Final Exam

To complete this final examination you will need to answer the 12 questions listed below. All questions must to be answered in Excel using the associated tabs included in the Excel file that is provided to you.

Q1. Calculate the requested values and include your answers in their respective cells highlighted in yellow.

Q2. Please refer to the accompanied paper titled "Why do the Swiss Rent?" and answer the following questions:

a. Table 1 illustrates a wide diversion in the percent of owner occupied housing among different countries. As per our class discussion, what are the factors that may increase (or decrease) the likelihood that individuals would own a home in their respective home country. List and briefly explain four of these factors.

b. According to Table 2, what is the main economic reason that only 10% of individuals in Geneva own their home?

c. According to Table 3, does the government provide an incentive for individuals to rent their home in any particular city? Where and what is it? Does it appear that individuals respond to this incentive?

Q3. You have recently invested in an office building located in NYC at a cost of $50 million. You paid for 40% of the building in cash and financed 60% with an interest only loan. For a variety of reasons you decided to denominate the loan in British pounds. At the time of the loan origination $1 could buy 0.81 British pounds. If you have a clause within your loan stating that your loan-to-value must never exceed 70%, what conversion rate will trigger a default? For simplicity, assume that the value of your property does not change.

Q4. Consider the Excel/Risk analysis on a hypothetical income producing property shown below. The only input risk distribution defined in this analysis is the "Terminal CAP", which is assumed to have a normal distribution with a mean of 5.25% and a standard deviation of 1%. The distribution shown below is the IRR output distribution.

a. According to this analysis, what is the probability that you will earn a positive nominal return on your investment?

b. According to this analysis, what is the probability that you will earn a return that is equal or higher than your required return?

c. Given today's real estate and interest rate market environments, what is the problem with defining a "Terminal CAP" with a normal distribution? Suggest a different kind of distribution that might be more suitable and explain how this distribution is likely to affect your IRR output compared with a normal distribution. Will it increase the chance that you will earn your required rate of return?

Q5. In order to diversify their portfolio, real estate investors should have exposure to different real estate property types, classes and geographic locations.

a. Is it more difficult to hold a diversified direct real estate investment portfolio compared to a diversified stock portfolio? Why?

b. What is a common alternative to holding a direct real estate investment portfolio that provides investors diversification with ease? 

c. What type of risk is eliminated with diversification? What type of risk remains? 

d. Is the benefit of diversification when applied to real estate smaller or larger than the benefit of diversification when applied to a stock portfolio? Briefly explain.

Q6. Consider the following information about 5 different asset classes (A, B, C, D and E).

Correlation matrix:

Assume that you currently hold asset A in your portfolio.

a. If you must choose only one additional asset to include in your portfolio, which one would you choose in order to maximize your overall portfolio expected return?

b. If you must choose only one additional asset to include in your portfolio, which one would you choose in order to minimize your overall portfolio risk?

c. If you were to add asset C to become 50% of the value of your portfolio, what can you say about the standard deviation of your overall portfolio? Hint - It must be lower or higher than a specific value.  

d. If you were to add asset C to become 40% of the value of your portfolio, what would be the expected return on your overall portfolio?

Q7. When analyzing a development project, which phase (construction or post construction) should be discounted at a higher rate? Why?

Q8. Consider the REIT valuation spreadsheet presented in class. For each of the following scenarios, and all other things equal, determine whether each scenario will increase, decrease or won't affect the probability that new investors will achieve their levered required rate of return.

a. The price of the REIT is lower.

b. A distribution is defined for NOI growth rate, where the average value remains the same, but the right "tail" of the distribution is longer than the left "tail".

c. The projected 10-year treasury rate is higher.

d. The quality adjustment value is lower.

e. The risk premium is lower.

f. The current market cap is higher.

g. The required levered return is higher.  

Q9. Consider the Big Mac index and its price differential among countries. 

a. Which factors contribute the most to the price differentials and which factors are pushing toward price equilibrium?

b. Compare real estate to a Big Mac with respect to the factors you mentioned in part a. Would you expect a larger or smaller price differential in the price of real estate among countries compared with the Big Mac price differential? Why?

Q10. You have gained access to a dataset that includes commercial real estate transaction that took place during the 2010-2012 time period in Miami, FL and in San Francisco, CA. After general data "clean up" you ran the following regression:

Price = α + β₁SQFT + β₂Year + β₃Class + β₄DumMiami

Where:

- Price is the price in dollars paid for each property transacted.

- SQFT is the size of each property transacted in squared feet.  

- Year takes a value of 0, 1 or 2 if the transaction took place during the year 2010, 2011 or 2012, respectively.

- Class takes a value of 0, 1 or 2 if the transacted property is of class A, B or C, respectively.

- DumMiami is a dummy variable that takes a value of 1 if the property transacted is locate in Miami and 0 otherwise.

For each of the coefficients ((β₁, β₂, β₃ and β₄) please predict whether you expect it to be positive, negative or ambiguous and explain in one sentence.

Q11. Referring to problem 10, what other variables would you have liked to include in your regression if you could get any information you want about each property?

a. List 3 additional variables you would have liked to include in your regression in order to improve its accuracy and clearly explain how each variable would be defined.

b. Briefly explain the sign you would expect (negative, positive or ambiguous) from the coefficient of each of these variables.

Q12. Which single real estate topic covered in this course you found to be most interesting and/or relevant? Please explain why in 3-4 sentences.

Attachment:- Assignment Files.rar