An overview of the book by its co-author Edward Trevillion, published by Palgrave Macmillan.
The inspiration for this book came from updating Will Fraser’s text, ‘Principles of Property Investment and Pricing’, the last edition of which was published in 1993. Much has changed in the property market context since that popular textbook was the mainstay of teaching of real estate investment. My co-author, Colin Jones, was a colleague of Will’s and both of us have used that book for our teaching over the years. The new book also draws on our teaching of the subject over the years. It is used as the basis for the real estate investment course at Heriot-Watt and we hope it will be taken up by other universities around the world.
The book comprises a combination of the essentials of how real estate markets work with the consequences for investment decisions. The content reflects the growing globalisation of real estate investment, information availability and benchmarking, the rethinking of pensions, the rise of sustainability issues and technological change since the publication of Will’s book.
It is also the first real estate investment book to place property market cycles at the centre of understanding decision-making. It emphasises the clear link between the performance of the macroeconomy and the real estate market. The book looks at the anatomy of property cycles on investment and development, and the significance of cycles to real estate markets is demonstrated through documented examples in an international history. In particular, it focuses on the property market dynamics of the global financial crisis, and its short and long term consequences for investment.
While our main goal is to provide an overview of real estate investment aimed primarily at students, it also provides a useful refresher for property professionals, providing them with a different and sometimes new view of how the property market really works. It mainly concerns itself with the commercial property market. However, it recognises that in some countries there are large investors in the residential sector and an increasing interest in it in others such as the UK.
