I had been looking for a text to help me make an easy cross-over from a capital markets background to the commercial property industry, while giving me enough ammo to find a potential area of study for an MSc. thesis in property valuation.
What I found initially was a lot of books which claim to be the "new" way to value property, but which were written by property people, for property people. The furthest they seemed to go was teaching property monkeys new ways to say "Years Purchase" - and many of them still referred to Parry's Investment and Valuation tables once they'd done it.
What Brown and Matysiak do well is to communicate to readers in a way which makes sense to analysts and capital market participants, stripping the traditional property industry jargon away from what are, after all, common financial concepts. The real interest lies in the pragmatic approach they take to portfolio management and risk analysis - it's accessible and comprehensive.
So, this book WILL appeal to fund manager/ investment bank analysts, and SHOULD appeal to anyone in the commercial property industry - because a large amount of money comes into property from the financial markets. The RICS should require its study, and the AIMR should include its study within their CFA designation - which is sadly lacking on the real estate side at present.
The only criticism I would make is that Brown and Matysiak try to cover too many bases and appeal to too many levels of student. The property market will be the point of entry to valuation of only a few students - so including the obligatory "time value of money" chapter really is a waste of paper. Thanks for the book, though, chaps!