Challenges of Commercial Real Estate Management : An analysis of the Swedish commercial real estate industry

Sammanfattning: This dissertation consists of five papers with specific objectives. The overall objective is, however, to seek a deeper understanding of the challenges of real estate management in the commercial real estate sector.The purpose of the first two papers is to provide a mapping of the industry and a better knowledge of the main organizational strategies of the companies and their view of customer relations. The third paper looks at the possibility that the online office market is a so-called lemons market, where primarily "bad" objects are marketed. The last two papers compares companies that outsource property management and companies that has property management in house. The first of the two (paper IV) address the question of incentives for effort and the second (paper V) address information for decision-making, both however consider how the real estate owner has created incentives and regulations to ensure that they are informed.From the first paper we learn that the commercial real estate industry in Sweden already before 2004 had made a shift from a product focus towards a customer/service focus. However we could not see an increased customer focus in the annual reports during the years 2004-2008. Paper II also conclude that regardless of organisational form of management, inhouse or outsourced, the executives state that the chosen form I to be able to deliver best service to the customer.In paper III a test of the online marketplace for offices in Malmö CBD was conducted to investigate if the market is a lemon market or not. Management form was one of the quality signals together with scale, existence of a local office and if the company has been involved in cases in the special court for rents (Hyresnämnden). The conclusion was that lemons hypothesis could not be rejected.The conclusions from paper IV and V pinpoints the occurrence of differences in how to build incentives for the real estate management organisation, if it is organised in-house or outsourced. As the management teams in the outsourced setting primarily is governed by the contract between the real estate owning company, and the service providing company, and there it is decided when and how they are to deliver in terms of service and information. The real estate management teams in the in-house setting instead act under a large freedom with responsibilities governing the outcome of their services and not any checklists or jobdescriptions. Regardless of how the management teams are governed they do not have monetary incentives tied to their individual performance.