Launched in 2018, the Oxford Future of Real Estate Initiative (FoRE) is an industry-supported research programme.
Its research is focused on the 2025-2030 impact of innovation and technology on the global real estate industry. This initiative supports a team of researchers and delivers regular white papers and academic journal outputs.
Martin Schmalz appointed to lead the Oxford Future Real Estate Initiative, in a new role.
Award winning academic, Professor Martin Schmalz, has been appointed the first Real Estate Professor and lead of Oxford Future of Real Estate Initiative (FoRE).
His new leadership role has been made possible, thanks to a generous £1,000,000 donation from the Lalji family, to establish a dedicated Real Estate Fund at the School.
The initiative is part of a range of activities designed to embed real estate within the School. This encompasses a popular Real Estate elective on the Oxford MBA, Executive Education programmes, a global network of Oxford real estate alumni created through the Oxford Real Estate Society (OxRES) and the delivery of the annual Oxford Real Estate Conference.
The 8th Oxford Real Estate Conference, entitled ‘Real Estate at the Pivot of Two Decades: Past Stability and Future Transformation’, was held at Oxford Saïd on 7 May 2024, with top industry partners participating. The keynote speaker was Chris Choa, Founder and Director of Outcomist.
Commenting on the event, Katherine Lang, vice chair of OxRES, painted a sobering picture for the coming decade: ‘The conference covered 20 years of the real estate universe – looking at the past 10 years of relative stability and growth in the sector, and ahead to the transformation that we might expect before 2035 as we face infrastructure risk, regulatory risk, geopolitical risk, climate risk, obsolescence risk, demographic risk... and more.’
Latest research from the Oxford real estate community.
Does the real estate market provide a financial premium for technologies that enhance sustainability and workplace productivity?
This report assesses the contribution of building features and workplace technologies in explaining the rent levels of office buildings in London. The findings suggest that, in addition to location, specific amenities matter when predicting rent levels. However, other features that are supposed to drive employee engagement or workplace productivity do not correlate with rent levels. From these findings, the authors draw the conclusion that the current real estate market in London values flexibility, and to some extent, sustainability.
In this report we have investigated the benefits and limitations of using Automated Valuation Models (AVMs).
We conducted interviews with industry and government practitioners and discovered that reliability and transparency seem to be major barriers to mass rollout and adoption of AVMs. Currently, most are developed by privately-owned companies offering valuation services, who understandably want to protect their trade secrets. This secrecy around how individual AVMs are run – referred to by the authors as the ‘black box’ - is currently vital to developers’ competitiveness.
Despite this, the research shows that AVMs have evolved in the past decade, with the improvement of traditional modelling and the introduction of AI. In fact, following a detailed review and case study, AI-informed AVMs were found to have an impressive advantage over the traditional AVM models in prediction accuracy.
Our 2017 report PropTech 3.0: the future of real estate was the most downloaded Oxford Saïd report of that year. PropTech 2020: the future of real estate is our 112-page 2020 update.
The Oxford Future of Real Estate Initiative, was launched by Professor Andrew Baum, real estate industry veteran and author of 2017's groundbreaking Proptech 3.0 report.
Real estate tokenisation is a term used to describe the transfer and fractionalisation of the value of real estate assets, debt and funds into digital tokens using blockchain technology. It draws on the concepts of both crowdfunding and cryptocurrencies and promises a revolution in the way real estate is funded, bought and sold. PropTech (property technology) entrepreneurs across the world believe this invention is about to change real estate forever. Are they right?
A report released by the Oxford Future of Real Estate Initiative in collaboration with Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, CBRE and EY explores the true potential of tokenisation and its likely impact on the real estate industry. Titled Tokenisation: the future of real estate investment? The report is split across eight chapters and features extensive interviews with industry leaders, entrepreneurs and academics.
This report examines the property transactions process and how new technologies may affect the purchase processes of the future. Statistics tell a story of a procedure stretched to its limit: conveyancers are undertaking 55% more work per person than they were in 2015, the average sale takes 11 weeks and 25% of all property transactions fail to complete. Meanwhile, an ever-increasing array of technologies are being developed that could transform the way we buy and sell property, with profound consequences for the real estate industry, businesses and property owners. So, what are these new technologies, why can’t we use them now, and how long will it be before we can instantaneously buy and sell property? Read the report in full or view the shorter summary report.
The real estate industry is traditionally a slow-moving asset class. The recent hype around real estate technology or 'PropTech' stands in stark contrast to this traditional view on real estate. It has been argued that this ‘digital disruption' of the industry may lead to a digitalised global real estate market. Data-driven markets are often characterised by a winner-takes-all competition between firms that offer platform business models centrally focused on providing digital services for users, who 'pay' in providing more user data.
In this paper, we investigate whether PropTech is actually turning real estate into a data-driven market. The quantitative findings reveal that such trends are at work in PropTech. It is indeed an increasingly important, global phenomenon, with data analytics technologies at the core of the network of property technologies.
The findings are important for users and owners of real estate. In order to benefit from the efficiency gains associated with the digitalisation of the market, they need to become aware of the business value of data they are generating in buying, renting, or managing real estate.
Why do we scour numerous comparison websites, relying on customer satisfaction scores and comparative costs to determine where would like to reside for a long weekend, when the offices we work in every day go without such scrutiny?
'Location, location, location' is now being challenged by 'location, experience, analytic'. Through exploring the transformations occurring in the office sector, namely: the impact of climate change and carbon management; the drivers of co-working, flexible working and working from home; the uses of digital data to measure or improve worker performance and develop smart buildings; the impact of transport technology; and the cultural impacts of a global health pandemic, this report will explore why this new mantra will begin to hold increasingly true, and why delivering occupant wellbeing will soon become a financial imperative.
This white paper was produced in collaboration with Proptech VC Pi Labs and the Business School.
The report aims to provide a roadmap for the industry, identifying the key process inefficiencies within real estate investment management and highlighting relevant technologies able to overcome them.
The Oxford Housing Sprint assembled 56 leading practitioners, academics and disruptors to bring radical realism and energy to bear on the UK's national housing emergency.
Through an intensive three-day event on 15-17 July 2019, the group used a modified Design Sprint approach to tackle the long-term goal of seeing an increased number of homes delivered in ways that generate community benefits and sustainable economic growth.
This is an innovative approach to applied real estate research that will create strong lasting partnerships between academics and industry.
The initiative will consist of a group of leading businesses who will support and engage in an ambitious programme of research at Oxford.
Our partners are:
This is a unique opportunity to contribute to, and work with, the exceptional research faculty and students at Oxford Saïd.
Andrew Vaughan, Chief Executive Officer at Redevco commented: ‘As a retail-focused investment manager we recognise the enormous structural changes taking place in our sector. We believe these will be both positive as well as disruptive, will come at an astonishing speed and will significantly impact our business. We are delighted to join the Future of Real estate initiative working with like-minded partners to learn about and anticipate the impact of such technologies and innovations at an early stage.’
As well as co-funding research, the initiative partners will meet twice yearly to discuss continuing research development.
