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The authors investigate how prices of condominiums are affected by the size of the tenant-owner associations that they belong to.

The authors use data of sold apartments in the Swedish municipality Malmö 2013–2018 and estimate hedonic price regressions. The authors also perform semi-structured interviews with three senior professionals in real estate companies.

The authors find significantly negative relationships between the prices of condominiums and the size of tenant-owner associations. Also, regression results indicate that associations should be no smaller than 6–10 apartments. The interviews support that associations should not be too small or too big. The lower and upper limit was suggested by the respondents to 40–50 and 80–150 apartments, respectively. In these ranges, economies of scale can be achieved, and residents will not lose the sense of community and responsibility.

The authors do not prove causality. Smaller associations may have relatively exclusive common amenities, about which we lack data. The same relationships may not exist in different market conditions.

The authors are not aware of previous studies with the same research question. The size of tenant-owner associations may affect the price through different channels. First, several of the banks in Sweden do not always grant mortgages for condominiums that belong to small associations. Second, larger associations may have better economies of scale and more efficient property management. Third, homeowners may prefer smaller tenant-owned associations, because they may feel less anonymous and provide more influence on common amenities.

This paper aims to investigate how the students perceive the cleaning of the university, from an in-house and outsourced perspective.

This research is based on a survey conducted in the different university buildings with a total of 240 students. The survey was then analysed through an ordinal regression.

The ordinal regression indicates a statistically significant result were student are more satisfied with the cleaning performed by the outsourced service provider.

The research in this paper is limited to one Swedish university. But, the overall strategies for how to organise the cleaning service at the university do address all universities. However, the research is limited and more research has to be performed.

The insight the paper provides regarding how the students perceive the cleaning service at the university gives direct implications to university in relation to how to consider the cleaning service as an important factor.

It provides the first study from a student perspective on the question of cleaning of the university, when previous studies have indicated cleaning as an important function not least to student’s performance and academic results.

Real estate is a capital-intensive industry for which the asset values tend to be highly volatile and uncertain. Transaction costs in the industry are therefore high, and transparency for investors may be low. The need to signal reliable estimates of property assets, in the communication to external stakeholders, can therefore be expected to be of extra importance in this sector. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how real estate firms use big four auditors to signal quality.

The authors use Swedish firm level data containing all limited liability real estate companies in the country to determine the determinants of big four auditors. The data set consists of 34,306 observations and is analyzed through logit regressions.

The results show that big four companies are primarily contracted by large and mature companies, rather than new firms or firms with volatile financial records, although the latter could be expected to have a large need to signal quality. The authors also find that firms listed on the stock market and firms targeting public use real estate are more inclined to use big four companies.

Real estate is a capital-intensive industry for which the asset values tend to be highly volatile and uncertain. Transaction costs in the industry are therefore high, and transparency for investors may be low. The need to signal reliable estimates of property assets, in the communication to external stakeholders, can therefore be expected to be of extra importance in this sector. No prior study of this area has been detected.

The purpose of this paper is to identify factors on property management level for analysing incentives for an effective property management in an outsourced setting.

This research is based on an interview study of a set of three real estate-owning companies and their contracted facility management companies’ property management teams.

The study concludes that the property manager within the facility management company is highly controlled by the contract between the real estate owner and the facility management company. However, this contract does risk the individual property manager to prioritise the wrong work tasks as she/he has to know exactly what to prioritise in each contract and consider in whose interest she/he performs each task, the real estate owner, her/him employer or the tenants.

The research in this paper is limited to Swedish commercial real estate sector.

The insight in the paper is regarding how real estate owners create incentives for the facility management companies’ property management organisation and how that are perceived by the individual property manager.

It provides an insight regarding how the commercial real estate industry prioritises different work tasks and how incentives are created to enable effort.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the real estate owner (decision maker) insures being able to make informed decisions and how they differ according to organisational form.

This research is based on an interview study of nineteen firm representatives, six decision makers and thirteen management representatives, all from Swedish commercial real estate sector.

The study concludes that, regardless of organisational setting, the industry has a plan regarding handling information. The decision makers have all secured themselves access to the required/desired information. How this is done and what kind of information it is however differ, if the real estate management is in-house or outsourced. Furthermore, a clear focus on financial and contractual information is evident in both organisational settings.

The research in this paper is limited to Swedish commercial real estate sector.

The insight the paper provides regarding required information can shed light on how information systems are built and how to improve your information sharing.

It provides an insight regarding how the industry, depending on organisation setting, prioritises different information and how the decision maker secures access to it.

The aim of this paper is to examine how the real estate owner (decision maker) can ensure that the preferred tasks are prioritised. In particular, the incentives to ensure motivation to perform to accomplish the strategic goals of the decision maker are investigated.

This research is based on an interview study of 19 firm representatives, 6 decision makers and 13 management representatives, all from the Swedish commercial real estate sector.

The study concludes that the real estate management organisation in the outsourced management setting is governed by the contract, in detail constituting work tasks, and in the in-house management setting, there is freedom with responsibilities instead of regulations.

The research in this paper is limited to Swedish commercial real estate sector.

The insight in the paper regarding how decision makers create incentives for the real estate management organisation in the different organisational settings can provide inspiration to design incentives for effort.

It provides an insight regarding how the industry, depending on organisation setting, prioritise different work tasks and how incentives are created to enable effort.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of theoretical knowledge related to financial behaviour and especially anchor effects.

The study design is based upon an experiment divided into two parts, before and after the development of the course curriculum for the course introducing behavioural finance for undergraduate real estate students.

The study concludes that the anchor effect is persistent also after introducing theoretical knowledge regarding financial behaviour and anchor effects. To conclude the results, in this study, indicates that the appraisal of properties are dependent on the individual’s cognitive capacity to mitigate anchor effects. There are epistemological assumptions underlying the belief in the individuals’ capacity to handle anchor effects that might provide biased appraisals. These assumptions need to be carefully tested and treated to increase the accuracy of property appraisals.

The study result also highlights the possibility that current literature in valuation, and learning activities, does not emphases and stimulate readers to critical thinking. This paper would, therefore, propose also other real estate education programmes to be aware of the potential lack of critical thinking among the students.

It provides an insight regarding how appraisal of properties is dependent on the individual’s cognitive capacity to mitigate anchor effects.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse two questions. First, is there, and if so, how large is the price premium paid for a building exhibiting a cultural value? Second, are there any spillover effects of buildings with cultural values on sales prices of neighbouring houses?

Using a unique database of all buildings in the region of Halland, Sweden, combined with transaction data, hedonic models can be estimated, with spatially lagged variables describing proximity to three classes of culturally classified building – A, B and C – corresponding to building of national interest, building of regional interest and building of local interest. In addition, the authors also estimate models with a spatial specification on the error term, in an attempt to control for omitted variables.

The results indicate that cultural classification plays a role in determining the price of a property, with large effects (ranging between 36 and 60% price premiums) for the highest classification. In addition, the authors find evidence of a cultural externality, houses in the vicinity of building with high cultural value sell at a small, but statistically significant premium of 1%.

The cultural externality may be overlooked when it comes to valuation of cultural values in society, and therefore, it is likely that warranted protection acts to preserve cultural values in buildings become less than the social optimum. This paper suggests a new measure to cultural values contrasting previous research that rely on cultural preservation. This approach should limit problems with measurement errors that may lead to biased results.

The purpose of this paper is to identify factors on the property management level for analysing incentives for an effective property management with a focus on organising it in-house.

This research is based on an interview study of 11 firm representatives from the Swedish commercial real estate sector with in-house property management.

The study concludes that the property management organisation in the in-house setting is governed in an informal way, with a large portion of “freedom with responsibilities” setup instead of regulations.

The research in this paper is limited to the Swedish commercial real estate sector.

The insights into the paper regarding how decision makers create incentives for the property management organisation can provide inspiration to design incentives for effort.

It provides an insight regarding how the commercial real estate industry prioritises different work tasks and how incentives are created to enable effort.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the strategies of formal customer evaluations and the use of satisfied customer index in the Swedish commercial real estate industry.

This research is based on an inventory of 24 commercial real estate companies use of formal customer evaluations and an analysis of 15 interviews with top-level managers in the Swedish commercial real estate sector.

Only half of the companies included in the study conduct formal evaluations, although they are considered to work customer oriented. Two different strategies for using formal evaluations is, for improvement work and for signalling quality. One proposed explanation to why only half of the companies conduct formal evaluations is the possibility that the official Swedish Real Estate Barometer is not sufficient if the company would like to use the result for organisational development. There are instead indications that this barometer mainly is used in publicity and marketing purpose, to signal quality.

The research in this paper is limited to Swedish commercial real estate sector. But, the overall strategies for conducting formal evaluations should be applicable in general.

The insight the paper provides regarding how the industry perceive the Swedish Real Estate Barometer gives direct implications of improvements of the barometer.

It provides an insight regarding the use of formal customer evaluations and a proposition of how the Swedish Real Estate Barometer could be changed to better support and fulfil the aim of being a barometer for benchmarking.