This chapter provides a brief overview of real-estate prices, describing the importance of this asset class for the economies worldwide, from the US and the UK to Asian and Pacific countries. The difference between residential and commercial real-estate is emphasized early on in this introductory chapter. The chapter ends with some discussion of empirical characteristics of real-estate prices time series through some models, highlighting the different nature of this asset class as compared with other established financial asset classes such as equity, foreign exchange, or fixed income.
Valuation in the US Commercial Real Estate