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The purpose of this paper is to examine the perspectives of real estate executives to assess the extent to which property management is viewed as a commodity or as a value-added professional service contributing positively to investment performance and property value maximization.

The qualitative analysis draws on the result of 93 semi-structured interviews conducted with executives employed by some of the largest real estate investment management and service firms across the USA.

The findings suggest that significant perceptual cleavages exist in the real estate industry, with some executives believing property managers are incredibly important to the value creation process and others believing they play a much more modest role.

The results highlight the need for the property management industry as whole to continue its efforts to gain recognition as a value-added professional service and for individual property management companies to actively take steps to differentiate themselves from competitors if they hope to avoid commodification and fee compression.

The study is the first to the authors’ knowledge to examine real estate executives’ perspectives about the roles property managers play in the value creation process, as well as their views about whether property managers have the skills and autonomy required to make value accretive decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the effect that ownership and management structures have on ability to control operating expenses. For individual investors, intensity of management experience is also explored as a possible explanatory variable for operating expenses. For property management services that are contracted out, the level of the fee is investigated as a possible cause for movements in operating expenses as well. Finally, operating expenses are used as a possible explanatory variable for a property’s lease-up performance during the year.

The analysis consists of a series of regression models performed on data provided by the 2012 Rental Housing Finance Survey (RHFS) in the USA. The RHFS is a unique data set that covers a wide degree of information on multifamily properties. The RHFS represents 2,260 properties in total, and covers various aspects of the apartment industry, including financing and operational cost measures. Control variables used as independent variables include number of units, year of property acquisition, and age of building.

Individual ownership and self-management proved to be statistically significant drivers in driving down log operating expenses. Hours spent by individuals performing property management roles on their own properties had a slightly positive association with operating expenses. For professional managers, the fees devoted solely to the manager or management company had a highly significant and positive effect on other operating costs. Finally, when separating out the individual components of operating expenses, only two variables had significant effects on tenant lease-ups: management expenses (positive) and security expenses (negative).

The data set is potentially biased toward those properties with less than 100 units, and thus it would be problematic to assume that these findings are generalizable to the population at large. There are also no geographic coding indicators within the RHFS data set, which eliminates the potential to control for various market factors and rural/urban differences.

The research provides an understanding of some of the basic factors behind increases in operating expenses, which ultimately has implications for performance benchmarks such as net operating income and property market value.

The reasonable controlling of operating expenses ultimately has potentially positive implications for low- to moderate-income populations, who would ultimately experience lower rents as a result.

This research represents one of the first known uses of the RHFS database.

This paper aims to examine whether property managers who live on-site within a residential apartment building provide a value-added benefit to the management in the form of cost control and revenue maximization.

This research uses two large US data sets that cover operational and financial data of apartment owners/operators and the financial and individual housing situations of renters themselves. The regression models developed were general linear models with operating expenses, rent collection and monthly rent paid as dependent variables, with on-site resident manager status as the experimental variable.

This research finds that the value of on-site property managers does not definitively maximize rent revenue, as expected. On-site property managers also don’t show significant reductions in operating expenses, although they are not cost centers either. Individual renter households do, however, pay a significant rent premium for units in communities with on-site personnel living there.

The limitations of this research include the inability to merge the two data sets and the inability to measure the intangible attributes of the on-site residential manager’s experience.

As roughly 30 per cent of US rental apartment buildings have some form of on-site manager, this research has some practical implications for multifamily housing investors/owners, a highly visible US building sector.

The action of hiring an on-site residential property manager also addresses issues related to the optimization and efficient allocation of human resources for property management companies.

This appears to be the first research addressing property managers who live at the site where they also work.

From the consumer side, this paper aims to highlight some of the various characteristics that older renters seek out from their apartment buildings, relative to conventional multifamily residential buildings and, from the operational side, to examine some of the costs involved in daily operation of such buildings.

The Rental Housing Finance Survey provides data that enables scholars to test empirical differences in amenities and costs between senior-oriented communities and other apartment buildings.

Occupancy rates outpace the rate for all other apartment communities. Regarding amenities, senior apartment communities are more likely than other communities to have a fitness center on premises, but less likely to have a swimming pool. Market value for senior properties is usually less than properties marketed toward multi-family property tenants. This difference may be due to a higher pattern of both operating/capital expenses within senior communities. Part of these increases in operating costs is due to a higher propensity to hire professional management companies and a higher fee for managing senior apartment communities.

Literature on seniors living within apartment communities is somewhat sparse, particularly regarding the operational aspects of managing apartment communities. There is a dearth of information on industry success measurements known as operating and capital expenditures. This study triangulates multiple sources of data to investigate differences in cost of senior housing apartment communities, as well as amenity structures.

The purpose of this research was to explore the growth of Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) fraud and the role of housing counselors in its identification and prevention. HECMs are the Federal Housing Administration endorsed version of a reverse mortgage and represent the majority of reverse mortgages on the market.

To investigate HECM counselor’s training, and their ability to detect fraudulent activity, a survey was constructed and distributed nationwide using HUD’s publicly available roster of qualified agencies and counselors. The survey consisted of three main sections agency and respondent information including HECM certification process, typical interactions with clients, and mortgage fraud and HECM fraud.

Responses indicate that HECM counselors have limited awareness of and training in identifying fraudulent activities.

The case is made that additional training is needed to raise awareness among counselors so that they might better serve their clients. Given the sizable population that may legitimately need HECMs, it is important to improve awareness and provide training to detect fraudulent schemes and prevent this type of deception from occurring.

The green building phenomenon has only recently extended to the residential sector. The purpose of this paper is to provide context on the prevalence of green building within the multifamily residential sector. The decisions on where green apartment buildings are sited are also examined.

A series of comparative analyses are performed on green criteria scorecards provided by the US Green Building Council (USGBC) across property types. Comparisons are made to determine whether the climate and rents differ substantially between green multifamily locations and the area means.

Green multifamily properties underperform other property types in each of the six categories that the USGBC uses in its green scoring criteria. While the siting of green multifamily properties was inordinately located in areas with high heating degree days during the early years of USGBC certification, green apartment buildings have since diffused to communities with more normal temperature patterns, suggesting an appeal of green buildings beyond simply energy savings. Finally, the median rents for areas where green apartments are located far outpace those of the surrounding areas, raising affordability concerns.

The nascence of the green movement within the multifamily residential sector limits the amount of available data for use within this research project.

This research represents one of the first attempts outside of the housing trade industry at examining green multifamily residential properties. This research helps policy makers understand how the multifamily sector differs from other property sectors seeking green certification.

Scotland's day of reputation in publishing came with the Foulises, who set a standard not only for Scotland but also for Europe. Robert Foulis, who was inspired by Dr. Francis Hutcheson to become bookseller and printer, opened his shop in Glasgow about 1741. He and his brother Andrew had visited the Continent on occasions, devoting themselves to studying the printing houses there. In a letter written by Thomas Innes of the Scots College of Paris, a well‐known Jacobite, to James Edgar, Secretary to the Chevalier de St. George at Rome, he tells about the departure of the brothers from Paris, and says that they returned home by London bringing with them six or seven hogsheads of books they had bought up in France. On their return to Glasgow, Robert opened out as a bookseller, his printers being Urie & Co., a firm some of whose issues are of higher quality than had to that date been achieved in Scotland. There was an obvious leaning to the classical side in the early Foulis publishing, and this inclination increased as the connexion with the University became cemented.

The purpose of this article is to determine the burden of proof that is applicable in the range of activities covered by the civil offence of market abuse. It also considers the approach adopted in the USA and discusses the extent to which that approach may be worth applying in this country.

The methodology adopted is a mixture of black letter law in analysing the nature of the burden of proof and the relevant market abuse issues, historical research in examining how the modern law relating to the burden of proof has evolved and comparative research through the consideration given to the US approach.

The findings are that the burden of proof in market abuse cases is unclear, that the burden may well not be the same in all cases, that clarification is needed on the point and that the approach adopted in the USA offers the advantage of clarity. Therefore, its adoption should be considered.

The main practical implication is that cases are currently being brought without this key issue being properly considered and clarified.

The author can find no other research that has been published in this specific area.