The value of property management: An empirical investigation

This paper is one of the first empirical studies to investigate the impact of property management on the market value of a building. The outsourcing institute estimates that the real estate service industry has a total value of more than 340 billion dolalr. Within this industry property management plays an important role, especially in the case of commercial real estate. Therefore it is vital to investigate whether the investment in such a service pays off in the sense that some of the cost are recuperated at the time of transaction. A comprehensive dataset containing U.S. commercial real estate transaction data from 1986 until 2013 offers the unique possibility to analyze the intrinsic value of a service, such as property management. Hedonic pricing models, and propensity score weighted models in combination with a geographical information system are used to analyze the relationship between property management and transaction price. Evidence is found that property management indeed has a positive impact on the selling price of a property. The observed premium related to the presence of a property manager is more than 6 percent in case of the most conservative estimation. Subsamples by sub periods illustrate that the impact of property management varies strongly under differing conditions. Propensity score matching verifies the robustness of the presented results; the effect of property management remains highly significant.