L Brown

Corporate Real Estate in Ireland: a current perspective on corporate strategic decision making

Corporate activity in Ireland has experienced a significant growth as the economy has benefited from extensive inward investment. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the role of real estate in corporate decision making within Ireland. Corporate real estate issues are initially discussed as the contextual anchoring for a survey of corporate occupiers within both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Findings indicate a high level of professional and practical experience in relation to real estate but this has not been fully exploited by companies in developing a proactive corporate strategy. Real estate plays a largely traditional role within organisations although it appears that differences exist between indigenous and externally parented companies. Comparisons are drawn with other similar surveys at an international level.

Corporate strategic decision making: A comparative analysis of companies in the industrial and non‐industrial sectors

Purpose – Seeks to explore recent studies in corporate real estate and to provide a comparative analysis of industrial corporations in Ireland and those in the non‐industrial sector with respect to their corporate real estate management objectives.Design/methodology/approach – The empirical investigation reports on a study undertaken in Ireland and compares results from companies in the industrial sector with companies in the non‐industrial sector. The methodology is based on a behavioural questionnaire targeted at the top 150 companies operating in Ireland and classified on the basis of number of employees.Findings – The findings indicate that significant differences are apparent between companies in the industrial sector and companies not in the industrial sector in the use of real estate assets. In particular companies in the industrial/manufacturing sectors have weakly developed corporate real estate strategies.Research limitations/implications – The main limitations derive from a relatively small sam...

List price and sale price variation across the housing market cycle

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how the difference between the sale price and list price of houses varies across the market cycle.Design/methodology/approach – The paper utilises quarterly transaction‐based information on house prices from the Belfast Metropolitan Area. The information is structured on a time series basis from 2002 to 2008. The analysis is concerned with the mean differences between list price and sale price, the standard deviation of the differences, the skewness and kurtosis of the distributions.Findings – The results show that under normal market conditions the mean deviation between list price and sale price is small circa 1 per cent. However, the departure between list price and sale price becomes substantial on both the up‐ and down‐cycles of the market. The analysis shows that the highest mean positive deviation of 12.1 per cent occurred in the first quarter of 2007 and two quarters before sale prices peaked, suggesting that buyer bidding behaviour was changing pr...