We examine a central result in corporate finance – the Modigliani-Miller capital structure irrelevance proposition – from a Coasian property rights perspective. Building upon the work of Coase, Demsetz and Cheung, we develop an enabling methodology to study the impact of positive Coasian...

This paper examines the magnitude of random disaggregate appraisal valuation error in institutional-grade commercial property. Unlike previous transactions-based studies of appraisal error, we use a much larger database that is not restricted to sold properties, and we employ a methodology that...

Analysis of more than seven hundred pairs of simultaneous independent appraisals of institutional-grade commercial properties shows that the standard deviation of the random component of appraisal error is approximately 2%. Random appraisal error appears constant across both time and the...

This study uses published mortgage commitment and delinquency data to compare historical and prospective results of investing in well-diversified commercial mortgage portfolios with corresponding investments in long-term Treasury and corporate bonds. The conclusions are that commercial mortgages...

Serial dependence of total annual returns in the NCREIF database is shown to be statistically significant in the first and fourth quartiles of disaggregated data between 1978 and 1994. More precisely, superior performance is generally followed by continued superior performance, and inferior...

Annual and monthly REIT returns display statistically significant serial persistence, although the two types of persistence behavior are qualitatively different. By contrast, quarterly REIT returns do not display serial persistence. This strongly suggests that linear multifactor market models...

The separation of commercial real estate into structured investment products as suggested by the debt-and-equity model can enhance property value due to positive net changes in agency costs and tax shields. In many cases this enhancement should be large enough to induce real estate owners to...

Synthetic leases provide corporations with off-balance-sheet finance for acquisition of tangible assets. The financings are less efficient for financial planning purposes than conventional on-balance-sheet debt. The inefficiencies can be avoided by replacing synthetic leases with synthetic debt....

Investment risk models with variance provide a better description of distribution of individual property returns in the Property Council of Australia data base from 1985 to 1996 than normally distributed risk models. The shape of the distribution of Australian property returns is virtually...