PhD Position in New Meanings of Value in the Built Environment

We are looking for a doctoral candidate for a fully funded position (0.8 – 1.0 FTE) to conduct individual research focused on understanding new meanings of value in the built environment.

In commercial property markets the focus is placed on assessing real estate as an investment asset. This type of thinking leads to discussions in industry and studies in academia centered around the identification of market and investment values, return and risk assessments, or financial portfolio management. Research demonstrates that this type of thinking limits investments that could yield in energy efficiency in buildings or broader sustainable and circular actions in real estate. Expenditures supporting these actions are often seen as affecting investment returns, creating tangible and hidden costs and risks to the investor and therefore lacking a compelling business case.

Traditional appraisal methods are too focused on determining property values based on physical building-specific features (e.g., size of the building, energy consumption, or number of rooms), taking a perspective of an exchange value of a building but ignoring intangible aspects that can create a different value for the customer. As value is traditionally understood as a monetary expression of customers’ willingness to pay, those intangible aspects of a tangible asset (building) should also be included in pricing and appraisal.

Therefore, a value-based pricing approach could be a potential way to encourage commercial real estate markets to move away from cost and competition to more value-based logics. A value-based approach is common for service and customer-experience driven economies where value is understood as subjective (and changing) to the user/buyer. However, this type of approach requires a different view to what we define as value and/or different approach to the overall valuation process. With this research, we aim at creating a framework that could serve as a tool for further development of new valuation/appraisal approaches for commercial real estate. To reach this, multiple steps need to be taken:

• Untangling value understanding of commercial buildings to different stakeholders and trade-offs they are willing to make
• Identifying the potential and limitations of value-based approach in comparison to traditional appraisal methods
• Defining metrics that could capture previously identified value properties/attributes
• Formulating suitable measures for improved commercial real estate value appraisal

This research would require knowledge and understanding of economic and business administration perspective, knowledge on commercial property markets and systems thinking in order to understand the complexity of the built environment and take a holistic approach towards it.

As part of the TU Delft, faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, department of Management in the Built Environment, we focus on rethinking, developing and applying new economic and financial value concepts for a future-proof built environment. We are constantly searching for adjustments in the system to enable flexibility and resilience of the built environment, creating benefits for people, industry and the society as a whole. As a PhD candidate, you will join our competent team with different backgrounds in economics, financial and civil engineering, management and architecture.