O – Compendium of Real Estate Terms & Concepts

An overhead is a general term often used to describe indirect costs. Indirect costs in entities providing services from infrastructure include technical overheads for program and project management, survey, investigation, design and construction supervision and corporate overheads for general management, procurement, financial services, information technology, and human resource management.

Outsourcing is the process of assigning a company's business processes to an external agency in lieu of enhancing service quality, driving innovation or deriving benefits of lower labour costs. It is a practice used by different companies to reduce costs by transferring portions of work to outside suppliers rather than…

This is the actual cost to its present owner; not necessarily the “first” cost at the time it was originally constructed or acquired (Boyce, 1984). This original cost concept is differently viewed by accountants who defined it as the price paid to acquire the assets (Hermanson, Edwards & Salmonson, 1989).…

1) Scenario Planning Scenarios are tools for thinking ahead to anticipate the changes that will impact an organisation. Scenarios can be considered instructive simulations of possible operating conditions. This approach might be used in conjunction with other models...

Orderly liquidation value is the estimated gross amount expressed in terms of money, that could be typically realised from a liquidation sale, given a reasonable period of time to find a purchaser(s) with the seller being compelled to sell on an as-is, where-is basis as of a specific date.

Operating expenses include all of the costs associated with running and maintaining a building. Examples are: • Utilities – Costs for natural gas, oil, electricity, water, internet and telephone.

Coined out of the Latin word ‘obsolesce’, obsolescence means to grow old. It is not only about age, the chief cause of obsolescence is ‘circumstantial changes’ occurring. With respect to property, it leads to depreciation (as in the case of physical obsolescence) - a loss in value from any cause…