The European Real Estate Society Conference 2006

The European Real Estate Society Conference 2006

The European Real Estate Society (ERES) held its 13th annual conference, in Weimar, from 7-10 June 2006. The conference was organized by Ramon Sotelo and hosted by the Bauhaus University. Ramon and his team put considerable effort into making the conference a success and the conference attracted a record number of participants.

This special edition of the Journal of Property Investment & Finance contains four prize-winning papers presented at ERES 2006. The first paper is the winner of the fourth annual Gerald Brown Memorial Prize, sponsored by Emerald, for the best paper presented in the area of Commercial Real Estate Investment and Finance. This is “The mortgage lending value: prospects for development within Europe” by Sven Bienert and Wolfgang Brunauer, which discusses the implications and application of mortgage lending value in the context of risk assessment for commercial lending.

The second paper won the IPD Prize for the Best Paper in Property Investment. This is the paper entitled “Gearing and the Australian real estate investment market” by Anthony De Francesco, which again continues the theme of assessing risk in a debt-driven market.

The third paper won the American Real Estate Society Foundation Prize for the Best Paper Presented at the ERES 2006 Conference in any area of Real Estate. This was the paper “Optimal holding period in real estate portfolio” by Michel Baroni, Fabrice Barthélémy and Mahdi Mokrane. This paper analyses the holding requirement of property within a portfolio to maximise returns.

And lastly, Sally Sims and Peter Dent in their paper “Property stigma: wind farms are just the latest fashion” discuss the impact of public perception on property values[1]. This paper won the Appraisal Institute Education Trust Prize for the Best Paper presented on Real Estate Valuation and Valuation Techniques.

Since the Weimar conference ERES has continued in its mission to provide an international forum for property researchers in Europe and beyond. ERES 2007 was held in London from 27-30 June organised by Cass Business School at City University, with strong support from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).

The 2008 conference will take place in Krakow, Poland, hosted by the Krakow University of Economics, from 18-21 June 2008. Full details can be found at www.symposium.pl/eres2008

Emerald has been a strong supporter of ERES since its inception and it is hoped that in 2008 there will be a new ERES journal in the Emerald stable that will become a sister journal to the Journal of Property Investment & Finance. Further details to follow later this year.

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

Editor’s note. This paper discusses the pricing of residential property, which is normally outwith the ambit of JPIF. However, as an ERES prize winner it was agreed that there should be dispensation for this special issue.

Hanna KalevaKTI Finland and Executive Director, ERES