ABSTRACT
Purpose: This study aims to establish the relationship between house acquisitions by foreigners (HAF) and house price index (HPI) in Turkey. Design/methodology/approach: Due to the nature of this study, the data spans from January 2020 to March 2022. The house price index and the number of foreign house acquisitions across three provinces: Ankara, Izmir and Bursa, and national-level data were obtained from the TurkStat database. Consumer price index (CPI) and Turkish interest rates are control variables. In addition, monthly Turkish interest rates and CPI were obtained from the investing.com and TurkStat database, respectively. Furthermore, this study used autoregressive-distributed lag and Toda Yamamoto Granger causality models to avoid analysis bias. HPI and HAF are the variables used to accomplish the objectives of this study. Findings: This study established a short-run equilibrium between foreign house acquisitions at the provincial and national levels. The short-run deviations were adjusted faster, ranging from 57.53% to 89.24% for some provinces, while Izmir is struggling to adjust at 6.48%. Both unidirectional and bidirectional Granger causality evidence suggests that the Turkish house price index increases at the national and provincial levels. This finding suggests the need for continuous policy intervention in the Turkish housing market because house prices play a pivotal role in Turkish economic development and daily lives. Research limitations/implications: This study's scope and single-country study are its limitations. However, those limitations make the findings appropriate for the country of the study rather than generalising the results. Practical implications: The study provides empirical evidence that foreign housing acquisition contributes negatively to housing affordability in Turkey and calls for authority intervention. This is because housing is considered shelter, a fundamental need to which citizens are expected to be entitled. Most citizens are low- and medium-income earners who may be unable to afford a house out of their income if it becomes costly. Once the expenditure to secure housing exceeds 30% of their income, it is considered unaffordable. Originality/value: To the authors' best knowledge, this is the first empirical study that established the influence of foreign house acquisitions on Turkish house price increases and adversely reduced house affordability by Turkish citizens. The study is the first on foreign Turkish housing acquisition that used both theory of ownership and justice motivation theory to explain HAF. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.
ABSTRACT
Purpose: This study aims to examine the performance and volatility of Turkey Real Estate Investment Trusts (Turkish REITs) as the world is adjusting to the new normal situation in every aspect of REITs' business activities. Design/methodology/approach: The prices of REITs were acquired from 26 Turkish REITs in this study, but owing to autocorrelation difficulties, 14 Turkish REITs were employed in the analysis. The ten-year long-term bond of the Turkish Government was also utilized and the period of data obtained was based on availability. The performance of Turkish REITs was evaluated using Sharpe's ratio and Treynor's ratio, and the volatility was assessed using MGARCH-BEKK. Findings: The authors found out that Turkish REITs are constantly underperforming and the REITs' returns remain highly volatile and persistent. In addition, findings showed evidence of volatility clustering and the asymmetric impact of shocks. This study further revealed the uniqueness of each of the Turkish REITs due to the lack of evidence of multicollinearity. Research limitations/implications: However, the limitation of this study is the constraint in obtaining more macro-economic variables of more than ten-years of Turkey's Government bond and the study focused mainly on Turkish REITs. Practical implications: The result suggests that since Turkish REITs are not mandatory to payout 90% of taxable earnings as dividends, high performance and an appropriate risk management approach are expected. The need for timely revealing performance of T-REITs and associated uncertainty may trigger better performance as discussed in the relationship between disclosure and performance which is recently emphasized in a recent study by Koelbl (2020). With current performance and associated uncertainty in Turkish REITs, the need to protect Turkish REITs investors is highly essential. The result further educates REIT investors that diversification benefits of REITs tend to reduce in extremely risky situations. Originality/value: This is the first study in the context of Turkish REITs that comprehensively integrated market capitalization of REITs and simultaneous evaluation of performance and the volatility of the Turkish REITs as the world adjusts to the new normal. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.
ABSTRACT
Purpose This paper aims to investigate asymmetric pricing behaviour and impact of coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic shocks on house price index (HPI) of Turkey and Kazakhstan. Design/methodology/approach Monthly HPIs and consumer price index (CPI) data ranges from 2010M1 to 2020M5 are used. This study uses a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag model for empirical analysis. Findings The findings of this study reveal that the Covid-19 pandemic exerted both long-run and short-run asymmetric relationship on HPI of Turkey while in Kazakhstan, the long-run impact of Covid-19 pandemic shock is symmetrical long-run positive effect is similar in both HPI markets. Research limitations/implications The main limitations of this study are the study scope and data set due to data constraint. Several other macroeconomic variables may affect housing prices;however, variables used in this study satisfy the focus of this study in the presence of data constraint. HPI and CPI variables were made available on monthly basis for a considerably longer period which guaranteed the ranges of data set used in this study. Practical implications Despite the limitation, this study provides necessary information for authorities and prospective investors in HPI to make a sound investment decision. Originality/value This is the first study that rigorously and simultaneously examines the pricing behaviour of Turkey and Kazakhstan HPIs in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic shocks at the regional level. HPI of Kazakhstan is recognized in the global real estate transparency index but the study is rare. The study contributes to regional studies on housing price by bridging this gap in the real estate literature.