Bullshit Jobs and Bullshit Offices
David Graeber’s ‘On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant’ made a compelling argument: many modern jobs exist for no real reason. Bureaucratic middlem...
Posts by Year
2025
New Paper: Enhancing Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) Return Forecasts via Machine Learning
Paper forthcoming in Real Estate Economics: We add to the emerging literature on machine learning empirical asset pricing by analyzing a comprehensive set of...
AI will continue to change real estate at a dramatic pace: How to prepare our students for an unknowable future?
It’s easy to throw out bold ideas on how AI will change the real estate industry for good. But how can we prepare our students for an unknowable future? How ...
2024
The MPhils were back in town!
It was such a joy to welcome back our MPhil alumni and former colleagues for the 2024 MPhil reunion! I truly enjoyed the evening, hearing all about your impr...
Continuous learning
As I sat in the dentist’s chair, waiting for the local anesthetic to kick in, I finally asked the dentist something I had wondered about a few times before: ...
Blog post: Predictable REIT returns
The Cambridge Endowment for Research in Finance (CERF) has published a blog post on Kahshin Leow’s and my research on predictable REIT returns: https://www.c...
Spring in Full Bloom
Spring has arrived both at home and at work.
Upcoming talks: Research seminars in Reading and London
This Wednesday (March 20) will be busy: First, I’ll head to the University of Reading for a research seminar (12–1 pm). My paper shows how REIT return predic...
Spring
Spring arrived early this year. The apricot is flowering, to the delight of big bumble bees. Let’s hope there will be no more frosty spells.
Agreed
“In [Trump’s] world: rent regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrict...
Easy New Year’s Resolutions
Still looking for an easy new year’s resolution? Something that won’t be difficult to do but might make you feel better every time you navigate the Internet?
2023
Run Large Language Models locally
Want to run a large language model (LLM) on your computer? Llamafile makes hosting a LLM chatbot locally as simple as downloading a single file and starting ...
True Craftsmanship
I spotted this exceptionally well-made gate not far from home. The oak wood has been hewn, not sawn, giving strength and elegant curves. Connections made in ...
Green Buildings of Silver Street
Not ideal from a building maintenance point of view… but beautiful. A gutter has been leaking for years and created a truly ‘green’ building on Silver Street...
Work with us: Assistant Professorship (tenure track) at University of Cambridge
The Department of Land Economy is searching for one more Assistant Professor in Real Estate Finance. Here my thoughts on why this might be an attractive oppo...
Reaching for yield and the housing market: Evidence from 18th-century Amsterdam
New paper by Matthijs Korevaar explores the links between financial markets and real estate in 18th-century Amsterdam
Tulip mania
An update from the garden: Tulips tulips tulips
Professor!
Personal news: I have been elected Grosvenor Professor of Real Estate Finance at the University of Cambridge
Franz Xaver Rektorzik
Etchings by Franz Xaver Rektorzik, printed by August Potuczek
2022
New paper: Testing machine learning systems in real estate
How do ML-models arrive at their predictions? Do they do what we hope they do—or are corners cut?. New paper out at Real Estate Economics
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New Paper: Urban land valuation with bundled good and land residual assumptions
Paper out: This paper develops a new approach to estimate the value of urban land and indirectly tests land residual assumptions. Bonus: Value surfaces estim...
New Working Paper: “Growth and Predictability of Urban Housing Rents”
This paper studies urban rental prices for half a millennium (1500–2020) and seven cities: Amsterdam, Antwerp, Bruges, Brussels, Ghent, London, and Paris. Ba...
Spatial ML: Estimating Land Values in Phoenix (AZ)?
A neural networks that accounts for spatial correlation and time dynamics?
2021
Are Estimates of Rapid Growth in Urban Land Values an Artifact of the Land Residual Model?
New paper out: A closer look at urban land and structure values – this is important for national accounts and for analysis of real estate risk over time. Wit...
Immobilienanlagen: Angebliches Renditewunder entzaubert / Le « miracle » de l’investissement immobilier démystifié
Summary of our total return paper in German and French.
New Publication: The Total Return To Real Estate
New research accepted for publication at the Review of Financial Studies (RFS) suggests that returns to real estate are solid but not exceptional: No sign of...
Nothing but hot air…
My previous website went down in flames (or rather: is now hosted in a black cloud).
Machine Learning, Architectural Styles and Property Values
New research accepted for publication at the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics: This paper couples a traditional hedonic model with architectural ...
Aesthetic Preferences for Residential Architecture: Finding Ground Truth with Machine Learning Approaches
This paper first collects binary classifications of house pictures from a large group of participants and then trains personalized ML classifiers for each pa...
2014
Valuable Words: The Price Dynamics of Internet Domain Names
This article estimates the first constant quality price index for Internet domain names. The suggested index provides a benchmark for domain name traders and...