With a focus on the Nigerian property market, this paper considered and empirically analyzed how property market nature and the perception of market players of some qualitative factors have impacted on choice of property portfolio diversification strategies. Questionnaires, backed up with interviews, were administered on 28 institutional property investors and 159 real estate practitioners in three commercial nerve centres of Nigeria, namely, Lagos, Abuja and Port‐Harcourt metropolitan areas. The frequency distribution analyses’ results revealed that the Nigerian property market was an emerging one and, as it is expected, there was dearth of time series data while investors in the market were small time institutional investors. Using mean rating on a 4‐point rating scale, the study found six factors, arising from the nature of the property market, as the significant factors impacting on choice of diversification strategies. These are: the investors’ overall expectation of the benefits of diversification scheme, the need to reduce management operating costs, management convenience, operating environment, market players’ education and knowledge of alternative diversification techniques and availability or otherwise of data in the market. The result of cross tabulation and Chi‐square test also indicated that there was a statistically significant relationship between educational qualifications of practitioners and their choice of diversification strategies. Santrauka Daugiausia dėmesio skiriant Nigerijos nuosavybės rinkai, šiame darbe apžvelgta ir empiriškai išanalizuota įtaka, kurią, renkantis nuosavybės portfelio diversifikacijos strategijas, daro nuosavybės rinkos prigimtis ir tai, kaip kai kurie rinkos dalyviai suvokia tam tikrus kokybinius veiksnius. Pasitelkus anketas ir pokalbius, apklaustos 28 į nuosavybę investuojančios organizacijos ir 159 nekilnojamojo turto specialistai trijuose pagrindiniuose Nigerijos komerciniuose centruose, t. y. Lagose, Abudžoje ir Port-Harkorte. Dažnių lentelių analizės rezultatai parodė, kad Nigerijos nuosavybės rinka yra kylanti ir, kaip tikimasi, trūko laiko eilučių duomenų, nes rinkoje veikiantys investuotojai buvo smulkūs instituciniai investuotojai. Apskaičiavus vertinimų vidurkį pagal keturių balų skalę, tyrimo metu nustatyti šeši veiksniai, susiję su nuosavybės rinkos prigimtimi, kurie daro reikšmingą įtaką renkantis diversifikacijos strategijas. Jie yra tokie: bendrieji investuotojų lūkesčiai dėl iš diversifikacijos schemos gaunamos naudos, poreikis mažinti operatyvines vadybos išlaidas, valdymo patogumas, operatyvinė aplinka, rinkos veikėjų išsilavinimas ir žinios apie alternatyvius diversifikacijos metodus bei prieinamos arba kitaip pasiekiamos žinios rinkoje. Be to, kryžminių lentelių ir Chi kvadrato kriterijaus rezultatai parodė, kad tarp specialistų išsilavinimo (kvalifikacijos) ir jų pasirinktų diversifikacijos strategijų yra statistiškai reikšmingas ryšys.

Background: The adoption of and improvements in new technology in the South African capital market historically led to increased trade capacity and liquidity, which may be linked to the growth in market size.Aim: In this study the aim is to investigate factors that will influence the adoption of blockchain technology in the South African clearing and settlement industry.Methods: In this study semi-structured interviews to collect data among stakeholders in the clearing and settlement cycle/process of securities in the South African capital market are employed. Participants were identified through a combination of purposive, snowball sampling and targeted sampling using social media. Data were analysed using thematic data analysis with the aid of Atlas.ti software.Setting: The South African capital market, with specific focus on the clearing and settlement of equity.Results: This study identifies People, Organisation, Technology, Industry and Country (POTIC) as factors important in influencing blockchain technology adoption in South Africa. The study expands and contributes to traditional frameworks for adopting blockchain technology in the South African clearing and settlement industry by adding five factors: trust, load shedding, unemployment/layoffs, current infrastructure, useful life and educational campaigns.Conclusion: The POTIC framework will be beneficial to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) and Shares Transactions Totally Electronic (STRATE) when considering the adoption of blockchain technology for the integration of trade, execution and post-trade services to reduce the settlement cycle. In addition, when regulators need to formulate new regulations they will benefit from considering the POTIC framework.

Purpose: The importance of education is always underscored without adequate demonstration of skill(s) for practice. Appropriate professional skills guarantees efficient real estate investment decision making and prevents loss of investment fund. The study evaluated, from the perspective of employers of labour, the effort of the government, through students, industrial scheme, at bridging skill gaps in real estate education in Nigeria. Design Methodology/approach: Primary data were collected with the aid of questionnaire served on 270 estate surveying and valuation firms in Lagos state, Nigeria. The descriptive methods of mean and proportion method were used to determine the contribution of government industrial scheme to real estate education in Nigeria. Findings: The result found that through the student industrial scheme, students acquired experience/skill in real estate marketing as well as the art of team work. Originality/Value: The paper is to serve as impetus to policy makers to enhancing the quality of real estate in Nigeria. It will also serve as proof to foreign investors of the quality of Nigerian real estate practitioners to give them efficient service.

With a focus on Lagos property market, the purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that influence accessibility to data for valuation and investment analysis in Nigeria. This was with a view to improving accessibility to property data in the market, thereby enhancing investment appraisal practice. Primary data utilized for the study were sourced through the use of questionnaire administered on property practitioners (referred to as estate surveying and valuation (ESV) firms) in Lagos property market. A total of 190 ESV firms were selected using stratified random sampling based on their geographical location. Relative significance index (RSI), frequency distribution and principal component analysis (PCA) were employed for data analysis. A total of 19 factors were identified as affecting accessibility to data. Confidentiality attached to property data by practitioners was ranked as the most significant factor with RSI of 0.81. The next three factors were lack of cooperation within members of professional body (0.79), accuracy of data (0.76) and duty of care to client (0.75), while the least ranked factor was duplication of data set (0.63). All the 19 variables were further grouped into six principal factors using PCA, namely, economic, attitudinal, ethical, legal, administrative and technical factors; with each factor explaining the following variance, 16.75, 16.1, 13.64, 12.78, 10.51 and 7.95, respectively. The paper’s results will enable stakeholders to address the challenges to data accessibility in Lagos property market and similar opaque markets elsewhere thereby enhancing property data accessibility and investment analysis. The paper is an attempt to examine the factors affecting accessibility to data identified in different studies holistically together in a single study and from the perspective of an emerging property market like Nigeria.

Purpose: This paper aimed to examine the return/risk performance of direct and indirect real estate (listed property stock) in the Nigerian real estate market and analyzed the short-term integration between the two classes of real estate assets. It also established whether investors could achieve diversification benefits by combining both assets in a portfolio.Design/methodology/approach: The data utilized comprised annual returns on direct real estate calculated from the rental and capital values of 226 direct commercial properties obtained from property valuers in Lagos, Nigeria, for a period of January 1999-December 2014. The appraisal-based direct real estate returns were de-smoothed using the Geltner (1993) procedure. The annual returns of indirect real estate were also computed from the transactions of listed property stock on the Nigerian Stock Exchange for the study period. The return-risk profiles were also broken down into short- and medium-term sub-periods, comprising 3, 5, 8 and 12 years to reflect the level of volatility in the market, whereas the nature of the short-term relationship between the two real estate assets classes was tested using Granger causality technique.Findings: The results revealed that listed property stock performed better than unsmoothed direct real estate on a risk-adjusted performance basis. The performance profile, however, varies over the different sub-periods considered. Short-term integration analysis showed that there was no bidirectional relationship between direct and listed property stock, implying diversification and risk reduction possibilities in combining both assets with other asset classes in a domestic asset portfolio. Overall, the results confirm the findings of previous study that listed property stocks return is segmented from the direct real estate market upon which its pricing and trading in the stock market are based.Practical implications: The conclusion of the study suggests that investors could achieve improved performance by investing in listed property stocks than direct real estate in the Nigerian real estate market. The inclusion of both assets in a domestic mixed-asset portfolio could also be expected to offer diversification and risk reduction benefits.Originality/value: This is one of the few studies that examine the short-run integration between direct real estate and listed property stocks with a focus on an emerging African market.

Purpose: With a focus on Lagos, Nigeria property market, the purpose of this paper is to examine the willingness of property practitioners towards property data sharing and assemblage with a view to improving accessibility to commercial property data in Nigerian property market. Design/methodology/approach: Primary data were sourced through the use of questionnaire administered on property practitioners (referred as estate surveying and valuation (ESV) firms) in Lagos property market. In total, 190 ESV firms were selected using stratified random sampling based on their geographical location, frequency distribution, percentage, and cross-tabulation were employed for data analysis. Findings: The results showed that majority of the practitioners (68.1 per cent) were willing to share property data among themselves while 52.6 per cent of the practitioners were in support of data assemblage. The result also revealed the higher the experience of the practitioners, the more they are averse to data sharing. It was also revealed that the bigger firm are more averse to data assemblage than the smaller firms. Meanwhile, majority of the practitioners (93.3 per cent) were in support of creation of a central database. Practical implications: The study concluded that without the willingness of practitioners to support data assemblage, the data debacle in property market might not be resolved. Originality/value: The paper is an attempt towards the possibility of creating database of concluded transactions, which will improve accessibility to property data in opaque property market.