The European Real Estate Society

In June 2005 the European Real Estate Society (ERES) held its 12th annual conference in Dublin, Ireland. The conference was organized by Simon Stevenson and hosted by the Centre for Real Estate Research, Smurfit Graduate School of Business, University College Dublin. The conference was held in association with the International Real Estate Society (IRES) who sponsored the Plenary Session. Simon and his team put considerable personal effort into making the conference a success and this effort was also reflected in the sponsorship received from both the Irish and international real estate communities. The Dublin conference attracted over 400 participants from 30 countries and built significantly on the success of previous ERES conferences with over 250 quality papers presented. Professors John Quigley University of California Berkeley and David Ling, University of Florida provided two very stimulating keynote addresses. Noted social highlights of the conference for many participants were the networking party held at the famous Powerscourt House and Gardens in Co. Wicklow and the gala dinner which took place in the palatial surroundings of the recently restored Royal Hospital in Kilmainham. The conference social events were also favoured by the notoriously unpredictable Irish weather.

This special edition of the Journal of Property Investment and Finance contains four papers presented at ERES 2005. The first paper is the winner of the third 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 “Real Estate Value: Creation and Destruction” by Stephen Roulac, Alastair Adair, Stanley McGreal, Jim Berry and Suzanne Allen from the University of Ulster. The second paper is the Society of Property Researchers prize-winning paper for Innovative Research, “Natural Vacancy Rates in Global Office Markets” by Ben Sanderson, Kieran Farrelly and Corin Thoday. The thirds paper by Tim Dixon discusses the role of Sustainable development in Brownfield developments and finally, the Practice Briefing is the winning paper of the Hamilton Osborne King Prize for best paper on the Irish Market, “Fiscal Incentives and Urban Regeneration in Dublin 1986-2005” by Brendan Williams.

Since the Dublin conference ERES has continued in its mission to provide an important forum for active engagement between property researchers in Europe and beyond. ERES 2006 held in Weimar, Germany attracting over 450 participants with a total of 250 papers presented. This makes ERES yet again the worlds largest real estate research conference in terms of both participation and papers presented. ERES 2007 “Real Estate in the Changing World” will take place in London, England from 27-30th June organised by Cass Business School at City University, with strong support from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). Full conference details are available from www.cass.city.ac.uk/eres2007. The 2008 conference will take place in Krakow, Poland, hosted by the Krakow University of Economics with the 2009 conference taking place in Stockholm,Sweden hosted by KTH. The ERES Industry Seminars have gone from strength to strength with recent seminars taking place in Paris and Zurich. The next ERES Industry Seminar will take place on the 13th of October in Stockholm on the topic of “Market Cycles and Volatility”. In December 2005 the first ERES Education Seminar took place at the University of Alicante, Spain. Organised by Paloma Taltavull it attracted over sixty educators from Europe and beyond and was regarded by all the participants as worthwhile and a potentially very important form for advancing the position of real estate education in Europe and for sharing best practice amongst educators. The second ERES Education Seminar will take place over the weekend of 8 and 9th December in Regensburg, Germany hosted by the Department of Real Estate at the University of Regensburg. The four seminar themes are: Core knowledge in real estate education, the role of accreditation in real estate education, coalescence of industry and academics in real estate education and concepts of life-long learning for real estate professionals.

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

Éamonn D’ArcyVice-President ERES, The University of Reading, Reading, UK