published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

Nowadays, as people have higher aspiration for quality of life, the way they value housing no longer looks for provision of fixed structure and physical comfort, but also the pleasure they enjoy from the spatial fixity and the service available in attached with the property. Historically, hedonic pricing model is the most popular way for valuation of housing by modeling the implicit price of attributes comprised in a residential premise. This research, based on the hedonic pricing framework, creatively and skillfully adopts the experimentation method to measure the value property management services in the residential properties in Hong Kong. After a thorough literature on both development of property management as well as the determinants and appraisal of property value, the experiment manipulates the criteria that potential property buyers would consider and simulate the information processing environment for decision making of home purchase, through which the value of property management services is then measured from the users' perspective. The experiment result confirms the importance of property management services, and statistically testifies the hypotheses to reveal the interaction between property management and property value. It finds that property management services in general have contribution to the value of the property being managed, and higher quality of service significantly contributes more. Even for same service quality, the role of property management becomes prominent to inferior grade of residential building, or presents larger impact when the property depreciates over time. Adoptability of experiment methodology is successfully justified. Hedonic regression approach in return examines the setting of the experiment and proves its subsequent result. Experimentation not only provides a powerful way of moving beyond simple questions about "do you think property management is important" or "how important is it" in normal survey, but also makes real time data available rather than analyzing the historical property transaction records in common hedonic modeling. People's appreciation to the intangible management services is well and truly measured from careful experimental arrangement. Such result surely expands the application of hedonic pricing model in measuring the magnitude of an intrinsic attribute, and provides good reference to the property management industry, real estate developers, academic researchers, and the society at large. / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

In the past decade, the nature of the property management service has been changing from providing basic elements such as cleansing, security, maintenance etc. to nowadays more and more added value services which have been applied in the daily operations and in fact far away from the basic nature of property management service but with more personalized, tailor made services to be included in order to upgrade the service quality as well as enhance the customer satisfaction. Different kinds of added value services have been used such as the postal service, copy & fax service, dry cleaning, dinning booking etc. are commonly applied in the property management services. In recent ten years, the concept of residential concierge service has been widely introducing into the residential properties in Hong Kong. Such concept is generally copied from the concierge service in hospitality industry which the department provides the tailor made and personalized service to solve the customer’s enquire without saying “no” in order to delight the customer in every touch. The concierge service is easily to enhance the customer satisfaction if the service provided excessed the customer expectation. In this circumstance, the concept of the concierge service has been applied into residential property as the provision of residential concierge service somehow could represent the level of luxury of people who are living in the property. The property management company makes use of the residential concierge service to make its product or service different over other competitors. The impacts of the application of the service seem positive in view of the increment of the number of the application in these recent years. Actually, the residential concierge service in this several years is not the monopoly for luxury residential properties but becomes one of the necessary service or item to be included under property management services. It is easily to discover that most of the newly established residential properties are equipped with the residential concierge service and the service standard has been tended to professional as in hospitality industry. It is believed that the application of the service could upgrade the service quality, enhance the customer loyalty and eventually gain business and enhance company reputation. Nevertheless, the impacts of the application of the residential concierge services have not been proved as there are fewer studies had conducted in the past although the application of the concept in the property management industry has been widely used. It is valuable to have an in depth study in order to realize the influences and further areas of the application in the future. / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

This is an original study based on information in publicly available newspaper advertisements and other available documentary data that span a period of over 40 years on the changes in consumer preferences for housing attributes. The aim study is to evaluate Fong’s (2007) hypothesis, “The Hong Kong domestic ideal has moved from a concern for utility in 1970’s to a concern for quality and stylish living in 1990’s” using superior information. It traces the changes in advertisements by using the content analysis method and case studies. Reviewing 2,000 data sets drawn from samples of newspapers for four months out of each year for over 40 years from 1953 to 1992, it was found that the image of a flat, as created by developers, changed over time. Over the years, developers have sequentially made use of the listings of interior space, exterior space, and surrounded environments to emphasize the respective elements of an “ideal” home. These changes were well demonstrated by the real estate advertisements in Hong Kong. / published_or_final_version / Real Estate and Construction / Master / Master of Philosophy

The aim of this research is to investigate corporate behavior, including investment and financing decisions, when corporations face uncertainty and flexibility/inflexibility, and to explore the effects of this behavior on real option valuation. It expands the real options analysis framework into two paths: the first is to add institutional details, portfolio aspects and financial structure into the classical real option model; the other is to extend the real option model into a firm valuation model with corporate investment and financing decisions. Two types of theoretical models are developed. The first set of theoretical models follows the framework of binomial option pricing. Three binomial option pricing models are constructed to represent real estate development in Hong Kong, in which developable land has different flexibility in accordance with covenants in typical land lease contracts. First, the firm may have contractually limited time to complete the development following conversion of urban fringe/agricultural land into commercial/residential land after paying a negotiable “land premium”; second, it may buy land from the market without development time constraints; or thirdly it may buy land at public auction also with contractual development time constraints. The three binomial models deal with the flexibility/inflexibility in these land development circumstances imposed by institutional arrangements. Interaction effects from cost-saving through co-development and potential price increases through agglomeration effects from co-location of multiple options are included in the binomial models. The financial structure of the firm is also seen to influence real option values, because capital structure could imply different capital costs in the exercise of the real options, which is ignored in traditional real option theory. In addition to the traditional factors in financial option pricing models, numerical examples show that interaction effects and capital structure influence real option values and their investment thresholds. The second set of theoretical models aims to value both real flexibility and financial flexibility dynamically and simultaneously. Financial flexibility in the firm, which is seen as an important factor in the capital structure decision, is itself seen as analogous to a real option in project valuation, as the firm can use some debt capacity to invest in the opportunity but still preserve unused capacity for future opportunities. The thesis argues that the firm owns the financial flexibility to adjust its debt through sale of its existing assets or to use these as loan collateral. The firm with more collateralizable assets would have larger debt capacity, use more debt and invest more through the flexible utilization of debt capacity. Two empirical tests are conducted to confirm the findings of the theoretical models, structured into three principal hypotheses: firstly, real option value is not only determined by embedded flexibility, but also by the existing corporate asset structure through interactions and the firm’s ability to trade or collateralize its existing assets (properties); second, real option value and real option execution/investment is directly influenced by external financing decisions due to financial frictions and constraints; and thirdly, financial flexibility is expected to increase corporate investment through the collateral channel and lower cost of capital. The first empirical study uses project level land auction price data in Hong Kong to investigate the relationships between real options and firm fundamentals including interactions, constraints and financial structure. Three sub-hypotheses associated with principal hypotheses one and two about real option valuation are derived from the theoretical binomial option models. Sub-hypothesis one states that real option value is expected to increase if the firm has more properties that may interact with the property underlying a real option; two states that real option value is expected to decrease if the firm faces capital budgeting constraints when allocating resources among competing projects and high financing costs caused by financial frictions; and three, real option value is expected to increase if the firm has sufficient internal funds and financial flexibility to finance the opportunity. The empirical results support the sub-hypotheses. It is shown that the option premium embedded in the land price is not only related to real flexibility such as waiting to invest (as identified in traditional real option theory), but it also increases or decreases with the direct interactions with other properties, their competition for firm resources and the firm’s financial status. This links for the first time project level predictions of real option theory to firm fundamentals. The second empirical test investigates investment decisions and the influence of the firm’s financial flexibility. It tests principal hypotheses two and three about the effects of financial constraints, frictions and flexibility. Through the firm valuation model, sub-hypotheses four to six are derived. Sub-hypothesis four states that utilization of external funds relaxes financial constraints and induces investment in profitable opportunities; while the higher opportunity cost of external funds raises the investment threshold which reduces investment and lowers real option value. Sub-hypothesis five states that the firm with more collateralizable assets has lower investment thresholds in comparison with the firm relying on external capital with higher financing cost, and is divided into two: 5.1 states that the firm with more collateralizable assets would use more debt financing (because the collateralizable assets create low-risk debt capacity); and 5.2 states that the firm with more collateralizable assets would have access to debt at lower interest rates. Sub-hypothesis six states that existing debt reduces internal funds and debt capacity of the firm, leading to less investment and a higher investment threshold due to potentially high capital cost of external financing. Hong Kong real estate company data is employed to test the implications from the firm valuation model. The results can be summarized as follows: (1) debt level influences investment decisions, in which debt firstly relaxes the financial constraint for investment and then imposes financial frictions; (2) collateralizable assets increase investment by creating debt capacity if the firm faces financial constraints; (3) the firm has the ability to use more long term debt if it owns more collateralizable assets; (4) interest rates charged for long term debt reduces in the firm with more collateralizable assets; (5) financially constrained firms have to depend on substantial collateralizable assets to issue debt and invest. In sum, there is support for the functioning of a “collateral channel” at the firm level. / published_or_final_version / Real Estate and Construction / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

There were many termination cases of Property Managers by Owners ‘Corporations in Hong Kong. The so-called IO has the absolute power to appoint a building manager to manage their housing estate, factory or commercial building, etc. Previous studies are focused the conflicts, service quality and the DMC clauses to discuss the main reasons of termination. Conflicts has been arisen by many reasons, most likely are produced by property managers and developer by their management and staff performance, yet, the writer would like to find out any other reasons from the view of customer. Customers have various opinions for the service, how can the property managers find a way to maintain the management agreement and to get the satisfaction of owners? The goal of the study is to find out the main reason of the termination of the contract of a property management company, and what the committee members of owners ‘corporation expect the property managers to perform their job. The writer would consolidate the previous finding from the scholars and students who studied in customer relationship and service quality, and the topics of conflicts between the property managers and owners corporation. The writer would suggest some ideas to help the Property Managers to have a better working strategy when facing Owners’ Corporation. / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management