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The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of property sale probability and sale price at auction in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

A two-stage Heckman sample selection model is used for this research. The first stage involves the estimation of a probit model on a successful sale. The second stage introduces an additional selection variable, the inverse Mills ratio, as an explanatory variable to the sale price estimation equation.

The authors find that Chinese-owned auctioned properties have higher sale probability and are sold at higher prices as compared to Indian and Malay-auctioned properties. Properties auctioned by the largest auction house outperformed other smaller auctioneers. Auction characteristics such as proximity to the city center, number of previous auction attempts and number of online viewers are positively related to sale price and sale probability.

The findings on the substantially lower sale price obtained by Malay and Indian borrowers compared to their Chinese counterparts imply that it is much harder for these borrowers to be relieved from financial distress. The two plausible explanations offered in this paper for this price differential, i.e. racial residential segregation and ownership restriction, warrant further study.

First, the authors consider the explanatory power of seller ethnicity, number of online viewers and auctioning route which are new to the literature. Second, they use a Heckman model that addresses possible selection bias of sold properties. This methodology is unexplored in the auction literature.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the sustainability levels in terms of sustainability practices amongst public-listed property companies in Southeast Asia.

The websites and annual reports for each company were assessed to determine the level of sustainability practices amongst property companies in Southeast Asia. Their sustainability strategies were then rigorously assessed by using a scorecard which assesses sustainability levels based on related issues.

The results show that green or sustainable property development in Southeast Asian countries remains at a moderate level. There is still much room for improvement to enhance the level of green attributes in property development.

This paper only assesses property development companies in five Southeast Asian countries; namely, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Given the increasingly significant sustainability issues – especially amongst international property development players, this paper attempts to deliver better informed investment and decision-making ideas for sustainable property developments.