Performing a mortgage valuation
The introduction of the commercial property derivatives market in the UK has raised some issues related to the valuation process of appraisers (according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS)). A sufficiently liquid market of commercial property derivatives would offer useful information about how the market expects property values to evolve. Appraisers could take this information into account when performing a valuation. However, appraisers may pay little attention to derivatives prices in the early stages of the market development.
When performing a mortgage valuation, appraisers prefer using comparable evidence. However, this approach has a number of shortcomings. First of all, it will always be retrospective by definition. Further, the illiquid nature of the physical commercial property market means that transactions are only rarely observed. Moreover, comparable deals may include covenants, incentives and lease clauses that are undisclosed but clearly price relevant and thus distort the comparability.
A forward price curve implied from derivatives could facilitate valuations and increase valuation accuracy by providing market forecasts for rents, yields and capital values on a daily basis. Such forecasts could be incorporated into the valuation process and would provide a timelier indicator than retrospective transaction data. Some appraisers already use derivative prices on the IPD All Property Index and its subsector indices as a starting point for the valuation process. Note that the valuations in turn are used to calculate the IPD indices. In effect, if appraisers follow more closely the forward curve of property prices, the index could follow the prices of the derivatives on them.
Cash-settled payday loan contracts are available
After the launch of futures and options on regional home prices, CME announced a partnership with the commercial real estate index provider Global Real Analytics (GRA) on 6 September 2006. They listed future and option contracts based on the S&P/GRA Commercial Real Estate Indices (CREX) on 29 October 2007.
The S&P/GRA CREX indices capture underlying real estate dynamics by tracking transaction-based price changes in diverse property sectors and geographic regions. GRA has a 20-year history of capturing data and sees the new indices as a natural extension, suited for the use of publicly traded futures contracts.
Ten quarterly cash-settled contracts are available: a national composite index, five regional indices (Desert Mountain West, Mid-Atlantic South, Northeast, Midwest and Pacific West) and four national property type indices (retail, office, apartment and warehouse properties).
CME expects the users of the new property contracts to be different from those trading in housing derivatives. If someone hedges against house-price declines in an area, he or she develops or buys a house there. The commercial contracts, on the other hand, are designed for larger investors who hold commercial properties in their portfolios, such as pension funds and REITs.
To hedge real estate or home price declines, individuals can purchase put options based on a particular index. If prices fall, investors will naturally see the value of their real estate holdings decline, but they offset the losses with gains in the put options. The CME hopes that there will be enough speculators in the market to take the other side of the transactions.
Payday loans as a new solution to invest
GFI and Colliers claim they are working with the National University of Singapore to create residential indices for Singapore’s housing market. The main issue is that there are fewcountries that have an adequate amount of transparency to develop credible and robust indices on which to trade.
The first property derivatives in Switzerland were launched by the Zuercher Kantonalbank (ZKB) in February 2006. The bank issued two structured products that were offered to institutional as well as retail investors as a new solution to invest into the asset class of real estate.
One of the products was capital-protected while the other was structured as a discount certificate. The products could be subscribed in small denominations and the bank guaranteed a daily secondary market. The two products were based on the “ZuercherWohneigentumsindex (ZWEX),” which tracks owner-occupied house prices in the Zurich greater area. The index is calculated and published quarterly and is based on transaction prices. The bank says that demand exceeded expectations, especially for the product with capital protection.
In September 2007, the first swap on commercial property was transacted. ZKB and ABN Amro traded the IPD Switzerland All Property TR Index against Swiss LIBOR plus an undisclosed spread.
Development of the property credit and taxes
The development of the property derivatives market has so far centered on the UK and the US. However, both interest and transaction volumes are growing throughout Europe and Asia. Market participants expect first trades in Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden after first trades in Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan and Switzerland. As the quality of indices improve, more and more countries will see first trades. Also, thePan-European IPD index creates strong interest from retail investors and from US pension funds. The trend is unlikely to spread to some countries where the data basis, needed to construct a reliable index, is insufficient.
Quickly increasing volumes are also expected due to the interest of insurance companies to hedge their liability risk, which depends heavily on real estate price changes. Liquidity will probably only change if more banks are willing to warehouse risks, i.e. take a risky position.
More mature markets will lead to more standardized derivatives traded on exchanges. However, the OTC market is likely to be the dominant derivative format in the near future.
The property group Grosvenor and ABN Amro traded the first property derivative in Australia, based on the Property Council/IPD Australian Property Index, in May 2007. The trade took the form of a two-year total return swap.
