged in the Irish housing market after 2009, while the counteroffer spread was positive before 2009 but negative for much of the period 2009-2011. The final chapter uses both inverted-demand and price-rent ratio methods to examine the long-run determinants of house prices in Ireland from 1980 on. In addition to careful treatment of standard fundamentals, it includes a measure of credit conditions as well as the ratio of persons to households, both contributions to the literature. The resulting inverted demand error-correction model shows a clear and stable long-run relationship, which is largely preserved when cointegration between series is explored. Similarly, a model of the price-rent ratio from 2000 shows clear error-correction properties. Together, they suggest that while a range of factors drove Irish house prices 1995-2001, credit conditions were largely responsible for the subsequent increase.

This thesis aims to provide an approach to real estate residential modeling and forecasting covering property types’ correlation, time series attributes within a region or a city, and socio-economic attributes of preferred real estate locations. The thesis covers residential estate markets and concentrates on property types, while previous studies that have considered country wide house price indices. There is a gap identified in the literature in the need to study correlations between property types within a region or a city and whether they will provide diversification benefits for real estate investors such as risk reduction per unit of returns. The thesis concentrates on property type seasonality in addition to modeling time series attributes within a region or city instead of real estate index seasonality. This thesis the first to combine modern information systems techniques such as geographic information systems (GIS) with socio-economic factors to help understanding causal relationships that can be used to forecast real estate prices. The results show that it is more achievable to forecast real estate prices within a city than for the real estate market of the entire country. The GIS and socio-economic modeling results show that higher property prices are awarded to real estate with more green spaces, residents with higher disposable incomes, lower council tax bands, fewer tax benefits claimants, and better health services. Previous studies have examined real estate price indices at the macro level (the general, all real estate house price indices). There has not been a study that examines real estate price forecasts by property types within a city. The contribution of this thesis is its focus on time series analysis as well as causal modeling within a city with the objective of providing a better understanding of the dynamics of real estate price changes.