Search

This paper assesses the response of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT's) to unexpected changes in US monetary policy. A critical element in this study is the use of futures markets to isolate unexpected changes in the policy rate. We find a significant negative response of REIT returns to a surprise change in the policy rate. The paper then examines the potential sources behind such an observed response. We find important differences between the REIT market and the broader equity market. Intuitively the impact of monetary policy on dividend news appears to be more pronounced in the REIT case. However, the decomposition of the response to monetary shocks is largely driven by revision in expectations regarding future excess returns and these results are largely consistent with the findings for the overall stock market as reported in Bernanke & Kuttner (2005).

We investigate the influence of unanticipated changes in US monetary policy on Equity Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT’s). Although a number of studies have investigated the issue of interest rate changes, the effect of unanticipated changes has not previously been addressed in terms of possible effects on both REIT’s returns and volatility. The results show a strong response in both the first and second moments of REIT returns to unexpected policy rate changes. The results for the impact of the shock on both mean and volatility of returns is consistent with results from studies addressing broader equity markets. However, we find evidence both against behavioral changes in volatility coincident to US monetary policy decisions and asymmetric responses to the monetary policy shock.

One stylized feature of financial volatility impacting the modeling process is long memory. This paper examines long memory for alternative risk measures, observed absolute and squared returns for Daily REITs and compares the findings for a non-REIT equity index. The paper utilizes a variety of tests for long memory finding evidence that REIT volatility does display persistence, in contrast to the actual return series. Trading volume is found to be strongly associated with long memory. The results do however suggest differences in the findings with regard to REITs in comparison to the broader equity sector which may be due to relatively thin trading during the sample period.

This paper examines volatility in REITs using a multivariate GARCH based model. The Multivariate VAR-GARCH technique documents the return and volatility linkages between REIT sub-sectors and also examines the influence of other US equity series. The motivation is for investors to incorporate time-varyng volatility and correlations in their portfolio selection. The results illustrate the differences in results when higher frequency daily data is tested in comparison to the monthly data that has been commonly used in the existing literature. The linkages both within the REIT sector and between REITs and related sectors such as value stocks are weaker than commonly found in monthly studies. The broad market would appear to be more influential in the daily case.

This study considers the consistency of the role of both the private and public real estate markets within a mixed-asset context. While a vast literature has developed that has examined the potential role of both the private and public real estate markets, most studies have largely relied on both single time horizons and single sample periods. This paper builds upon the analysis of Lee and Stevenson (2005) who examined the consistency of REITs in a US capital market portfolio. The current paper extends that by also analyzing the role of the private market. To address the question, the allocation of both the private and traded markets is evaluated over different holding periods varying from 5- to 20-years. In general the results show that optimum mixed-asset portfolios already containing private real estate have little place for public real estate securities, especially in low risk portfolios and for longer investment horizons. Additionally, mixed-asset portfolios with public real estate either see the allocations to REITs diminished or eliminated if private real estate is also considered. The results demonstrate that there is a still a strong case for private real estate in the mixed-asset portfolio on the basis of an increase in risk-adjusted performance, even if the investor is already holding REITs, but that the reverse is not always the case.

Using a time-varying approach, this paper examines the dynamics of volatility in the REIT sector. The results highlight the attractiveness and suitability of using GARCH based approaches in the modeling of daily REIT volatility. The paper examines the influencing factors on REIT volatility, documenting the return and volatility linkages between REIT sub-sectors and also examines the influence of other US equity series. The results contrast with previous studies of monthly REIT volatility. Linkages within the REIT sector and with related sectors such as value stocks are diminished, while the general influence of market sentiment, coming through the large cap indices is enhanced. This would indicate that on a daily basis general market sentiment plays a more fundamental role than more intuitive relationships within the capital markets.

This paper provides evidence regarding the risk-adjusted performance of 19 UK real estate funds in the UK, over the period 1991-2001. Using Jensen’s alpha the results are generally favourable towards the hypothesis that real estate fund managers showed superior risk-adjusted performance over this period. However, using three widely known parametric statistical procedures to jointly test for timing and selection ability the results are less conclusive. The paper then utilises the meta-analysis technique to further examine the regression results in an attempt to estimate the proportion of variation in results attributable to sampling error. The meta-analysis results reveal strong evidence, across all models, that the variation in findings is real and may not be attributed to sampling error. Thus, the meta-analysis results provide strong evidence that on average the sample of real estate funds analysed in this study delivered significant risk-adjusted performance over this period. The meta-analysis for the three timing and selection models strongly indicating that this out performance of the benchmark resulted from superior selection ability, while the evidence for the ability of real estate fund managers to time the market is at best weak. Thus, we can say that although real estate fund managers are unable to outperform a passive buy and hold strategy through timing, they are able to improve their risk-adjusted performance through selection ability.

The use of MPT in the construction real estate portfolios has two serious limitations when used in an ex-ante framework: (1) the intertemporal instability of the portfolio weights and (2) the sharp deterioration in performance of the optimal portfolios outside the sample period used to estimate asset mean returns. Both problems can be traced to wide fluctuations in sample means Jorion (1985). Thus the use of a procedure that ignores the estimation risk due to the uncertain in mean returns is likely to produce sub-optimal results in subsequent periods. This suggests that the consideration of the issue of estimation risk is crucial in the use of MPT in developing a successful real estate portfolio strategy. Therefore, following Eun & Resnick (1988), this study extends previous ex-ante based studies by evaluating optimal portfolio allocations in subsequent test periods by using methods that have been proposed to reduce the effect of measurement error on optimal portfolio allocations.\ud \ud \ud \ud