Real Estate
Over the past two decades institutional investors have experienced increased allocation to “alternative” private‐market assets like commercial real estate (CRE). Indeed, CRE comprises an estimated at $23 trillion in total value in the United States alone with roughly $8 trillion considered to be of institutional investment quality. With the growing allocations to CRE, investment professionals increasingly need access to quantitative tools and transparency on par with the other portfolio asset classes.
The Commercial Real Estate Data Alliance (CREDA) is a consortium of academics and industry professionals dedicated to achieving data parity with other major asset classes. Specifically, we believe that improved access to and understanding of available data in commercial real estate is key to fostering higher quality research and interactions between academia and industry, to the benefit of the entire CRE community.
CREDA is currently leading several new research data initiatives:
1. We are nearing the end of Phase I of a three phase initiative to coordinate access among commercial data providers and academic researchers:
- Phase 1 – Feasibility study to identify a limited sample of properties about which a variety of willing data providers have information. Primary goals are to assess the level of consistency across datasets and the feasibility of merging diverse data sources. We also seek to identify a set of important research questions to be explored in subsequent phases
- Phase 2 – Scale the merging of datasets to obtain a large enough sample for meaningful academic research (e.g., 5,000 properties)
- Phase 3 – Scale to full datasets
2. Merging permitting and capital expenditure data for a large sample of U.S. commercial properties using proprietary data sources. More
3. Launching a data merging methodology initiative based on the Unique Building ID (UBID) concept by the Department of Energy in conjunction with LightBox to be posted sometime this summer.
4. Studying the impact of climate risk on CRE debt underwriting partnering with LightBox, FirstStreet.Org, and UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.
Further details on CREDA’s efforts are available in the report “Commercial Real Estate Data: Towards Parity with Other Asset Classes”. More
Latest Real Estate Research
Private Real Estate Returns, Style Drift, and Procyclical Risk Taking
This paper documents that development exposure is an important determinant of private real estate returns and market risk exposure. It also documents that open-end private real estate funds have time-varying, procyclical market risk exposure through their development activities. More
A First Look at the Impact of COVID19 on Commercial Real Estate Prices: Asset Level Evidence
This paper examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on commercial real estate prices. We construct a novel measure of real estate investment trusts’ (REITs’) exposure to the growth in COVID-19 cases at the asset level. We document a negative relationship between this geographically weighted case growth and risk-adjusted returns. More
Commercial Real Estate as an Asset Class
Working Paper
We survey the properties of commercial real estate (CRE) as an asset class. We first illustrate its importance relative to the US economy and to other asset classes. We then discuss CRE ownership patterns over time. While the academic literature has emphasized Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), about two thirds of CRE is owner-occupied. We next study the return properties of CRE indices, indices on particular property types, and discuss what is known about the returns to individual properties. We briefly discuss CRE debt before turning to property derivatives. More
Advisory Board
Jeffrey Fisher
David Geltner
David Ling
Rossen Valkanov
Nancy Wallace
Affiliates
Tom Arnold, ADIA
Itzhak (Zahi) Ben-David, Ohio State University
Shaun Bond, University of Cincinnati
Andrea Chegut, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Jim Clayton, York University
Bob Connolly, University of NC - Chapel Hill
Dragana Cvijanovic, Warwick Business School, the University of Warwick
John Duca, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas & Oberlin College
Mike Eriksen, University of Cincinnati
Jeffrey Fisher, Indiana University
Andra Ghent, University of NC - Chapel Hill
Lu Han, University of Toronto
David Hartzell, University of NC - Chapel Hill
Preetesh Kantak, Indiana University
Constantine Kontokosta, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
John Krainer, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Crocker Liu, Cornell University
Peng Liu, Cornell University
Greg MacKinnon, PREA
Tobias Mühlhofer, University of Miami
Joseph Nichols, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Joseph Pagliari, University of Chicago
Tomasz (Tomek) Piskorski, Columbia University
Tim Riddiough, University of Wisconsin
Spenser Robinson, Central Michigan University
Mauricio Rodriguez, Texas Christian University
Jacob Sagi, University of NC - Chapel Hill
Eva Steiner, Cornell University
Sheridan Titman, University of Texas - Austin
Susan Wachter, University of Pennsylvania