Commercial Real Estate Market at a Crossroads: The Impact of COVID-19 and the Implications to Future Cities
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors the topic is very interestring, but in my opinion is necessary to improve some aspects before the paper is suitable for a publication.
1) Introduction: In this section if is possible i suggest to add some studies which describe the some aspects in different countries or economy.
In this section is necessary to add the description of the following sections of the paper and to highlited the aims of the study.
2) Data: In this section is necessary to add a table with the description of the variables and the Summary statistics. In this this studies the variables description is in the methodology section and and it's a little superficial.
3) Methodology: You can explain how many regression was perfomed in the empirical analysis and which is the sample for each regression. In my opinion is necessary to clarify this aspects.
4) Conclusion: In order to improve the scientific soundness identifie the limitiation of this study and comparinge the results with other countries if is possibile.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Many thanks for the authors for discussing a very interesting phenomena. However, the paper have some few serious limitations described below. I strongly advise the authors to improve the paper. Major revision is requested in terms of data used to describe COVID-19 pandemic situation, literature review describing crises’ impacts on real estate market, and finally missing section of discussion.
COVID-19 is a global issue. Thus, investigating the problem in the local or even national context should be considered as an inappropriate approach, except of autarchic economies, but for sure economy of Florida is not of that kind. Thus, I strongly advise to investigate separately the influence of number of deaths/cases evidenced at various spatial levels on the situation of the real estate market in the cities of Florida. This is the very serious question whether the local real estate market is influenced rather locally, or impacted by national/international/global pandemic situation. I would like to share with authors the paper https://doi.org/10.3390/su12114697, describing situation of the hotel industry to see the idea of the analysis at different geographical context.
COVID-19 is not the only phenomena inducing negative changes in the real estate market. From that perspective literature review must be improved. To understand well the impact of COVID-19 we must first understand the general impact of any crisis events. Try to find some literature describing crisis of real estate market induced by financial crisis in 2008/2009. The following papers might be a starting point: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jimonfin.2014.05.016, https://doi.org/10.3390/su10124559, https://doi.org/10.1080/00036846.2018.1430343. From the perspective of US, it might be very interesting to see the differences between those two phenomena. However, other crisis should be also considered. See also plenty of papers describing real estate market in Florida: e.g., https://doi.org/10.1080/17549175.2022.2071966, https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0308518X19896579.
Missing section of discussion is the most serious issue I have identified in reviewed paper. As I have no serious remarks related to the method applied and presentation of the results, there is nothing about discussing the results. The authors have just described the results and then simply concluded with no references to already mentioned (in the section of literature review) papers on real estate market. For example, we don’t know whether the COVID-19 induced real-estate market crisis is similar to other real estate crises evidenced in US. Delivering separate section of discussion is a must for the authors.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript. The paper examines the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on commercial real estate markets in the context of the Florida MSA.
Some suggestions to consider when reviewing this paper:
- The abstract must include in chronological order: the general objective of the research, the methodology or methods of analysis and the final result of the analysis;
- In the "Conclusions" section I recommend the inclusion of future research directions.
The manuscript is well defined and written. Congratulations to the authors.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
No moore comments.
Reviewer 2 Report
Many thanks to the authors for improvements. In my opinion, you did a great job. My every suggestion and comment was considered and responded. As thus, I have no more remarks related to your paper but one: in table 1 presenting descriptive statistics, those for COVID-19 cases and deaths at different geographical levels are missing. It does not change my opinion about the recent quality of your paper. Congratulations! Waiting for published version.
