Global Trends in Real Estate Finance

Book excerpt: To operate effectively in today’s dynamic global real estatemarkets, it is essential to understand the complex processes thatunderpin them. This up-to-date work, which brings togethercontributions from industry and academic experts from around theworld, is a valuable corollary to effective investmentdecision-making within the property sector and will be of interestto post-graduate property students, researchers and practising realestate investors. Recent years have seen some rapid developments in the globalscale and structure of real estate markets. Such transformationshave been paralleled by significant changes in the financialstructures, and processes that serve these markets, includingsophisticated new investment and finance structures and products.Examples of these include the real estate investment trusts (REIT)products that have been developed in USA, Europe and Asia, therange of unlisted products emerging in UK and Europe, and theinnovative financing structures being developed in manycountries. Global Trends in Real Estate Finance addresses thisemerging complexity and sophistication in contemporary real estatemarkets by discussing the history, merits and implications of arange of products and processes. Also examined are the changes inthe practices and environment needed to ensure the success of theseproperty products, including increased disclosure, corporategovernance, market transparency and improved skills base. Chapters are written by leading international contributors, bothacademic and practitioner. The context is explicitly international,with a focus on UK, Europe, Asia, Australia and the USA. The aim isto identify specific market areas to describe the key innovations,rather than simply providing a description of various geographicalmarkets.