René-Ojas Woltering

Real Estate Fund Openings and Cannibalization

This paper examines the trade-offs in launching new real estate funds, specifically open-end, direct-property funds. This investment vehicle, which is designed to provide the risk-return benefits of private market real estate, is available to retail investors in a number of countries. At the same time, these funds are also subject to liquidity risk, because they hold an inherently illiquid asset in an open-end structure. This format presents fund-family managers with unique challenges, particularly with the decision to open new funds. The data consists of 2,127 German fund openings across 76 fund families in 12 asset classes over the 1992-2010 period. Including a wide range of asset classes allows for a comparison between real estate and other investment objectives. We find a substantial cannibalization effect across the existing real estate funds of a family, while we note the opposite effect – i.e., flows into existing funds increase following a fund opening within the same objective – for all other asset classes. Our analysis of fund opening determinants shows that inflows mitigate the cannibalization risk for new real estate funds. Additional evidence highlights the role of scale and scope economies in real estate fund openings. Overall, the results provide new insights into the relatively large size and small number of real estate funds when compared to mutual funds dedicated to other investment objectives.

New Insights into the NAV Spread Puzzle of Listed Real Estate: Idiosyncratic and Systematic Evidence

This paper presents novel insights into the NAV spread puzzle of listed real estate. We find 1) that increasing company size reduces NAV discounts and increases NAV premiums which can be explained by economies of scale and the popularity of large stocks among investors. 2) Increasing company-specific risk increases the discount as risk of potential default decreases attractiveness among investors. Contrary to existing research, rising leverage reduces the discount and increases the NAV premium accordingly, which can be explained by a potential positive leverage effect on the return on equity. 3) Long-term credit market indicators help to explain the NAV spread puzzle: An increase in the default spread, increases the discount and decreases the premium. However, the results for the short-term credit market indicator term spread do not help to solve the NAV spread puzzle. 4) Increasing positive stock market and property sector sentiment reduces NAV discounts as was found by past research accordingly and is in line with the noise trader theory. The analysis is based on monthly data over the 2005-2014 period for a global sample of 447 listed real estate companies (REITs and REOCs) in 12 countries. This rich setting offers substantial heterogeneity in NAV spreads, idiosyncratic and systematic factors across time and countries.

Real Estate Fund Openings and Cannibalization: Real Estate Fund Openings and Cannibalization

This article examines the trade‐offs in launching new real estate funds, specifically open‐end, direct‐property funds. This investment vehicle, which is designed to provide the risk‐return benefits of private market real estate, is available to retail investors in a number of countries. At the same time, these funds are also subject to liquidity risk, because they hold an inherently illiquid asset in an open‐end structure. This format presents fund‐family managers with unique challenges, particularly with the decision to open new funds. The data consist of 2,127 German fund openings across 76 fund families in 12 asset classes over the 1992–2010 period. Including a wide range of asset classes allows for a comparison between real estate and other investment objectives. We find a substantial cannibalization effect across the existing real estate funds of a family, while we note the opposite effect—i.e., flows into existing funds increase following a fund opening within the same objective—for all other asset classes. Our analysis of fund opening determinants shows that inflows mitigate the cannibalization risk for new real estate funds. Additional evidence highlights the role of scale and scope economies in real estate fund openings. Overall, the results provide new insights into the relatively large size and small number of real estate funds when compared to mutual funds dedicated to other investment objectives.

The Interest Rate Sensitivity of Value and Growth Stocks - Evidence from Listed Real Estate

This paper analyzes the return sensitivity of value and growth stocks to changes of five interest rate proxies. The analysis is based on monthly data over the 2000 to 2014 period for a global sample of 487 listed real estate companies in 24 countries. This rich setting offers substantial heterogeneity in interest rates across time and countries. We find that value stocks are more sensitive to changes in the short-term rate than growth stocks. This is consistent with the theory that investors with a short investment horizon trade-off the high initial yield of value stocks against a lower risk short-term rate. In contrast, growth stocks are more sensitive to changes in the long-term rate, which is consistent with the future cash flows of growth stocks being discounted at a higher rate. We also find that value stocks are more sensitive to changes in the credit yield. Since credit costs have a direct impact on a firm’s cost of capital, this result is consistent with risk-based theories of the value premium, which argue that value stocks are riskier, because they tend to have higher leverage and a larger default probability.

Multiple Arbitrage: Evidence from International Real Estate Markets

Divergences between public and private market valuations provide potential arbitrage opportunities. We develop a model in which the investment decisions of public companies depend on the valuation gap between public and private markets. Our model predicts that public companies finance growth externally by raising capital, debt and equity, when public market valuations exceed private market valuations in order to realize shareholder value gains. We empirically test our model’s predictions using a global sample of 400 REITs and REOCs. We argue that the real estate industry is particularly well suited for this analysis due to its transparency, as well as the high number of private market valuations in general, and at the company level. In particular we examine: 1) whether public real estate companies exploit valuation gaps between public and private markets through external growth (i.e., by raising equity and debt to expand their portfolios), and 2) whether these externally financed expansions result in shareholder value gains.