Real estate as an asset class
The real estate market as a whole is an aggregate of many submarkets such as owneroccupied housing, offices or land. Usually the performance of a submarket and not the overall market is the focus of an investor. It is important to take indices as underlying instruments that have a large community of potential users. Primary users are generally institutional investors, but private investors should also be able to understand and benefit from property derivatives.
While investors see real estate as an asset class that must generate a return as high as possible, homeowners see their house as a consumption good with some price risk. The submarkets for the two are completely different. The choice of an index as a suitable underlying instrument for derivatives depends mainly on the criteria of the region, property type and data base (rents, transaction prices or appraisal values). Types with a potential volume that is sufficiently large for a reasonable derivatives market include offices, residential properties, retail space and industrial space. It is doubtful whether more special property types such as hotels or even land would find a big enough market.
Owner-occupied housing is treated very differently around the globe. While homeowners borrow relatively moderately and stay for decades in their home in central Europe, households in the UK and in the US are much more sensitive to property price movements. Often, they are ready to realize gains by selling their home or they increase the mortgage once prices have appreciated.
Only the latter mind-set may lead to a broadly supported desire for protection against falling house prices. The market for owner-occupied housing is huge, and the sufficiently large number of transactions make indices more reliable.
The impact of payday loans market
There is mixed evidence on the impact of a derivatives market on its underlying asset market. Some studies have found a reduction in volatility after the introduction of derivatives while others conclude that volatility was not affected or even increased.
The general reasoning for an increase in payday loans volatility states that derivatives attract speculators who may destabilize the base market and create bubbles, and that the closing out of hedging positions shortly before expiration creates additional price variation. On the other hand, a decrease of volatility could result as derivatives make a market more complete, reduce transaction costs and enhance information flows. Also, the transfer of speculative activity from the base market to the derivative market may dampen volatility.
Others suggests that derivatives improve the efficiency of incomplete markets by expanding the opportunity set faced by investors. This in turn should reduce the volatility of the underlying asset. Research show that option listings have beneficial effects and improve the market quality and liquidity of the underlying stocks. They analyzed the impact of derivatives on their underlying assets for 174 stocks that had an option listed on either the American Stock Exchange (Amex), the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the Pacific Stock Exchange (PSE) or the Philadelphia Stock Exchange (PHLX) from 1983 to 1989. In particular, they observed a decrease in the bid-offer spreads and increases in quoted depth, trading volume, trading frequency and transaction size after the introduction of derivatives. In summary, the listing of options resulted in reduced transaction costs for the underlying stocks. Further, they found that information asymmetries decreased and pricing efficiency increased.
Exchange of cash flows between loans
A PTRS is a simple exchange of cash flows between two counterparties based on a notional amount. On one side, the buyer, taking a long position on commercial property, pays a fixed percentage interest rate or LIBOR plus a spread. In return, he or she receives a cashflow based on the annual total return of the property index. The seller, taking the equivalent short position, pays and receives cashflows that are exactly opposite.
The interest rate used by the market is typically the three-month LIBOR. The spread that is added reflects expectations of the future performance of the index, and what buyers and sellers are prepared to accept to take the position (see the property spread). In January 2008, many banks switched from the LIBOR-based to a fixed interest rate convention.
In the event that the annual total return is negative, i.e. if the capital value drops sufficiently to wipe out income returns, the total return buyer pays that negative return to the seller, in addition to the quarterly interest payments. The property index commonly used is an annual index, which is based on the actual performance of a large number of institutional portfolios and comprises an income or rental and a capital growth element.
In addition to swaps, contracts-for-difference (CFDs) are used as trading instruments. For deals on residential indices, such as the Halifax House Price Index, CFDs are already common. A CFD represents an index that is artificially set at 100 when the deal is done. Investors and hedgers then state the price at which they are willing to buy or sell the index at maturity. If two counterparties agree on a three-year deal at 112 and the index rises to 116, then the buyer receives 116 ? 112 = 4 times the contract size from the seller. The transactions are cash free until maturity, when profits and losses are settled. Many market participants find CFDs more intuitive than swaps.
The capital credit value components
In early 2007, further banks were granted licences to trade the NCREIF property index and are planning to launch a US platform to trade property derivatives (Four more banks, 2007). By December 2007, seven banks were licensed to trade derivatives on the NCREIF commercial property index. Besides Credit Suisse, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley are involved. The traded volume reached US$ 300 million by late 2007. More banks are expected to sign up for a licence contract within a few months (Banks move, 2007; Property derivatives, 2007). Given the potential, hedge funds and insurance companies are also starting to show interest in developing the US market for property derivatives.
Credit Suisse initially offered three basic trades to investors: Price Return Swaps on the capital value return component of the NPI, Property Type Swaps on the total return by property type subindices (for all reported property types except hotels, as hotels comprise only less than 3% of the overall index) and Total Rate of Return Swaps for the NPI total return:
In a Price Return Swap, the capital value return component, published quarterly by NCREIF, is exchanged against a fixed spread. The fixed spread is used to balance demand on both the long and short sides of the trade (see Chapter 8 on the property spread).
A Property Type Swap on the total return by property type subindices is a total rate of return swap transaction in which an investor takes a long position in one property type and a short position in a different property type, based on the respective property type subindices. Depending on the property type swap that is entered into, the investor will either pay or receive a fixed spread to enter into this swap. The fixed spread will be determined by supply and demand in the market, and therefore could be positive, negative or zero.
In a Total Rate of Return Swap for the NPI total return the quarterly total return published by NCREIF is exchanged against a three-month LIBOR plus or minus a spread. The spread is used to balance demand on both the long and short sides of the trade.
All trades are notional based. This means that they are unfunded and the only cash needed upfront to enter the trades are margin requirements necessary to manage counterparty risk evaluated on a counterparty-by-counterparty basis. The trades settle quarterly and have a maturity of two to three years. In April 2007, the property company CBRE claimed that the first trade on a US subindex had been closed.
