"Oft expectation fails": a time-series analysis of construction starts in the London office market

Grandy, A.-M. and Fuerst, F., (2010) "Oft expectation fails": a time-series analysis of construction starts in the London office market. Working Papers in Real Estate & Planning. 13/10. Working Paper. University of Reading, Reading. pp19.

Abstract/Summary

Expectations of future market conditions are generally acknowledged to be crucial for the development decision and hence for shaping the built environment. This empirical study of the Central London office market from 1987 to 2009 tests for evidence of adaptive and naive expectations. Applying VAR models and a recursive OLS regression with one-step forecasts, we find evidence of adaptive and naïve, rather than rational expectations of developers. Although the magnitude of the errors and the length of time lags vary over time and development cycles, the results confirm that developers’ decisions are explained to a large extent by contemporaneous and past conditions in both London submarkets. The corollary of this finding is that developers may be able to generate excess profits by exploiting market inefficiencies but this may be hindered in practice by the long periods necessary for planning and construction of the asset. More generally, the results of this study suggest that real estate cycles are largely generated endogenously rather than being the result of unexpected exogenous shocks.

Item Type	Report (Working Paper)
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/26980
Item Type	Report
Divisions	Henley Business School > Real Estate and Planning
Publisher	University of Reading
Publisher Statement	The copyright of each working paper remains with the author. If you wish to quote from or cite any paper please contact the appropriate author; in some cases a more recent version of the paper may have been published elsewhere.
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