Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Real Estate Development in Conjunction with the Center for Real Estate, 2009. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Cataloged from student submitted PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 82-85). / With 1 billion people living in the slums of cities today and no signs of a decrease in the rate of urbanization and population growth, it is obvious that new approaches to combating poverty and the global housing crisis are needed. Acknowledging the recent growth of the microfinance industry and social investing, this thesis investigates how for-profit social investment techniques could be used to create housing and combat the growth of slums. It compares various for-profit social business models and provides a "toolbox" of potential structures which could be employed based on the characteristics of a specific community. In the end, it shows that social business techniques hold promise as effective ways to draw money into developing nations from the world's capital markets to improve the lives of millions of informal settlers. Using literature reviews, interviews with industry participants, and a feasibility study based in Manila, the paper shows that: - There are multiple for-profit social business structures for producing low-cost housing which could be employed based on the characteristics of the particular community. - The social investment landscape has developed to the point where there is significant capital available for investments in housing. - A social business structure would be effective in providing housing for the lower-middle class population of informal settlements in Manila; and the implementation of such a program would be effective in relieving a large financial burden from public institutions, allowing them to serve more households in the lowest income segment. / (cont.) - These social business models could be scaled-up to numerous communities to create a significant impact on the housing crisis. As real estate developers fancy themselves as choreographers of a dance of multiple disciplines which, when orchestrated well, improves the quality of the built environment, I hope this paper presents a unique multidisciplinary approach to the issue of informal settlements, combining elements of finance, urban planning, law, and policy. / by Kurtis C. Fusaro. / S.M.

Thesis: S.M. in Real Estate Development, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Real Estate Development in conjunction with the Center for Real Estate, 2018. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 70-74). / This thesis explores relationships between experiential retail and historic adaptive reuse, and develops an understanding of their mutual potentials. The emergence of e-commerce is pressuring traditional brick-and- mortar retail to focus on enhancing experiences irreplaceable by online shopping. Meanwhile, an adaptive reuse approach on historic structures carries forward the city's legend via story-telling. A space and a story make a place, with uniqueness, character, innovation, and sustainability. Between online and offline retail, physical space is the differentiator that activities take place and emotions are felt in person. I look beyond the boundary of asset types to study an experiential trend shared by hospitality, residence, office, and retail. The main difference between experiential and traditional retail is understanding customers' social needs as part of the experience. The socializing effects are partially reflected by social media posts, sharing about unique products, digitalized service, various activities beyond merely shopping, and special space. Historic redevelopment is centered around continuing the heritage and creating synergy. Adaptive reuse is a resourceful alternative to save historic buildings from demolition, but not to be confused with historic preservation. The success of adaptive reuse depends on the right creation of program, one that matches the history and activates the place by engaging users. Historic redevelopment conveys meanings and references to the past that enhance the experience of users. This synergy can be a powerful mechanism to create value in real estate. After examining 10 cases involving experiential retail and adaptive reuse, I see unique opportunities that match the space characteristics in experiential retail and historic buildings, especially in a mixed asset type. Experience is intensified by the collaboration of multiple programs, and strengthened by interacting with a unique historic story. With a theoretical framework summarized from case studies, I compose a practical "menu" of space revamps and program creations for developers to "order from". Based on a sample of approximately 2500 social media hashtags, I characterize unique retail experiences. Applying the menu, I make recommendations to redevelop LA's Bradbury Building, one of the oldest commercial landmarks in Downtown LA, to be a mixed-program experiential center. / by Alice Chen. / S.M. in Real Estate Development

Thesis (S.M. in Real Estate Development)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Real Estate Development in Conjunction with the Center for Real Estate, 2013. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 82-84). / This thesis investigates the use of the game theory and the real options theory in real estate development at the strategic level, trying empirically to explain different economic observations among different metropolitan cities and different property types. The real options theory provides a rich theoretical framework to analyze investment values in real estate development. It takes the market uncertainty into consideration, while the widely used neoclassical NPV valuation method takes a deterministic approach. A simplified real options valuation model is set up in this thesis to calculate the option premium value of waiting for developers. However, since it is done in a monopolistic setting, the strategic interaction aspect of real estate development will be analyzed using the game theory model. The interaction of the game theory model and the real options model will provide a comprehensive and powerful framework to study the timing strategy of developers. Using data spanning quarterly from 1995 to 2013 among 5 property types (single-family house, apartment, industrial, office, and retail) and 44 MSAs, this thesis analyzes the relationships empirically between the volatility of underlying assets, the land cost ratio, the option premium value, and the timing of development. The aims of the study are twofold. First, the study compares different market characteristics among different MSAs and different property types from the option game theoretic perspective. Second, it analyzes the effect and the use of the game theory and the real options theory in the context of real estate development. / by Chun Kit So ( Timothy So ) / S.M.in Real Estate Development

Thesis (S.M. in Real Estate Development)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Real Estate Development in Conjunction with the Center for Real Estate , 2010. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 56). / 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. / by Hyunjae Kim. / S.M.in Real Estate Development

Thesis (S.M. in Real Estate Development)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Real Estate Development in Conjunction with the Center for Real Estate, 2012. / Cataloged from department-submitted PDF version of thesis. This electronic version was submitted and approved by the author's academic department as part of an electronic thesis pilot project. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 106-108). / New York City's tax expenditures relate to real property tax totaled $4.5 billion in fiscal year 2012. The largest expenditure relates to the "421-a" tax exemption program for new multi-family residential real estate development, which costs the New Yorkers nearly $1 billion in foregone tax revenue (Office of Tax Policy, FY 2012). The 421-a program was originally established in the 1970s to spur new multi-family developments. Initially, developers received full tax exemption on the assessed value of the new construction, which then decreased by a phase-out schedule where their property taxes were payable in full at the end of benefit period. As the private development market recovered, the city calibrated the program to (i) exclude certain neighborhoods from receiving benefits for strictly market-rate development and (ii) to spur affordable housing development by offering benefits of the program if a certain percentage of the total units constructed were affordable. Despite the success of the strategy in delivering 142,044 residential units in 2012 (Office of Tax Policy, FY 2012), the program has been subjected to increasing scrutiny as New York City's need for real estate tax revenue has increased. It is unclear how many of these units would have been built without the exemption. Many opponents have argued for the termination of the program because it has not produced benefits commensurate with the huge tax expenditures New York City has made, and that the beneficiaries had been landowners who captured the value of the abatements through higher land prices. As the program approaches its potential renewal in June 15, 2015, it is worthwhile to conduct a detailed analysis of the efficacy and cost of the current program. The thesis offers a thorough yet intelligible case study of a co-op building in Chelsea of how the property taxes would be calculated and the program's impact on the financial feasibility of the development. Different scenarios are created that follows each of the program reforms to understand the actual value of the property tax exemptions to developers and the ways in which such value is distributed. In the current environment where many New Yorkers find themselves facing a daunting housing market with decreased production and increased demand for affordable units, the program should strengthen its benefits to steer more developers towards creating affordable housing. Alternative financial models based on the case study suggest that the return of an improved negotiable certificate program can make the 421-a program a more effective affordable housing incentive without additional cost to the city. / by Jenny Chiani Wu. / S.M.in Real Estate Development

Thesis: S.M. in Real Estate Development, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Real Estate Development in conjunction with the Center for Real Estate, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 33-34). / The ability of Commercial Real Estate to provide strong current income returns has long been one of its benefits of inclusion into a long-term portfolio. Capital Expenditures can significantly hamper this income return of commercial properties and mislead the investors into making misguided decisions. However, there has long been an informational vacuum about capital expenditure and the current available literature can best be described as non-existent. This thesis focuses entirely on capital expenditure to understand the future implications of Capital Expenditure Spending, and to understand the co-relation between different property characteristics and capital expenditure. The thesis uses contingency tables to understand the behavior of commercial properties over a span of nine years. The goal was to understand if capital expenditure spends have an impact on future spends. If an investor invests high (low) capital expenditure in the present do they keep spending high (low) all throughout their hold periods or their spending changes over time. Secondly, regression analyses is used to better understand the relationship between different property characteristics and capital expenditures and this exercise helps build an intuition about capital expenditure spends. The contingency tables and regression analyses revealed distinguishing trends about capital expenditure and helped understand its behavior. It was revealed that investors currently spending high on capital expenditures are not necessarily successful in saving capital expenditure spends in the future. The regression analyses defined a positive correlation for capital expenditure with respect to age, sq. ft, NOI and market value and it defined a negative co-relation with respect to cap rate and location considering the property was located in the top six markets in the country. / by Mehul Chavada. / S.M. in Real Estate Development

Thesis: S.M. in Real Estate Development, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Real Estate Development in conjunction with the Center for Real Estate, 2014. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 94-98). / The prodigious US single-family housing market consists of roughly 80 million existing homes and of those, more than 14 million are currently being rented. This trillion-dollar rental market has traditionally been operated exclusively by mom and pop organizations, until now. Since the housing collapse began five years ago institutional investors began taking note of falling home prices and rising inventories of bank owned properties. Private equity giants like Blackstone and Colony Capital saw a once-in-a-generation opportunity to invest at pennies on the dollar in a sector long regarded but never before accessible to large institutions. Reminiscent of California in the late 1840's, there was a massive rush West and South by firms looking to deploy billions of dollars of investment capital through the purchase of thousands of single-family homes. By the middle of 2013 nearly $20 billion had been raised or spent and more than 150,000 homes were in the hands of institutional investors. A new market was born and fast maturing. In the early days skeptics permeated the space while investors looked to further formalize the hundreds of millions already invested. By the end of 2013 three Real Estate Investment Trusts existed with a market capitalization exceeding $4 billion and the Blackstone Group finalized the formation of the world's first bond backed by single-family rental streams. Today analysts and investors disagree on what stage of maturity the single-family rental (SFR) exists. Specifically, there are those who see SFR as a new asset class advancing toward a double or triple digit billion market capitalization. On the other hand there are those who see these investments as nothing more than a short-term trade, destined to fade within the next few years. This contemporary thesis topic aims to shed light on the buy-to-rent strategy surrounding single-family home investors including tactics being adopted to garner the greatest rewards. Furthermore, the thesis will assess the recent investment methods being made by the burgeoning industry's largest players including filing for REIT classification and securitizing single-family rental incomes. Finally, the thesis will answer the question of whether this new national investment will endure as a business model and forever change the single-family landscape or simply remain and opportunistic 'trade' at a time when so many Americans lost their home. / by Morgan W. Pierson. / S.M. in Real Estate Development

Thesis: S.M. in Real Estate Development, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Real Estate Development in conjunction with the Center for Real Estate, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (page 35). / Commercial Real Estate price performance is captured at the aggregate (or market) level by a price index such as Moody's RCA CPPI Index. However, individual property performance could be significantly different from the aggregate index performance (both national and metro indices) due to several property related reasons which are different from the factors affecting the market. For example, a tenant's lease termination, an excellent property manager securing attractive leases, unusual operating expenses are some of those (unobserved) property specific characteristics that affect property performance. Specifically, the RCA CPPI Index tracks all sales transaction pairs and using them, constructs a regression model that represents the price index that best fits the sale transactions. The difference between the individual property sales pair performance and that predicted by the aggregate index is captured by the residual of the regression model and represents idiosyncratic risk which is different from the market risk as represented by the aggregate index. Idiosyncratic risk can be quite important for real estate investors. In the absence of derivative contracts for synthetic investment, no one can invest in the aggregate market as a whole. The objective of this thesis is to quantify the idiosyncratic risk (dispersion) of individual CRE transactions in the US from the observed RCA-CPPI national and metro level (regional) indices' performance during the period 2001-15. In this regard, the thesis tries to capture the basic dynamic nature of how the idiosyncratic price dispersion tends to evolve over time as well as by property type and by metro market. Also, the thesis seeks to understand the potential drivers behind the dispersion. / by Phanidhar Yella. / S.M. in Real Estate Development

Thesis: S.M. in Real Estate Development, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Real Estate Development in conjunction with the Center for Real Estate, 2018. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 70-73). / Taking a qualitative case study approach, this thesis examines the approach in combining a concert hall with other real estate product types in the urban redevelopment context, and demonstrates that successful mixed-use development with concert hall or other cultural facilities could be a viable strategy to add both civic and commercial value for new town development. Concert halls have been used as catalysts for place making and experience creation for wide community, with a new interest in playing a key role in urban regeneration. Combining cultural facilities in mixed-use development is expected to create a win-win situation that can benefit both the cultural institutions and the developers, and both the cities and the citizens. This thesis analyzes the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Germany to examine the real estate rationale for the mix of cultural and commercial uses in civic and commercial value creation, and explores the transferability of the HafenCity model defined based on the Elbphilharmonie case to China. This thesis then studies the concert hall market in China, and summarizes the Hexi New Town model and the Macau model from cases in Nanjing and Macau. A comparison of the three mixed-use cultural project models is made, and the thesis concludes with alternative points of view that worth considering and recommendations for the application of the Hexi New Town model in China. / by Zhiyao Feng. / S.M. in Real Estate Development

Thesis: S.M. in Real Estate Development, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Real Estate Development in conjunction with the Center for Real Estate, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 69-70). / As China's elderly population grows at an accelerating rate, investors from a wide range of industries have entered the senior housing market and view it as a "sunrise industry" which can offer attractive returns for investors. Today, growth in China's senior housing market is presents both tremendous opportunities and challenges. On the other hand, due to the large capital required, long investment cycle and steady capital inflow toward the middle or the end of the projects, an alternative financing method is required to meet the rapid development of senior housing in China. REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts), allowing anyone to invest in portfolios of large-scale properties through the purchase of stock, are a great alternative source for financing. This thesis reviews the background and current market of senior housing in China and discusses the key points in this industry, especially the ways of project to finance. Then, REITs are introduced in terms of history, pros and cons, valuation, and challenges. A case of a US leading health care REIT is conducted, with a comparison to the current quasi-REITs in China. Finally, the general strategy and structure of senior housing REITs are discussed. Based on this study, REITs clearly fit the current and future needs of senior housing sector in China. Although China's capital market is not completely ready to adopt REITs with international standards, China should pursue the experiment of such practice amid the challenges. / by Yiming Cai. / S.M. in Real Estate Development