Property
Asset management
Public benefit Modern accounting techniques that correctly identify publicly owned real estate and enable it to be put to full use could help address the global housing crisis and reduce economic disparity Dag Detter
Real estate, and housing in particular, has become one of the biggest symbols of a growing divide in society – and may well be the biggest contributor to rising inequality, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research (bit.ly/hseineq). There are millions of households in California and New York city, for instance, who cannot afford a decent apartment at market rates, while according to the McKinsey Global Institute, London’s annual home completions over the past two decades have fallen far short of demand and driven house prices five times higher (bit.ly/hseprice). The global housing crisis is defined by this chronic shortage, which could in time lead to urbanisation without growth, as a 2015 Explorations in Economic History paper describes (bit.ly/congrowth). But suppose real estate could be part of the solution to this crisis? According to the IMF, governments own assets that are worth twice the value of their respective GDPs (bit.ly/welofnat). Professionally managed, these assets could generate more revenue than developed economies collect in corporate taxes. The irony is that a large part of this gold mine is highly visible, in the form of real estate. 26 Journal July/August 2019
Indicative valuations of some US cities have recently shown that urban real estate – that is, the land and buildings – owned by the public sector has a value equivalent to the cities’ respective GDPs and represents a quarter of the total value of the city’s real-estate market (bit.ly/hidwealth). In addition, there are indications that the land value alone of Manhattan is larger than the GDP of Canada, while the total value of urban land in the USA is worth twice its national GDP. Publicly owned real estate around the world might be worth as much as global GDP, but we just don’t know. Whatever the precise value of public real estate, professional management could help increase housing supply as well as generating revenues for public expenditure.
The reason governments do not know what assets they own is partly because these are governed in a fragmented way and partly because many local authorities do not have a consolidated list of their real estate. But it is also because the public sector does not use modern accounting methods that properly value their assets. For example, a 40-fold difference has been identified between the book and indicative values of the real estate owned by the city of Boston (bit.ly/unlockpw). Unlike cash-based accounting, which is no more sophisticated than a simple bank statement, accrual accounting makes a record of spending and taxes as they are incurred, regardless of when the money changes hands. It also records assets and liabilities and therefore paints a far more
Publicly owned real estate around the world might be worth as much as global GDP