Aareal Award of Excellence - Blog

While we are awaiting the Award prize-giving ceremony a lot of people are working hard for it. Some impressions of today’s preparations:

Preparations for the Award Ceremony on next Friday

Preparations for the Award Ceremony on next Friday

Preparations for the Award Ceremony on next Friday

Preparations for the Award Ceremony on next Friday

Preparations for the Award Ceremony on next Friday

Aareal Bank Group and EBS Real Estate Management Institute started this blog as a joint project. I’m working for Aareal Bank as a Public Relations Manager and this time it’s my turn to post these pictures while Kirsten is still working

Tomorrow I will post some more pictures sent by Kirsten in the afternoon. Stay tuned

Frank

All winners of the Aareal Award of Excellence in Real Estate Research 2010 will be presented at the 11th EBS Real Estate Congress. There will be one winner in each category: “Research Paper”, “Dissertation”, “MSc-/BSc-/Diploma Thesis”. Over 40 authors have submittet their theses which were evaluated by over 20 international reviewers. About 40% of the authors live outside Germany – which is a great success as the Aareal Award is an international award. We’re excited to announce all winners!

The price money and book gifts will be given by all three founders of the Aareal Award: Profesor Nico B. Rottke, EBS Real Estate Management Institute, Dr Wolf Schumacher, Aareal Bank AG and Olaf Hütten, Immobilien Manager Verlag. All pictures and interviews with the winners will be blogged right away on the 26 February directly from the 11th EBS Real Estate Congress.

The Congress aims on bringing together all experts within the real estate industry from the industry, university and the politics. It is an event where students, professors and professionals  discuss the topic: “Underdog or hidden champion? The real estate industry between claim and reality”.

Join us at the EBS campus Schloss Reichartshausen near Wiesbaden and meet and greet all people interested in real estate.

I’m looking forward to seeing you there!

Kind regards,

Kirsten Lohmann

Desiree Springmann is one of the winners of the Aareal Award of Excellence in Real Estate Research 2009 who won the second price in the category master theses with her research paper on „Analysis of Real Estate Finance Performance Measures in the Context of Real Estate Cycles“. She was interviewed by Kirsten Lohmann in December 2009.

Feel free to ask her any questions or start a discussion.
Kind regards,

Kirsten

KL: Ms. Springmann, thank you very much for your time to answer some questions regarding the Aareal Award of Excellence in Real Estate Research! First of all, why did you do research in the field of real estate? And where are you currently employed at?

DS: I wrote my Master’s Thesis in the area of Real Estate primarily because I did my Master of Science in Real Estate at the EBS. Apart from that, the cyclical behavior of real estate markets and the complex interaction due to exogenous and endogenous factors influencing real estate performance fascinated me already when I wrote a seminar paper about real estate cycles in my second Bachelor semester.
Currently I am working for the Real Estate branch of Ernst & Young in Luxembourg, where I am primarily dealing with real estate appraisals. And it is ironic that, especially in the current market environment, the connection of real estate cycle theory and practice could not be more distinct.

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The congress aims to bring together and promote an exchange of ideas between practitioners, academics and students from the field of real estate. It is organized by the EBS Real Estate ressort, 20 students at European Business School (EBS) interested in real estate. In their activities they are actively supported by the EBS Real Estate Management Institute (EBS-REMI).

The 3^rd Aareal Award of Excellence in Real Estate Research will be conferred at the Congress through Dr Wolf Schumacher, CEO, Aareal Bank AG, Professor Dr Nico B. Rottke, European Business School (EBS) and Olaf Hütten, head of publishing house, Immobilien Manager Verlag (IMV). Media partners for the 2010 Aareal Award of Excellence in Real Estate Research are the “Immobilien-Manager” and the “REurope” magazines. These trade journals support the jury in defining the topics for the prize competition.

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Maximilian Brauers (30) is the winner of the Aareal Award of Excellence in Real Estate Research 2009 in the category Master’s/Bachelor’s theses. Brauers studied economics at the “Albert-Ludwig University of Freiburg” and wrote his final thesis on the topic “Preisblasen auf Immobilienmärkten und die Rolle der Geldpolitik” (Price bubbles on property markets and the role of monetary policy”) at the “Institut für Finanzwissenschaft und Monetäre Ökonomie” (Institute for Finance and Monetary Economy) under Prof Dr Dr h.c. Hans-Hermann Francke.

1) What made you participate in the Aareal Award of Excellence in Real Estate?

MB: Fellow students drew my attention to the prize, my mentoring professor was full of praise for my thesis and my doctoral advisor generally recommended to hand in my thesis for a possible prize.

2) How do you see the relevance of this Award within the property industry?

MB: Due to an article in the “Immobilienzeitung” (German property magazine) and through an announcement on the Internet, I received congratulations from former fellow students and colleagues who work in the industry. This directly reflects the attention and the prestige of the prize within the industry.

3) Would you say that winning the Award has an influence on your professional / scientific career in the future?

MB: Yes, and only in an absolutely positive way. I received congratulations from professors and doctoral candidates and – even more important – my thesis has been recognised. Furthermore, the money that comes along with the prize is of course very helpful for me as it supplements my rather modest salary as a doctoral candidate. This allows me to concentrate on my job as a research assistant and on my research work, and to treat myself with a relaxing vacation without having to work in a second job.

4) How do you assess your “competitors” for the Award (top-class or average)?

Absolutely top-class. I had the opportunity to read Nils Kok’s thesis and I also know the excellent Felix Schneider from my time at the University of Freiburg. But also the high quality and broad range of the other theses from many different international universities impressed me. Thus, I feel even more honoured having won the prize.

5) Is there something you would like to improve in reference to the Award?

MB: I really like the fact that the prize is well-known at European universities, thus resulting in the hand-in of top-quality research theses. The award ceremony within the framework of the EBS Real Estate Congress is very well thought-out and ceremonial, too. The announcement of the theses in business practice and scientific research, which have been awarded with the prize, could possibly be improved.

In his thesis, Mr. Brauer discusses the causes and effects of price bubbles before the background of the current bubbles on the property markets as well as possible courses of action in monetary policy, which shall prevent or alleviate the effects of such bubbles. The discussion is based on the analysis of the current price development on the property markets of 18 industrial countries.

Hi everyone,

I wish all of you and your families a merry Christmas with peaceful holidays and a lovely New Year’s Eve!

I’m very pleased about all comments, reports and details about the Aareal Award of Excellence in Real Estate Research on facebook, Xing and our Aareal Award blog! We are all looking forward to the New Year with many more posts and interviews. We’re going to have an interesting interview with Maximilian Brauers, the first prize winner of the Aareal Award 2009, in January. Feel free to join the blog and ask Maximilian questions and details about his time after his winning the award.

We are going to have a little Christmas break now and will be right back on January 4^th, 2010!

Have a wonderful time and see you in January!

Kirsten

Our EBS Real Estate Management Institute at the European Business School (EBS) was founded by our kind Professor Nico B. Rottke in 2006. As of today, we have nine professors or heads of chairs who are active in real estate research and teaching. Professor Rottke’s chair, the Aareal Endowed Chair of Real Estate Investment and Finance, consists of 3 administrative employees and 10 academic research assistants who all support the chair’s research like book publications (“Real Estate Capital Markets”, “Real Estate Private Equity” and “Economy versus Ecology”), the yearly real estate congress, teachings in the field of real estate, help with the supervising of the students’ theses and put great effort in providing the real estate community with attractive programmes like the Aareal Award. When the European Business School grew bigger, our institute and some others moved to Wiesbaden Schierstein into a very exclusive office building in order to have enough room for all academic researchers and staff.

What is very important to us is corporate social responsibility - our students at all educational levels must take the interests of society into account by assuming responsibility for the impact of their activities on customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, communities and other stakeholders, as well as the environment.

Each month we distribute our institute’s newsletter to all people interested in real estate teachings and research to give information on new educational programmes, on events and new book releases.

We’re always looking forward to important research projects at our competence centres and bringing together experts from the real estate industry with scientific researchers in order to create a huge real estate community to improve the scientific foundation in the German real estate industry.

Praxis meets Theory!

The initiators of the Aareal Award of Excellence in Real Estate Science come up with three new topics every year in order to cover as many research topics as possible. Researchers in the real estate industry can address their theses to one of the three topics, which have been defined by the researchers of the EBS-REMI for the Aareal Award 2010:

Real Estate Financing Products and Ratings

While in the years before the current financial and economic crisis modern/alternative financing products (like securitization via MBS or CDOs) have become the centre of interest, in times of crisis the traditional financing products have proven to often be the only remaining financing possibility (not least due to the dry out of the securitization market). Despite the need for an intense examination of the traditional as well as the modern/alternative financing methods, real estate science has now the task to deal with the increased requirements of a sound rating system, as well as with a structuring of real estate specific financing products.

Real Estate Investment Products

Besides traditional direct real estate investments, indirect real estate investments become more and more important, which is due to an increasing integration of real estate markets and capital markets. In comparison to direct investments, indirect investments allow primarily higher fungibility and transparency, along with an increasing complexity and risk structure. As a consequence real estate science has to focus more on the connection between real estate markets and capital markets.

Real Estate and Demographics

The world is facing with an incommensurable demographic change. While the industrialized countries are confronted with a constantly diminishing and aging population, emerging economies encounter an explosive growth of their populations. Despite these two effects, an increasing urbanisation can be identified – in 2008 for the first time more than 50% of the world’s population lived in agglomerations. This development makes the real estate industry having to face special challenges, but at the same times offers numerous opportunities.