Simon Stevenson, the Chair of the Runstad Department of Real Estate and the John and Rosalind Jacobi Family Professor of Real Estate, has been awarded the 2018 Nick Tyrrell Research Prize for innovative applied research in real estate investment. The award is for the paper “Optimal Composition of Hybrid/Blended Real Estate Portfolios”, which was co-authored with former colleagues Frank Ametefe and Steven Devaney of the Henley Business School, University of Reading.
The prize is awarded annually by three of Europe’s leading real estate industry associations; the European Association for Investors in Non-listed Real Estate Vehicles (INREV), the Investment Property Forum (IPF) and the Society of Property Researchers (SPR). The prize is in memory of Nick Tyrrell, the former Head of Research & Strategy and a Managing Director in J.P. Morgan Asset Management’s European Real Estate Division, who passed away in August 2010. His research work was characterized by a combination of academic rigor and practical relevance.
The research considers the optimal mix of liquid, publicly traded assets that may be added to a real estate portfolio to provide enhanced liquidity while at the same time minimizing the impact on portfolio return. The performance and liquidity of real estate funds has become an issue of concern among investors, especially as the ability of investors to exit funds has often been compromised in periods following market shocks. Increasingly, institutional investors, such as UK defined contribution pension funds, are requiring increased liquidity from real estate funds, which they use to gain exposure to real estate as an asset class.
The research indicates that applying formal portfolio optimization techniques leads not only to benefits with respect to liquidity but also to an improvement in the ability of blended real estate products to track the underlying benchmark index. The authors will be presenting their findings at a special industry seminar in London in the spring of 2019, date to be confirmed. A similar event will be held in Seattle. A copy of the Prize-winning paper is available here: