Research

Academic & Sponsored Research Overview

UF’s Bergstrom Real Estate Center seeks to support both cutting edge academic research and applied research that addresses issues of concern to real estate practitioners in Florida and throughout the U.S.

The full-time Real Estate faculty are regular presenters at national and international conferences and symposiums and have provided research and consulting services to numerous state and national organizations including Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the National Association of Home Builders, the National Association of Realtors, the Florida Association of Realtors, and the CCIM Institute.

The research activities of the Bergstrom Center are supported by a number of affiliated UF faculty also working in the areas of corporate real estate, mortgage design and contracting, land use law, affordable housing, geographical information systems, and design and construction.

Evidence of UF Research Productivity and Influence:

• A first-of-its-kind study suggests that not all commercial real estate is affected equally as a result of COVID-19. David Ling of the University of Florida Warrington College of Business with Chongyu Wang of Concordia University and Tingyu Zhou of Florida State University find that certain types of properties are struggling more than others.
  In the paper, “A First Look at the Impact of COVID-19 on Commercial Real Estate Prices: Asset Level Evidence,” Ling, Wang and Zhou examine whether the daily stock returns of real estate investment trusts (REIT) that own income producing real estate are related to the county-level growth rates of confirmed COVID-19 cases, while controlling for other variables that are known to impact returns. Using data from January 21-April 15, 2020, the researchers construct a daily measure, called GeoCOVID, that captures the exposure of each REIT’s property portfolio to the growing pandemic. Each firm’s unique daily exposure is weighted by the reported daily county COVID-19 growth rates and the percentage of each REIT’s property portfolio in each county.
• In its Fall 2006 publication, Real Estate Economics ranked the University of Florida as the eighth most influential university in real estate research. The same publication ranked David Ling, UF’s McGurn Professor of Real Estate, as the seventh most influential individual real estate researcher worldwide. Real Estate Economics, the Journal of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, is internationally recognized as the top academic journal focused on real estate and urban economics research. The university’s “influence” ranking is based on the number of times articles published by UF researchers were cited in leading real estate journals from 200 through 2004. This ranking places UF ahead of other well-known real estate programs, such as those at the University of Wisconsin, Wharton, University of British Columbia, Penn State, and the University of Southern California, to name a few. This ranking is especially noteworthy given that the number of real estate research faculty at UF is much smaller than the real estate faculty at the institutions listed above.
• A 2002 study published in the Journal of Real Estate Literature ranked UF 12th in real estate research productivity over 1988-1998. The article also listed Professor Ling as the sixth most productive academic researcher working in the areas of commercial and residential real estate during the 1988-1998 time period.
• A separate study that examines the impact of commercial real estate and housing researchers lists Professor Ling as the 14th most frequently cited author in papers published by the two most prestigious academic commercial real estate and housing journals – Real Estate Economics and the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics.

The Bergstrom Real Estate Center also conducts and publishes The Survey of Emerging Market Conditions, the only Florida-centered survey of leaders and professional advisors in the real estate industry. The survey analyzes prospective data to produce extensive forecasting information pertinent to 37 of the state’s 67 counties.