Читать книгу Property Investment Appraisal - Andrew E. Baum - Страница 14

Research has shown that valuers and valuations can consciously or sub-consciously be affected by a variety of factors ranging from previous valuations and new information to the influence of clients and other stakeholders in the valuation outcome. The major focus for research on client and stakeholder influence has been in two areas, specifically bank lending valuations and performance measurement valuations. Individual loans are secured on property valuations and investor benchmarking is mainly valuation-based.

Performance measurement valuations are undertaken for a wide variety of property owners including pension funds, insurance companies, property companies, REITS (real estate investment trusts), open-ended funds, and closed-end funds. Although in most countries these valuations will be undertaken by third-party service providers, asset managers are often involved in the process. Major bank loans are often brokered, and the valuer may be known to the broker, borrower, and lender. In the UK, the client is the lender, but in some countries the client can be the borrower. The literature discusses numerous different motivations for clients or other stakeholders to try and encourage the valuer to either increase or decrease valuations in these situations. Articles on client influence are numerous (see Crosby et al. 2010, 2018a, for reviews) and this literature has raised the following issues related to individual clients, borrowers, lenders, and asset managers.

In the case of performance measurement, valuations can have a dual purpose. For example, Property Company and REIT valuations are used for financial statements and the company's Net Asset Value will have an impact on the share price, in which case the directors may have an interest in keeping the valuations as high as possible. Managers may also be remunerated on the basis of the performance of the fund, a practice that has come under scrutiny in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, but remains widespread. Carried interest payments will usually kick in when assets are sold, but might be valuation based. In such cases, persuading valuers to adjust valuations by small amounts could tip the balance over the payment of bonuses.

In contrast, other owners or managers might want valuations to be low. For example, a new fund manager might want the lowest possible start point from which their future performance is to be assessed, while a fund manager wanting to sell an asset might want a valuation to be low to make any subsequent offer look good to the investment committee. Open-ended funds may want valuations to fall as much as possible in a downturn in order to prevent large volumes of units being sold at excessive prices. (Units in such funds are priced by reference to the level of valuations and a run might occur where unit holders think that valuations overstate the actual value of the underlying assets.) Crosby et al. (2018a) use data measuring MSCI UK capital value changes through the GFC period, and found differences between the performance of open-ended funds and that of property companies/REITs which are consistent with the ideas noted above.

In the case of bank lending, a borrower may need a valuation of a minimum amount so that the loan to value ratio will not prevent them from borrowing the amount that they desire. The broker will not want the valuation to kill the deal and the employee of the bank may be rewarded by a bonus that is only paid when a loan is made. Motivation for client influence is not, therefore, in doubt. A number of experimental studies and surveys have shown that the valuation process allows clients and stakeholders access to the valuer. They have also identified a number of ways in which a valuer can be pressured, but there is no evidence of systematic bias in the process caused by client influence. Nonetheless, the RICS now includes protocols for behaviour at draft valuation meetings within the Red Book (RICS 2020a, PS 2).