Survey: RE Financial Reporting Inadequate

Traditional financial reporting does not provide an adequate picture of a real estate company's value, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of RE executives, investors, and analysts.Nine out of 10 real estate executives surveyed don't think their company's stock price reflects its intrinsic value, while investors and analysts are critical of the companies' reporting practices, PWC said. Forward-looking real estate companies "are abandoning the discredited practices of the past: no more starting with a number and working backwards, no more hiding behind the intricacies of [generally accepted accounting principles], and no more burying important information where investors are less likely to notice it," said Tom Kirtland of PWC ValueReporting. PWC said the survey suggests that investors take a broader view than RE executives about which measures accurately reflect value, pointing to 18 of 30 potential value indicators identified by the survey as important to them. In contrast, real estate executives labeled only seven of the measures as important. The survey is titled "Firm Foundations: Building Public Trust in the Real Estate Sector." PricewaterhouseCoopers can be found on the Web at http://www.pwcglobal.com.