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The purpose of this paper is to examine the performance of 19 Malaysian Real Estate Investment Trusts (M-REITs) over the period 1999 to 2014, following the implementation of dividend tax reforms announced in the 2007, 2009 and 2012 budgets.

Sharpe index, Treynor index and Jensen α are utilized to compare the performance of M-REITs against a newly developed tax-adjusted value-weighted M-REITs index, equity market, property sector and three month Malaysia Treasury Bills (T-Bills). The calculation of M-REITs returns has been adjusted to take into account the dividend tax reforms which have never been considered in previous studies.

Most M-REITs outperform the tax-adjusted value-weighted REITs index, equity market, property sector and three month T-Bills. Property sector performs worst during those periods. Some of the M-REITs have a higher standard deviation than the equity market and the tax-adjusted value-weighted M-REITs index. Most M-REITs have a lower total risk than the property sector. Further analysis shows that before (after) the tax reforms, most M-REITs underperform (outperform) the other sectors. The introduction of the tax reforms benefits both REITs and investors. A significant positive Jensen α for some M-REITs indicates that fund managers are able to time the market or to select undervalued assets.

Findings of the study would enable investors to evaluate the performance of all REITs in comparison to other financial assets during the period of study for better investment decision making. A more accurate assessment on REITs performance that take into account the tax reforms, is available for investors and fund managers to decide on the investment mix to be included in their portfolio. Moreover, fund managers’ performance can be assessed whether they perform better or worse than the equity market, property sector and three month T-Bills.

This study contributes to the scant literature on dividend tax reforms and their implication toward REITs performance. It is the first study to thoroughly assess the returns of REITs by taking into account the changes on dividend tax rates announced in the 2007, 2009 and 2012 budgets.

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 study is to examine the causal impact of international immigration inflows on housing prices at the state level in Malaysia from 2007 to 2018.

Hedonic regressions using both fixed effects and first difference approaches are used to estimate the impact of immigration inflows on house prices in Malaysia. This study deals with potential endogeneity of immigrants’ choices of destination states in Malaysia by using a shift-share instrument variable approach. Specifically, historical shares of immigrants in a state are used to predict current immigrant inflows to a particular state. The predicted value of immigration flows is then inserted into the house price regression models in place of the actual immigration flows.

Using annual data for 14 states from 2007 to 2018, this study documents the positive impact of immigration inflows on house prices in Malaysia. The authors find that a 1% increase in immigration inflows is associated with an increase of 10.2% (first difference) and 13.4% (fixed effects) in house prices. The economic impact is larger in magnitude than that found in developed countries. Contrary to existing studies that find immigration inflows to be associated with native flight, the authors find support for the attraction effects hypothesis, where immigration inflow is positive and significantly related to net native flows.

The effects of immigration inflows are economically significant, considering that the effects are 10 times larger than those documented in the USA. Policymakers in Malaysia ought to monitor house price trends in immigrant-popular states to ensure that natives are not priced out by new immigrants.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is perhaps the first study to focus on the relationship between immigration inflows and house prices in Malaysia. Focusing on Malaysia has at least two originality aspects. First, Malaysia is relatively not an immigrant-popular destination. Second, Malaysia has a multiracial and heterogenous society among its natives. The findings, obtained within these two settings, would therefore provide a wider scope of result generalization, and natural experiment grounds for causal implications of our results.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of visual technology on the price discovery process in listings of residential properties in Singapore from 2015 to 2018.

The authors empirically model the effects of 360 virtual tours and drone video on four dimensions in price discovery – buyers’ arrival rate, sale probability, transaction prices and time-on-market – using a comprehensive data set for the residential properties in Singapore.

The analysis shows that the availability of virtual tours or drone video in a listing increases the arrival rate from potential buyers, the probability of a successful sale and the selling price. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that technologically enhanced tools improve the quality of information and the marketability of property. However, listings with virtual tours tend to be associated with longer marketing time, which is consistent with the prediction of the information overload hypothesis.

This paper extends the housing and price discovery literature by examining how technologically enabled new information affects property transactions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to consider the impact of drone video on property market outcome.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of conversion to REIT status by former listed property companies in the United Kingdom on the level of institutional ownership during the period of 2007–2016.

This paper uses an event study framework to track the change in institutional ownership three years before and after a REIT conversion event. This event study approach circumvents the sample selection bias issue associated with the conversion event wherein the decision to convert to REIT is likely to be endogenous.

Panel regression analysis reveals that changing to REIT status led to a 12.8 and 15.2% increase in institutional ownership and number of institutional investors, respectively. The first order of priority in institutional investors' investment in REIT shares is their preference for liquidity. Further analysis shows that institutional investors changed their preferences towards characteristics associated with systematic risk, firm age and liquidity after the conversion event by becoming less averse to firm-specific risk, placing more emphasis on firm age and less emphasis on systematic risk and liquidity.

Overall, conversion to REIT status helps increase former property companies' investor base, which is in line with the regulator's aim to open up the property market to a wide range of investors through the introduction of a REIT regime. Findings from this paper also have policy implications for countries that are considering a REIT regime for their capital market and existing REIT regimes without a formal conversion mechanism.

This paper offers, for the first time, evidence on 1) how conversion to REITs influences firms' institutional ownership and 2) the determinants of converted REITs' institutional ownership.

Momentum returns are considered an anomaly in the finance literature as their existence cannot be fully explained under the asset pricing paradigm. This study attempts to shed more light on this anomaly by investigating the determinants of momentum returns.

The panel data technique is applied to the sample of 40 countries worldwide from 1996 to 2018. The authors use the panel-corrected standard error (PCSE) model to estimate the coefficient of World Governance Indicators (WGI), whereas the fixed effect model is used to determine the coefficient for corporate governance indicators (CGIs). The choice of PCSE estimation methods is guided by the fact that WGI variables are subjected to serial correlation, heteroskedasticity and cross-sectional dependence problems while CGI variables are not. Furthermore, a composite WGI index is constructed using principal component analysis (PCA).

Regression analysis shows a negative and significant relationship between WGI index and momentum returns. The negative coefficient value of WGI supports the prediction of the overreaction hypothesis, which postulates a lower behavioral bias in the market with high governance quality. Breaking down of the WGI by their six indicators reveals that four of the indicators (control over corruption, government effectiveness, stability and avoidance of violence) are negative statistically significant with momentum returns while two indicators are not significant. As for CGIs, only one (strength of investor protection) of the four tested indicators is negative and significantly related to momentum returns.

The study fills the gap in economic literature by highlighting the association between governance quality at the country (WGI) and firm level (CGI) on stock momentum returns.

This paper examines the evolution and impact of property development activities on REIT performance. The paper provides insights on whether REITs should venture into property development in addition to their core-business of holding income producing properties.

This paper charts and highlights the evolution of development activities of US REITs from 1992 to 2020. The Tobin's Q of property developing REITs and non-property developing REITs are compared using univariate analysis.

Development activities of US REITs grew dramatically during the run up to global financial crisis (GFC) in 2008. The level of development activities has dropped since the GFC and it has not return to its pre-crisis peak. In comparison, development activities of listed property investment companies and homebuilders are less volatile over the same period. The data reveals that property developing REITs enjoy significantly higher Tobin's Q as compared to their non-developing counterparts.

Our graphical evidence from a market without development restriction suggests that development restriction in other REIT regimes has it value in limit REITs' excessive risk-taking tendency during a booming property market. The positive relationship between Tobin's Q and the existence of property development activity support the value creation of this business activity to REITs.

This paper raises overbuilding as a potential cause of the underperformance of the REIT sector during the GFC.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of crime risk on housing prices at a national level in Malaysia during the period from 1988 to 2016.

A hedonic regression approach was used to estimate the Malaysian households’ valuation for crime risk. Specifically, the state-level property index on the state-level reported crime rate was regressed while controlling for state-level socioeconomic variables. The macroeconomic panel nature of the data set provides the merit to use a panel dynamic model instead of the traditional static panel data techniques (fixed effects or first difference).

Panel dynamic estimators consistently show a negative impact of crime risks on housing prices. The estimated elasticity of housing prices with respect to crime risks ranges from −0.141 to −0.166, in line with existing literature using micro level data. In fact, householders in crime hotspot states are willing to pay more for crime reduction compared to householders in non-hotspot states. The willingness to pay has also increased since the implementation of nationwide crime reduction plans in 2010.

This is the first study that has examined the Malaysian people’s willingness to pay to reduce crime. This information is important in determining the optimal level of government expenditures for public safety.

This is the first study to examine the relationship between crime rates and housing prices in Malaysia. This study contributes to the literature by examining the impact of crime rates on housing prices at a national level by using panel dynamic models. The macro level data results are consistent and complement the existing literature based on micro level data.