Purpose -After salary and wages, facility and real estate expenditure are the largest cost items in the semi-public sector. Especially, for long-term care facilities, there is high-saving potential from more efficient and effective use of property. The main purpose of this paper is an exploratory research study in order to analyse the operating costs of long-term care facilities. Design/methodology/approach -The survey is based on empirical data questionnaires, data generation and semi-structured interviews at 18 long-term care facilities in Tyrol, Austria carried out during Summer 2007. In order to determine the volume and to prioritize the cost drivers computer-aided real-estate benchmarking software was used, which was developed by the Institute of Real Estate Benchmarking at the University of Applied Sciences KufsteinTirol, Austria. Statistic analyses were conducted to investigate saving potential, determine the best case of the sample and submit recommendations to the decision makers. Findings -The main findings are the investigation and visualization of saving potential of long-term care facilities and identification of the volume and structure of the cost drivers and illuminated current best practices in effective building upkeep and operating costs of long-term care facilities in Tyrol. Furthermore, the study reveals the immense saving potential in the costs of various services.Research limitations/implications -This survey is based on the operating costs of long-term care facilities. Other running costs such as costs for healthcare personnel as well as quality indicators are not considered in this survey. Further research activities will be necessary regarding the identification of these cost drivers by the application of regression models. Practical implications -Professional property management of long-term care facilities will be shown to decrease the cost share in the healthcare sector. The results should help to establish cost benchmarking increasingly and develop it as a strategic planning tool in order to support management in the healthcare sector in the decision-making process. Originality/value -The paper presents a new measuring method, which allows an holistic view of three influencing factors, namely the amount of beds, occupancy and the space consumption, to investigate weak points in cost efficiency on one chart.

The directive 2002 / 91 / EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 16th December, 2002 (Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, EPBD, 2002 requires member states to introduce an energy certifi cation in order to reduce energy consumption in buildings. For the appraisal of the energy, key-fi gure paragraph 2 of the directive generally allows both the theoretical calculation of energy demand and the collection of the real energy consumption; however, these two approaches do not always lead to the same result, but rather to substantially different values. Naturally, this leads to lively discussions among the involved persons. This paper is the fi rst survey of a study whose goal is to explain where the differences between the two approaches arise from. The fi rst results, for example, show that external walls, ceilings and roofs with a theoretically poor thermal quality are expected not to be as ' bad ' in practice as the theoretical calculation would lead us to believe .

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AbstactThe paper is focused on the use of fuzzy numbers in some different spheres -real estate researches, investments and valuation.At the first part of paper it is shown that fuzzy numbers allows us to get exact model for the property valuation. The probability of this model is 100% in contradistinction of traditional models which has inaccuracy about 10%.The real estate market is not perfect and it is subject of many external influences, such as: an economic situation in the country, seasonal activity, availability of financial assets. Therefore it doesn't have precise logic connections and definitions. That is why it is necessary to use fuzzy numbers when we research a real estate market. The process of estimation of real estate investments of any country considerably becomes simpler. In another part of paper is analyzed the real estate market of Minsk -the capital of Belarus. It was used fuzzy numbers.