The role of environmental sustainability has increased in the real estate sector. The adoption of sustainable principles, however, has been slowed by a lack of evidence relating to the financial benefits and uneven distribution of costs and benefits between owners (investors) and occupiers. This study identifies the drivers and benefits of environmentally sustainable buildings from the real estate investor's perspective. The research is based on a comprehensive literature review focusing on the previous research showing scientific evidence on the benefits of investing in environmentally sustainable buildings.

Planning systems are generally divided into plan-led and development-led systems. However, it is quite common that the planning practice follows development-led planning although the planning system would structurally be plan-led. To study how development-led planning affects the implementation of large-scale urban development projects, we conducted a cross-sectional survey in Finland – a country with a hierarchical setting of legally binding zoning plans which can be prepared by following either plan-led or development-led practices. The survey respondents were civil servants managing implementation of large-scale urban development projects. Our results quite surprisingly suggest that development-led planning may cause the projects to become more vulnerable to property market uncertainty compared to the projects following the plan-led practises. These results challenge the usual output-based legitimation of development-led planning to some extent.

This paper studies the market selection criteria in international real estate investments. It presents the results of a questionnaire study among internationally investing property investors in Europe. The results indicate that the most important factors for market selection are safety of property rights and title as well as expected return on property investments. Also other factors describing institutional set‐up and market maturity were found to affect the market selection process, whereas the correlation of the property returns was not found to have a large impact on market selection. Santruka Šiame darbe nagrinejami kriterijai, pagal kuriuos pasirenkamos rinkos tarptautinems investicijoms i nekilnojamaji turta. Jame pateikiami Europos nekilnojamojo turto investuotoju, investuojančiu tarptautiniu mastu, apklausos rezultatai. Rezultatai rodo, kad svarbiausi veiksniai, renkantis rinka, yra nuosavybes teisiu saugumas ir laukiama graža iš investiciju i nekilnojamaji turta. Nustatyta, kad rinkos pasirinkimo procese svarbūs ir kiti veiksniai, apibūdinantys institucine saranga ir rinkos branduma, o nekilnojamojo turto gražos koreliacija rinkai pasirinkti reikšmingos itakos neturi.

Executive Summary. Long present in the United States, real estate investment trusts (REITs) are a fairly new phenomenon in Europe. This paper examines the sensitivity of European REIT returns to returns in other asset classes, including equities, bonds, and commodities. Consistent with previous studies, the results suggest that a significant positive correlation is observed between REITs and equities, especially small cap- and value stocks; REIT correlation to fixed income securities is found negative. Temporal variations in asset volatilities and their effect on correlations are assessed: The motivation is for investors and portfolio managers alike to incorporate the time-varying nature of the relationship in their decision making. Whereas the diversification benefits for equities decrease with increasing volatility, fixed income assets provide an increased hedge. The case of commodities in this sense remains to a large extent blurred.

This article adds to the scarce literature on the influence of international investment flows on local real estate values. We hypothesize that a greater foreign-investor presence in a real estate market results in a lower capitalization rate and examine whether this holds true in the Helsinki CBD office market in Finland. This market provides an interesting case study by being part of a small open economy, in which the presence of foreign investors has substantially varied over time. The Dynamic OLS estimations using data for the period 1990–2015 provide support for the hypothesis. The baseline results show a highly statistically significant negative impact of foreign-investor participation on the capitalization rate, the point estimates indicating that a 10% point growth in the share of foreign buyers of the total transaction volume decreases the cap rate by approximately 30 basis points.