A repeat sales index for office buildings in New York City, 1900-2000

This paper comments on one of the real estate and financial world's most common adages: that real estate is a safe long-term investment that will perform equal to or exceed other common investments, particularly over long stretches of time. With data drawn from a wide range of primary and secondary sources, a repeat sales index of large (250,000+ square foot) commercial building sales in the Midtown and Downtown sub-markets of New York City is created to illustrate how these properties have performed as an inflation-adjusted investment from 1900 through 2000. It differs from other papers that focused on hedonic modeling of building attributes and locational characteristics or that created appraisal-, lease- or property-share returns indices. Although our findings were not statistically significant, appreciation is found to be rather flat over time, appreciating on average between 1/4 to 2/3 percent per year and mirrors the findings of Eichholtz 1997 and Eichholtz & Geltner 2002. This suggests that while commercial office properties may provide investment opportunities when purchased and sold at the right points in the cycle, it tends to under-perform other investment options when carried over time.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2002

Authors dc:creator

• Templeton, Cesarina A. (Cesarina Antoinette), 1971-
• Baranski, Mark S. 1966-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• William C. Wheaton.

• Urban Studies and Planning.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/8165

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/8165