Lease

About: Lease is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2509 publications have been published within this topic receiving 22387 citations. The topic is also known as: loan & leasing.

Real estate search and location system and method

Abstract: There is provided a method for locating available real estate properties for sale, lease or rental using a database of available properties at a central location and remote stations which use a graphic interface to select desired regions on a map of the areas in interest. The user begins with a region where they are interested in acquiring property and select an inner area within this region by using a pointing device such as a mouse to designate boundaries on a map displayed on screen. This is then zoomed in on and a second area is selected within the zoomed region. The second area is then cross-referenced with the database of available properties whose approximate locations are then pictorially displayed on screen. Information about the properties can then be obtained in textual form.

Why hold‐ups occur: the self‐enforcing range of contractual relationships

Abstract: One of my most enjoyable intellectual experiences was working with Armen Alchian on the Klein, Crawford and Alchian [1978] hold-up paper. In this paper I extend the basic framework presented in that paper, pointing out what I now consider to be its shortcomings and providing insights into the nature of hold-ups and the form of contracts chosen by transactors to avoid hold-ups. The major analytical extension entails combining hold-up analysis with my work on private enforcement. Because private enforcement capital is limited and written contract terms are necessarily imperfect, transactors must optimally combine court-enforced written terms together with privately enforced unwritten terms to define what I call the self-enforcing range of their contractual relationship. Hold-ups occur when unanticipated events place the contractual relationship outside the self-enforcing range. This probabilistic framework, where transactors enter contractual relationships knowing that a hold-up may take place (but believing that the expected gains from trade outweigh the expected rent-dissipating costs associated with the hold-up risk), is shown to have important implications for understanding the structure of contracts adopted by transactors in the marketplace. I. WHY DO HOLD-UPS OCCUR? I begin with a simple example that illustrates the basic economic forces involved in a hold-up. Assume that a builder constructs a house on a piece of land the builder does not own but, rather, only leases short-term. After the initial land lease expires, the landowner could hold up the builder by raising the land rent to reflect the costs of moving the house to another lot. This example illustrates all the hold-up factors emphasized in Klein, Crawford and Alchian - (a) the builder has made an investment that is highly specific to a particular piece of land and (b) the landowner has taken advantage of the incompleteness of the contract that governs the relationship (in particular, the fact that the lease does not cover future years) to (c) expropriate the quasi-rents on the builder's specific investment. The obvious question is why anything like this would ever occur; that is, why would someone be so naive as to build a house on land for which they had only a short-term lease? Our primary goal in Klein, Crawford and Alchian was not to explain the existence of hold-ups, but rather the institutions adopted by transactors to avoid hold-ups. For example, we would expect that builders, anticipating a potential hold-up problem, would decide to purchase the land or at least to sign a long-term ground lease before starting construction. However, we do present some examples in the paper of hold-ups that actually occurred. The implicit reason we give for the occurrence of these hold-ups is transactor ignorance. Apparently, transactors are not always smart enough to choose the contractual arrangement that would eliminate the hold-up problem. Oliver Williamson provides a similar, but much more explicit answer to the question of why hold-ups occur. When defining "opportunism" he states: By opportunism I mean self-interest seeking with guile. This includes but is scarcely limited to more blatant forms, such as lying, stealing and cheating. Opportunism more often involves subtle forms of deceit. ...More generally, opportunism refers to the incomplete or distorted disclosure of information, especially to calculated efforts to mislead, distort, obfuscate, or otherwise confuse.(1) For example, the hold-up may have occurred in our illustrative house construction example because the landowner deceived the builder with a low up-front land rental price and vague promises about the future. Relying on the ability of one transactor to take advantage of the naivete or ignorance of another transactor is a highly unsatisfactory way to explain the incidence of hold-ups. Simple examples of deception, such as a builder constructing a house on land that is only rented short-term, rarely, if ever, occur. …

Determinants of Corporate Leasing Policy

Abstract: The existing finance literature assumes the real operating cash flows from leasing or owning are invariant to the ownership of the asset and focuses on tax-related incentives for corporate leasing policy. Our analysis suggests that taxes are important in identifying potential lessees and lessors, but are less important in identifying the specific assets leased. We provide a unified analysis of the various incentives affecting the lease-versuspurchase decision. We then show how these incentives explain the use of contractual provisions such as maintenance clauses, deposits, options to purchase the asset, and metering. WHEN A FIRM BUYS AN ASSET, it obtains both the right to the services of that asset over the period it is owned plus the right to sell the asset at any future date. With a lease, the firm acquires only the right to the asset's services for a period specified in the contract. The existing finance literature analyzing corporate leasing policy concentrates on the tax-related incentives to lease or buy (e.g., see Miller and Upton [19], Myers et al. [21], Lewellen et al. [13], Franks and Hodges [11], and Brealey and Young [4]). We believe that taxes play an important role in explaining certain dimensions of leasing policy, for example, the choice between manufacturer and third-party leasing. However, taxes provide only a limited explanation of why specific assets are leased rather than owned, and for the choice of provisions in lease contracts. In this paper, we want to accomplish two things: (1) to provide a unified analysis of the various incentives affecting the lease-versus-buy decision and (2) to employ that analysis to explain observed variation in corporate leasing policy. In deriving testable hypotheses about the characteristics of lessees, lessors, the assets leased, and provisions in lease contracts, we extend the standard leaseversus-buy analysis found in corporate finance textbooks (e.g., Brealey and Myers

Diversification Categories in Investment Real Estate

Abstract: This paper continues previous work evaluating the benefits of diversification and analyzes the various dimensions within the commercial real estate opportunity set. The database is large and extends through the 1982 downturn in property values. Due to the low levels of systematic risk, current distinctions by region and property type make little sense in a world of costly diversification. More exacting categories combining property type, SMSA growth rate and lease maturity offer promise for more efficient diversification within the real estate portfolio.