published_or_final_version / Real Estate and Construction / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The objective of this thesis is to examine the differences in residential property prices across different cities in India. Soaring prices have led to increasingly unaffordable property prices in large metropolitan cities. As a result, there has been academic discourse about the existence of a housing bubble in recent years. In the past, empirical research has focused on national level trends due to a lack of city-level data. I investigate the city-fixed effects on growth in house prices across fifteen different cities. Although different empirical models suggest different conclusions about these effects, point estimates suggest above-normal growth in house prices in Delhi for the period 2009-2013.

In the early 1980’s, the Chinese government launched the nationwide housing and land reform programme to tackle almost insurmountable problems in providing residential housing for its citizens and adequate business facilities to facilitate sustainable economic growth.  Real estate developers play a significant role in the reform process.  The object of this thesis is to identify the problems encountered under Chinese legislation with regard to controlling the activities of developers and suggest solutions. Chinese legislative provisions are compared with the provisions of the sophisticated American Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act and well-developed South African Sectional Titles Act. The first part of the thesis focuses on the complicated housing and land reform process in China.  The major part of the thesis focuses on the role of developers in the development, sale and initial management of the condominium scheme.  Topics discussed include the role of developers in the establishment of condominium schemes, allocation of parking spaces and the management of condominium schemes during the initial period.  Consumer protection against abuses of power on the part of developers, especially regarding the sale of condominiums in a building which is still under construction is another key focus. The author finds that under current Chinese law, the developer is neither provided with sufficient flexibility nor controlled adequately by pertinent legislation.  The most important shortcoming is that developers are not empowered to draft constitutive documents to suit the needs of their particular schemes.  Lack of a constitutive document creates disputes among developers, management agencies and unit owners over various issues, such as the boundaries between exclusive units and common areas and their individual rights and obligations.  Allowing developers to draft and register the constitutive documents would not only bind the three parties to the provision of constitutive documents but provide more flexibility to the developer.  The automatic establishment of an owners’ association after the first unit is transferred will create a channel for communication among the three parties and reduce further friction amongst them.

The EAAB (Estate Agency Affairs Board), a statutory body for the South African real estate industry, introduced an extensive Code of Conduct in 1992. The research conducted will serve to determine whether this Code of Conduct is effective in ensuring ethical behaviour by real estate agents. Both qualitative and quantitative research was undertaken, whereby it was determined that there is indeed a level of unethical behaviour amongst real estate agents, that a majority of such agents were unable to interpret specific clauses in the Code of Conduct, and that there was no clear correlation between support for the Code of Conduct and moral intent. Qualitative interviews highlighted the various roles that stakeholders do and should play in training and enforcement of the Code of Conduct, and their insights helped provide the basis for recommendations to the Estate Agency Affairs Board on improving the effectiveness of the EAAB Code of Conduct. Key recommendations to the EAAB were that a revision of the Code of Conduct was needed, entry requirements into the industry should be more stringent, a professional image for the industry should be promoted, and improved communication between the EAAB and stakeholders, improved enforcement and higher penalties, and an extensive training and education programme on Ethics and the Code of Conduct were needed. A Ten Element Model for an Effective Code of Conduct was proposed that detailed ten key themes arising from the research which could also be applicable in other industries. The forces and importance of communication, debate and consultation between society and industry, through regulatory bodies and/or professional associations provided the foundation for the development and revision of the Code of Conduct. To ensure effectiveness, the Code of Conduct needed to be supported by an ethical culture, professionalisation of the industry, support and understanding of the Code of Conduct by stakeholders, exposure, education and training on the Code of Conduct and Ethics, enforcement, penalties and consumer education.

The subject of the thesis is the lease of real estate amended by Czech law and some aspects of the lease of real estate amended by English law. This thesis tries to provide the reader with basic information about these issues. The thesis is systematically divided into two sections- the lease of land and the lease of building firmly connected with the land. It is focused on fundamental terms such as the thing in legal sense. The question of changes in an area of lease of real estate is quite actual because of passing the new civil code in the Czech Republic. That is why the thesis contains a comparison between the effective civil code and civil code in force. It points out the most significant amendments which will become effective on 1. 1. 2014. The other purpose of this thesis is to highlight the most important aspects of legal regulation of lease of real estate in English law. The thesis compares the Czech legal regulation with English one and defines the basic differences of this issue in both countries. The thesis is structured into introduction, five elementary chapters and conclusion. Each chapter is focused on issue which directly or indirectly influences the lease of real estate. The first chapter contains the elementary terminology which is connected with the lease of real estate. It is a...

Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the Degree of PhD (Marketing) at the University of the Witwatersrand September 2016 / Purpose: The impact of the mandate type used and real estate agents’ ideological outlook on conflict of interests and compromising of principals’ interests together with their effect on the ultimate outcomes has largely been ignored in the South African real estate industry. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of dual mandate system and ideology on the outcomes to buyers and sellers of properties. This was achieved by investigating their influence on the conflict of interests and compromising the interests of the principals and how these in turn lead to suboptimal outcomes for the industry. Method: Stratified random sampling was used for information gathering. Data were collected using face-to-face filling in of the survey instrument and 204 participants agreed to take part in the study. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was employed to assess the reliability and validity of the results. Findings: The results reveal that the dual mandate system and ideological persuasion of actors in the real estate industry does positively impact on conflict of interests and also compromises the interests of the principals. Conflict of interests and compromising principals interests have also been found to negatively affect the resultant outcomes for the principals. Practical implications: The dual mandate system should be reconsidered with the view of revising or changing it altogether. Also, practices of real estate agents should be closely monitored by relevant authorities to ensure that they do not disadvantage other consumers. Insights gained from this study provide the basis for future policy-making by government and for academic activity on training of new real estate agents. The findings of this study are expected to assist the Estate Agency Affairs Board (EAAB) as the custodians of licensing of real estate agents. Research limitations: The participants were all from Gauteng Province which might limit generalizability prospects to other provinces. Also, some respondents might have given biased responses by attempting to prove that they were not ignorant of how the industry operates. Key concepts: Dual mandate system, Ideological outlook, Conflict of interests, compromising of principals and Outcomes. / MT2017

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Chiu, Man Kin. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 83-88). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Acknowledgement --- p.iv / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 2 --- Literature Review --- p.11 / Chapter 3 --- The Model --- p.28 / Chapter 3.1 --- The Preliminaries --- p.28 / Chapter 3.2 --- The problem setting --- p.31 / Chapter 3.3 --- The optimal selling strategy and structural properties --- p.39 / Chapter 3.3.1 --- The optimal selling strategy --- p.39 / Chapter 3.4 --- The optimal investment decision-Making regarding capacity and investment time --- p.44 / Chapter 3.4.1 --- The optimal decision on the construction capacity --- p.45 / Chapter 3.4.2 --- The optimal decision on the starting time of the investment --- p.48 / Chapter 4 --- Numerical analysis --- p.55 / Chapter 4.1 --- The setting of the numerical example --- p.56 / Chapter 4.2 --- The numerical results --- p.63 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- The optimal capacity --- p.63 / Chapter 4.2.2 --- The optimal starting time of the construction --- p.69 / Chapter 4.2.3 --- The effect of the capacity constraint --- p.73 / Chapter 4.2.4 --- The effect of the time constraint --- p.78 / Chapter 5 --- Conclusion --- p.80 / Bibliography --- p.83

Institutional investors have typically involved commercial property in their core portfolios for stable and income-oriented returns, particularly concentrated on low-risk traditional property sectors including office, retail and industrial property. Recent years have seen the strong growth in demand for quality commercial properties resulting in an imbalanced property investment market, with significant capital flows available (eg: growth in superannuation fund assets) for property investment from this increased appetite for commercial property. This has also been driven by some basic factors such as changing demographics. The demographic change has affected savings, investment and capital flows as the elderly prefer investments with the characteristics of higher yield and stability. Due to the ageing population, a compulsory superannuation system was introduced by the Australian government in 1992 which has driven significant increased capital flowing into investment markets. Since the increased capital flowed into investment markets with significantly compressed property yields, institutional investors have considered a range of emerging property sector investments such as self-storage, retirement, healthcare, and leisure properties to enhance the performance and provide diversification benefits in their portfolios. Specifically, recent years have also seen infrastructure emerge as a separate asset class for institutional capital, with the infrastructure asset class having distinctive characteristics and attractive features; particularly in a climate of significantly reduced government spending on infrastructure in most countries, as governments seek alternative funding options for infrastructure development and maintenance. However, only limited studies regarding the performance of the emerging property sectors and infrastructure investments have been conducted. As such, this PhD thesis focuses on both quantitative and qualitative aspects of the investment issues for the emerging property sectors and infrastructure. To provide a fuller view of the emerging property sectors and infrastructure, the empirical analysis in this thesis provided the performance assessments of Australian emerging property sector LPTs, US non-traditional REITs, UK direct leisure property, Australian infrastructure, US infrastructure and European infrastructure, as well as the strategic investment issues regarding emerging property sector and infrastructure investment via surveys with Australian emerging property sector LPT and infrastructure fund managers. With the development of an emerging property sector LPT index, the results of the empirical analysis indicate Australian emerging properties are characterised as higher risk-higher return property investments. The diversification benefit has been confirmed as adding emerging properties to an investment portfolio. The emerging property sector LPT fund managers’ survey has found new product diversity, strong performance, enhanced yield, greater choice of property and significant capital inflow available for property as the essential motivating factors for emerging property sector investment; whilst the quality and availability of data, the competition of emerging property investments/acquisitions, the depth of market and identifying reliable/strategic business partners, and the policy and regulation issues have been identified as the most significant risks in emerging property sector investment. For US non-traditional REIT analysis, self-storage REITs presented strong performance over the study period. The efficient frontier of portfolios consisting of self-storage REITs also presented enhanced efficiency, while healthcare and specialty REIT portfolios showed less significant efficiency. Due to no equivalent public emerging property series being available for UK, a direct leisure property total return series is obtained from IPD as the proxy of leisure property investment performance. Leisure property outperformed the other property sectors, as well as the other asset classes over the 26-year period to 2006. Similarly, the findings of the property portfolio and mixed-asset portfolio analyses suggest that adding leisure property to the UK property portfolios or mixed-asset portfolios has resulted in significant diversification gains. The findings of the infrastructure analyses have shown the consistent results of enhanced returns, lower risk and significantly improved diversification benefits by infrastructure investments over the three major infrastructure markets including Australia, US and Europe. With the rapidly expanding market in recent years, the strong performance and volatility of infrastructure investment has been moderate when the infrastructure markets are maturing. The Australian infrastructure fund managers’ survey has found stable cash flows, long duration, greater understanding of infrastructure, monopoly characteristics, inflation hedging and diversification benefits as the essential motivating factors for infrastructure investment; whilst infrastructure policy and over-valued infrastructure have been identified as the most significant risks in infrastructure investment. As the emerging property sectors and infrastructure are maturing as effective and significant investment vehicles in Australia and internationally, the issues assessed in this thesis taking on increased significance in the future. It is clearly evident that the property and infrastructure research in this thesis has lead to the enhanced understanding of alternative property and property-related assets and a fuller understanding of the investment dynamics of the emerging property sectors and infrastructure. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 103-107)