Welcome

The last decade of the 20th century has had a significant impact on the real estate industry. The remarkable recovery from the cyclical decline of the late 80s and early 90s has fueled profound changes in all aspects of the industry, including development, construction, financing and ownership. Real estate has become more liquid, more public, and more global. These changes have attracted financial innovators, offering new opportunities and posing new market challenges. As a result, while traditional disciplines such as real estate management, development, construction and finance continue to provide important tools and perspectives, there are new techniques that the successful real estate practitioner must utilize.

There are new forms of real estate investment, most notably Real Estate Investment Trusts. REITs offer investors a highly liquid investment while preserving the tax advantages typically associated with real estate investments. More importantly, REITs have brought real estate investments to public capital markets, becoming one of the hot investments of the 90s.

Another recent innovation is the remarkable growth of securitization, whereby highly liquid securities are issued against a pool of less liquid securities such as mortgages. Again, the financial sector has risen to the demand for more liquidity while preserving the basic tax attributes of real estate investments.

A third significant change is the globalization of real estate markets: U.S. developers, builders and REITs are looking abroad for new opportunities, most notably in Eastern Europe. In addition, firms specializing in securitization and REITs are considering how the successful U.S. models can be exported to other regions such as Europe and East Asia.

These changes have dramatically increased the demand for well-trained real-estate practitioners. The mission of the Kellogg School's Real Estate program is to understand these powerful forces and their effects and to translate that understanding - through research, conferences and graduate and executive courses - to provide a solid preparation for the challenges faced by real-estate practitioners.

As part of the Kellogg School's commitment to continuous improvement, we are enhancing the Real Estate program by adding courses which integrate the core competencies of the Kellogg School: finance, marketing, accounting, and negotiation. These new courses reflect the skills and perspectives necessary for the training of successful real-estate practitioners both in the last year of this century and the beginning of the next millennium.