Аннотация:This insightful Paper written by one of the top academic leaders in investment project assessment and property valuation community takes a fresh look at the underpinnings of direct income capitalization approach and its interrelationship with general DCF analysis and proves that it is still possible to offer a new perspective and related toolset in this otherwise belabored research area. This is done by setting up an optimizing condition for the economic life of capital improvements whereby it is supposed that there exists an optimal economic life for capital improvements such that it results in maximal present value of benefits from overall property (i.e. in continuous time interpretation this means that the partial derivative with regard to the length of property use (T) in the continuous- time DCF format is set equal zero and the implications of this are explored). Provided that investors and owner-occupiers in the market actually optimize useful life of property with the view to realizing the highest present value of benefits, the pursued line of inquiry allows to develop a new technique of income capitalization consisting of a formula to obtain the projected growth rate of income from overall property implicit in the market and dependent on the expected performance of the land element plus a formula for estimating the resultant capital value of the improvement. One of the merits of such formalization is that it allows to explicitly expand the concept of highest and best use which is generally focused merely on the considerations of the 'type of use' by adding to it a helpful temporal dimension of the 'highest and best timing of use'. This insight suggests that we should be more critical of utilizing conventional forecasting perspectives in DCF of 5 or 10 years duration and also derive those from market evidence (with the appropriate techniques for this derivation suggested in the Paper). Many elements of this novel capitalization analysis are such that they strike at the root of multiple accounting-related allocation/valuation problems which require a separate treatment of the land and improvement elements in the property also having regard to its useful life. Proceeding from the optimization of the latter variable (useful life), the proposed framework offers a set of coherent and meaningful valuation tools specifically tailored to address such issues without making mechanistic detours blighting usual allocation practices between the elements. As the next step, it is promising to explore the proposed optimization concepts and their applicability in the context of IFRS-consistent property valuation practices. To help in this, the paper is accompanied by useful numerical examples which provide templates to streamline the application of its major concepts to everyday practice.