Self storage has become a globally recognised and specialised property investment. Valuation guidelines and annual Industry surveys are available for mature self storage markets worldwide, but currently there is no published South African guideline for self storage expense ratios in terms of total expenses, direct facility operating expenses and portfolio management expenses. These expenses, which are necessary for valuation, are difficult to obtain in the market compared to rental rates, which are publicly advertised to potential tenants. A case study approach was shown to be the applicable research methodology. It was then explained that the methodology consisted of four stages: The first stage describes the method of data collection from the valuation literature and international annual industry surveys. The second stage describes the method of data collection from the international self storage industry by analysing financial statements of international publicly listed self storage portfolios. The third stage describes the method of data collection from South African self storage portfolio case studies. The fourth stage describes how the data is to be analysed to arrive at an expense ratio guideline for South African self storage portfolios. The methodology was then carried out to answer the four research questions.

This study investigates the determinants and predictability of listed property returns in South Africa based on the framework developed by Eugene Fama and Kenneth French. The study tests four asset pricing models, including the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) developed by Sharpe (1964) and Lintner (1965), the Fama and French (1993) 3-Factor model, a model which adds the South African Bond Index to the CAPM and finally a model which includes macroeconomic, market and firm specific factors. The empirical analysis makes use of macro-economic data and returns data of various portfolios of South African listed property stocks created based on a ranking of specific style factors. The style variables are size, momentum, liquidity, dividend yield, price to NAV, earnings yield, dividend growth, average cost of debt, loan to value ratio and the interest coverage ratio. The data was extracted from INET and the Muller and Ward (2015) data base which was subsequently updated by Shapiro (2016). The data sample extends over a 20-year period from January 1996 to December 2015. Ordinary least squares regression is used to determine the appropriateness of each of the four models. Furthermore, because these relationships change over time, a 5-year rolling regression analysis is used to understand the relationships over time. The results suggest that the Capital Asset Pricing Model, the Fama and French (1993) 3-Factor model and the CAPM plus Bond Factor model do not fully explain the patterns of expected return of the South African listed property index. However, the All Factor model is able to fully capture the pattern of expected return of the South African listed property index. Furthermore, the results suggest that the South African listed property sector is less volatile and therefore relatively less risky than the overall stock market. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that that listed property behaves more like bonds than equity over the sample period. The research provides empirical evidence of a positive relationship between South African listed property returns and size, dividend yield and momentum is found. In addition, it is found that South African listed property returns are negatively related to the price to net asset value ratio. This suggests that South African listed property tends to revert to a long term mean net asset value. The analysis of the performance of active trading strategies shows that once transactions costs are included none of the strategies are able to outperform a passive investment strategy. In addition, the study finds that there is no statistically significant difference between active and passive returns. Therefore, it is concluded that the South African listed property sector is efficient and profitable arbitrage opportunities should not exist.

A notion exists that the operational savings stemming from Deep Energy Retrofits are not sufficient to justify its capital outlay. This notion has focused property developers' attention on the construction of new green buildings, rather than optimizing existing building stock. Producing new buildings, while many existing properties are utilized on a sub-optimal level, with low rental income and high vacancies is not only resource inefficient, but also contributes to a much greater carbon footprint. The aim of this research is to establish whether retrofitting is a viable means of optimizing energy consumption in buildings based on investment return. The literature reveals that the façade is the most significant variable in energy optimisation in buildings and concluded that over-cladding strategies are generally the most efficient means to reduce heat transfer and control lighting levels. The research have been conducted by means of a two tiered methodology involving a case study approach, along with an experimental design, which was conducted through a simulation. A hypothetical building, representative of Cape Town's building stock was modeled and a number of façade over-clad strategies simulated to derive the most optimal solution. The simulation is conducted in DOE Energy Plus and COMFEN GUI. Capital cost data was collected and compared to energy cost savings in order to determine payback values. It was found that over-clad strategies may be economically feasible, which delivered payback periods of between 5 and 19 years, depending on the strategy. A partial retrofit, involving only the East and West facades was found to be the most feasible from an investment point of view, where woven mesh screens delivered the best results.

This thesis investigated how the South African local governments in the Western Cape Province are involved in the urban land market and, specifically, land supply for commercial property development to optimise socio-economic objectives in the South African property sector. The current conditions, challenges, and opportunities were examined using a qualitative research approach, combining primary and secondary data collection methods. The data for this research was gathered from a literature review, interviews and an online survey with local government property management officials directly involved in land transactions in local governments in the Western Cape Province, South Africa. The research found that, if well-managed, public land offers opportunities to achieve government's socio-economic objectives of driving economic growth, creating employment opportunities, and advancing people economically and socially. Through their majority urban land ownership (Gelderbloem, 2012), the South African local governments in the Western Cape Province can leverage their land assets for commercial property development to achieve socioeconomic outcomes in the urban land market. Local governments can achieve this by leading, shaping and unlocking development potential through direct supply of land, land use allocation, and facilitating, expediting and incentivising development to stimulate desired catalytic property developments. Catalytic projects refer projects that stimulate development and redevelopment of surrounding properties. The land allocation and property decisions in local governments are mainly driven by socio-economic objectives where sustainable development is the top priority and financial gain, though important is not key. In order to give full effect to leading, shaping and unlocking development on public land, local governments should make conscious, calculated interventions in the land supply chain for commercial property development to ensure a healthy property market. Also, it was found that, ideally, local governments should dispose of their land with rights in place in order to realise full valuation potential on their property as well as to minimise risk to the potential developer. Lastly, it was found that land supply from local governments for commercial development is faced with a number of challenges, chief among them being: excessive legislation and compliance requirements, lack of expertise, political interference, inadequate land management systems and others. In order to optimise local government land ownership to achieve socio-economic objectives in the urban land market, it is recommended that municipalities make well thought out strategic interventions in the land market as well as invest in the establishment of land management information systems to establish comprehensive asset registers to render effective planning and programming of their land holdings. Notwithstanding the challenges faced by local governments in alienating land, local governments in South Africa can leverage their land ownership in the urban land market for commercial property development to achieve socio-economic outcomes.

The purpose of this research is to explore the scope and understanding of facility management (FM) in the public sector, and specifically at military unit level, and compare it to a normative model. The principles of applied research are used in a single exploratory and instrumental case study with a mixed-method approach of data gathering. The literature review studied secondary data to create context, and open-ended and closed-ended questions in a questionnaire produced primary data on the actual scope and understanding of FM. A sequential mixed research approach was used to discuss the five research propositions. The research found that FM policies do not extend to military unit level. Furthermore, that FM practitioners have some understanding and competencies but there is no consistency in and between units, and therefore, support is needed in some. Support is required in the form of training/education, career development, budgets and structures as identified by FM practitioners. The Department of Defence (DOD) needs to define and communicate FM; structure FM down to unit level; staff structures; train, educate, and promote FM practitioners as FM professionals; and fund FM activities. FM practitioners need to be informed and skilled, they should build networks, and be cost conscious. This research is limited by studying FM at only a few military units on the West Coast of South Africa, which limits statistical inference and the establishment of FM within the whole of the DOD. Although FM research has been done within the South African public sector, and the DOD has made contributions, no previous research has focussed on FM at military unit level. The value of this research is a consolidated and focussed effort towards FM, which ultimately contributes to state security and the cost thereof. Future research should find the optimal structure, staffing and competencies for FM in military units.

South Africa suffers from an acute housing shortage with the lack of access to credit partly to blame. The implementation of Basel III, an international regulatory framework touted to impact the banking sector, has been suggested as a potential catalyst to credit deterioration in South Africa. The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of the Basel III regulatory Accord on the provision of long - term housing finance in South Africa. A combination of interviews with bank personnel, as well as a time – series statistical analysis utilising aggregate bank balance sheet data is employed to gauge how changes in banks’ balance sheet compositions may affect long - term housing finance. South African banks are historically well capitalised. However, the introduction of newly developed parameters in accordance with the Basel III Accord appear to threaten bank profitability. Findings from the study indicate that the provision of long - term housing finance will be compromised in certain ways with some sectors of the housing market more impacted than others.

There is a belief that anything that is specialised tends to outperform the diversified counterparts and this study investigates if this proposition applies in the property industry, specifically the REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) market in South Africa (SA). The norm is to apply a quantitative methodology when assessing performance but this study follows a qualitative approach in comparing the overall performance between specialised and diversified REITs in SA using non-quantitative metrics. A mix of specialised and diversified REITs in SA were sampled and a multiple case study analysis was done after interviewing senior management in four REITs. A total of four interviews were done with five respondents across four cases. These cases were then analysed using thematic analysis. The respondents were asked questions relating to the REIT they are working for, industrial specialised and diversified REITs performance and the SA property market as a whole. The overall findings suggest that diversified REITs may outperform the specialised REITs in SA currently however, this conclusion depends on a lot of factors. These factors include the analysis time of reference, the economic status of the country (for example, recession), the size of the REIT, the company gearing level, how that specific sector is performing at that particular time relative to others and the management efficiency level. The growth of e-commerce plays a vital role as a factor as well because it is said to be replacing the brick and mortar retail industry therefore, its influence affects the specialised industrial sector performance. For further research, a similar study with a quantitative approach can be considered in order to add to the SA REIT body of knowledge. Furthermore, research on the performance of property companies before and after attaining REIT status could be investigated to determine the REIT status effect on the company. To add on to the SA REIT literature, performance between REITs in different sectors and provinces could be explored.

In South Africa, there is a growing awareness of green buildings because they are understood to be environmental sustainability. Yet at the same time building adaptability has the ability to provide sustainability to building structures because it enables ease of response to building user changes. The thrust of this study was to evaluate how much adaptability is incorporated in the design and construction of green buildings in order to minimize unnecessary building obsolescence and prevent the premature demolition of the structures. This is because demolition of buildings is wasteful and unsustainable, hence the importance of constructing adaptable green buildings. Building adaptability helps to preserve and prolong the lifespan of buildings thereby contributing to their long-term sustainability. A mixed method of a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews was used to investigate the phenomenon and to collect data from a sample of engineers, architects and sustainability consultants who are involved in the accreditation of green buildings. The study was limited to commercial office buildings that have a green star rating. The research indicated that, in general, most green buildings in South Africa are not designed and constructed with adaptability in mind. However, in the commercial office space, most of the buildings are constructed with some level of flexibility due to the fast pace nature of the business environment that requires that the interior building spaces be adaptable to change of use by different tenants. Findings from the research also indicated that, even though the current rating tools for green buildings used in South Africa do acknowledge some elements of building adaptability, the rating tools are generally silent on building adaptability as a whole. Consequently, efforts by engineers and architects to design adaptable green buildings are not fully recognised and rewarded for. The lack of incentive for designers to design adaptable buildings is one of the reasons why the concept of building adaptability has not been fully embraced as a design principle in the construction of green buildings in South Africa.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between unlisted and listed commercial property returns and the macroeconomic factors identified, which are the stock market, economic activity, inflation and interest rates, in South Africa for the period from 1995 to 2013 (for unlisted properties) and from 2002 to 2013 (for listed properties). It is commonly understood that relevant macroeconomic variables impact asset prices; it is therefore easy to see why it is important to examine the dynamic interactions between the macroeconomic variables and property returns. Previous studies identified stock market performance, economic growth, interest rate and inflation as significant macroeconomic variables. The empirical research in this work is conducted using regression and vector auto regression (VAR) methodologies consistent with prior studies. Regression analysis considers the statistical dependence of the dependent variable on one or more explanatory variables. VAR analysis permits inferences to be drawn about how a particular variable helps to explain property returns and to see how a shock from the same variable affects that return. The work concluded that unlisted property has insufficient historical data to perform the relevant statistical testing. It also established that unlisted property has shown a high correlation (69%) to listed property. Finally, for listed property it was determined that interest rates were found to be a significant negative variable. This result was consistent with the impulse response analysis conducted. Variance decomposition also showed that the interest rate variable explained almost 49% of the volatility of listed property. No other economic variables identified in this work were found to be statistically significant. This research is the first of its kind relating to commercial property in South Africa. The findings of this research reaffirm the theoretical argument that the relationship between interest rates and returns of commercial property is negative. The findings of this research are of significance to investors, analysts and policymakers wishing to acquire a better understanding of this market.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 164-170). / The aim of the research is to assess the risks and current pricing of single-borrower/multi-property and multi-borrower/multi-property commercial mortgage-backed securities in South Africa and make investors aware of the potential pitfalls of investing in these new bond instruments.