The European Real Estate Society

Citation

D’Arcy, É. (2006), "The European Real Estate Society", Journal of Property Investment & Finance, Vol. 24 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/jpif.2006.11224aaa.001

The European Real Estate Society

In June 2004 the European Real Estate Society (ERES) held its 11th annual conference in Milan, Italy, the first time ERES has been held in Italy. The conference was organized by Paola G. Lunghini at the Palazzo Mezzanotte (the headquarters of the Italian Stock Exchange) in the centre of Milan. Paola was assisted in her task by Uberto Visconti and a very strong support team including her husband, Alberto Lunghini from the Reddy’s Group in Milan. The conference received significant sponsorship support from both the Italian and international real estate communities and important local institutions, in particular the Milan Chamber of Commerce and the organisers of the Turin Winter Olympic Games in 2006. The Milan conference attracted over 400 participants from 30 countries and built significantly on the success of previous ERES conferences, with over 220 quality papers presented. A noted social highlight of the conference for many participants was the opening party held at the famous San Siro football stadium, during which some very lucky participants were allowed to take penalty kicks on the famous pitch.

This Special Issue of the Journal of Property Investment & Finance contains four prize-winning papers presented at the Milan conference:

1. 1.

   the winner of the annual Gerald Brown Memorial Prize, sponsored by Emerald, for the Best Paper Presented in the Area of Commercial Real Estate Investment and Finance, “The impact of the New Basel Capital Accord on real estate developers’ locations”, by Christoph Pitschke and Stephen Bone-Winkel;

2. 2.

   the winner of the Grosvenor Prize for the Best Paper on Comparative Analysis of International Real Estate, “The performance of property developments of institutional investors: an empirical analysis and European comparison”, by Bjorn-Martin Kurzrock and Michael Roth;

3. 3.

   the winner of The Appraisal Journal Prize for the Best Paper Presented on Real Estate Valuation, “Uncertainty and feasibility studies: an Italian case study”, by Nick French and Laura Gabrielli; and

4. 4.

   the winner of the EFG Eurobank-PropIndex SA Prize for the Best Paper on Balkan Real Estate, “Architecture for a real estate analysis information system using GIS techniques integrated with fuzzy theory”, by Elli Pagourtzi, Konstantinos Nikolopoulos and Vassilios Assimakopoulos.

Since the Milan conference ERES has continued in its mission to provide an important forum for active engagement between property research in Europe and beyond. ERES 2005 was held in Dublin and attracted over 400 participants with a total of 250 papers presented. This makes ERES yet again the world’s largest real estate research conference in terms of both participation and papers presented. ERES 2006 will take place in Weimar, Germany from June 7-10, and is organised by Ramon Sotelo, with strong support from the German Society of Property Researchers and the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. Full conference details are available from www.eres2006.org The 2007 conference will take place in London, England, and will be hosted by the Cass Business School at City University; the 2008 conference will take place in Krakow, Poland, hosted by the Krakow University of Economics. The ERES biannual industry seminars have gone from strength to strength with recent seminars taking place in Frankfurt, Dublin and Paris. In December 2005 the first ERES Education seminar will take place at the University of Alicante, Spain. The objective of this seminar is to identify the key issues driving the evolution of real estate education in Europe, the experiences of individual countries and the problems encountered by those involved in the process. The aim of the seminar is to provide an important forum for sharing experiences, identifying best practices and fostering pan-European collaboration among real estate educators in particular.

For more information on the European Real Estate Society, membership, conferences and initiatives please visit our website, www.eres.org

Editor’s note

In this issue of the journal we introduce a new section, The Education Briefing.

A survey of the internet enquiries on the JPIF website has shown that there is an increasing appetite for articles that deal with basic principles and underlying concepts. The Practice Briefing provides some papers that satisfy this need, but it was suggested that we introduce a new section that concentrates on these issues.

This section will provide a simple introduction to some of the fundamentals underpinning the valuation of property, investment analysis, statistical analysis, development appraisal, and so on.

In tandem with The Practice Briefing, we hope that we will provide readers with a range of articles that are both easy to understand and pragmatic. This, coupled with the rigorous academic standards of our main papers, will ensure that JPIF continues to service the needs of the property profession both in academia and in practice.

Éamonn D’ArcyExecutive Director ERES, The University of Reading, Reading, UK