EFFICIENCY OF REAL ESTATE MANAGEMENT IN CROATIAN CITIES

Through the process of decentralization, cities became the owners of a large number of real estates. However, the practice of managing these properties is not uniform, so the question is how efficiently cities manage their real estate portfolios. The scientific problem of this paper arises from the lack of systematic care for real estate owned by cities, and in particular the lack of an appropriate benchmark for measuring the success of real estate management. The aim of this paper is to determine the characteristics of cities that affect the efficiency of real estate management owned by cities. Using secondary data, based on the non-parametric method of data envelopment analysis (DEA) and Tobit panel regressions, the paper analyzes the efficiency of real estate management owned by cities and identifies the factors that affect the efficiency of real estate management. In particular, the paper investigates whether cities in Croatia efficiently manage their own real estate, whether large cities manage real estate more efficiently than small ones, whether cities located by the sea manage real estate more efficiently than inland cities, and whether cities that are county-centers manage real estate more efficiently than other cities. Empirical results show that cities in Croatia do not manage their real estate efficiently, that large cities manage their real estate more efficiently than small cities, that seaside cities manage real estate more efficiently than inland cities, and that county-based cities manage real estate more efficiently than other cities.