Empirical analysis of the illiquidity premia of German real estate securities

In this study, we analyze illiquidity premia and their effect on the expected returns of German real estate securities. To this end, we use a unique data set that includes real estate stocks, real estate investment trusts (REITs), and open- and closed-end real estate funds for 2003–2017. We follow Amihud’s (JFM 5:31–56, 2002) structural approach; specifically, we estimate Amihud’s illiquidity factors, investigate the relationships between expected returns and illiquidity, and analyze the effects of expected and unexpected market illiquidity on future returns. We show that illiquidity plays an important role in expected returns for real estate stocks and investment trusts (REITs); however, it has less clear effects on open- and closed-end funds. We find that the adjusted ILLIQ includes appropriate correction factors for securities with low trading activity and is a useful improvement. We also find evidence of structural breaks in the relationship between returns and illiquidity.

Pricing ESG Equity Ratings and Underlying Data in Listed Real Estate Securities

By analyzing the adoption of the European Public Real Estate Association’s (EPRA) Sustainability Best Practices Recommendations (sBPR), we examine and discuss the application of transparent environmental, social and governance (ESG) ratings and their interaction with public real estate performance across European markets. Due to increasing concerns about the environment and the impact of investment on society at large, public property companies have made significant progress in improving transparency and enhancing the protection of shareholder value by sharing and reporting ESG best practices. We explore and review the EPRA sBPR database, which is highly useful for investors who are already screening listed real estate companies. Hence, in this project, we carefully study the diffusion process of this new ESG metric as a tool to enhance informational transparency regarding public real estate investment management and assess the effects of this transparency and ESG performance for the real estate stock returns. We find evidence of a sustainability premium that investors are willing to pay to access companies with better sustainable ratings.

Risk and Performance of Internationally Listed Real Estate Returns

This article studies the performances of publicly traded real estate companies (real estate investment trusts and listed property companies) from 14 countries covering North America, Europe, and Asia as proxied by FTSE EPRA/NAREIT Global Real Estate Indexes over the period from 2000 to 2015. We implement robust normalized risk-adjusted performance measures and compare nine performance indicators before, during, and after the global financial crisis (GFC). Our findings show that the GFC had a huge impact on the ranking of internationally listed real estate securities’ relative performance. The study also stresses the importance of applying various performance measures to get a full picture of internationally listed real estate returns.

International Real Estate Review

This study examines the tail dependence of returns in international public real estate markets. By using the daily returns of real estate securities in seven cities/countries from 2000 to 2018, we analyze how the interdependence of international securitized real estate markets has changed since the Global Financial Crisis. We divide our sampling period into the pre-crisis, crisis, and post-crisis periods, and estimate both upper and lower tail dependence coefficients for each sub- period. Our empirical results confirm that most city/country pairs have changed from tail-independent to tail-dependent since 2007. Strong tail dependence persists during the crisis and post-crisis periods. The findings from the post-crisis sub-sample provide new evidence on increased tail dependence in the global real estate market in recent years. We conclude that international real estate securities still offer diversification benefits nowadays but to a lesser extent than in the pre-crisis period. Investing in the global real estate securities markets is beneficial for cross-region, mixed-asset portfolios.