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A
downpayment on success.
That’s
how Swiss Bank Worbege viewed the assistance of Tony Sanders.
Last year, Sanders’ research on "Pricing Shared-appreciation
Mortgages" caught the bank’s attention. So they did what any
forward thinking organization would do.
They
put him on the payroll.
Sanders,
a finance professor and co-director of Fisher’s Center for Real
Estate Education and Research, was hired as a consultant to
head up the real estate research division of the Deutsche Bank
in New York. There Sanders investigated and analyzed defaults
and prepayments in the REITS and CMBS markets and traded mortgage
derivatives for the bank.
His
experience at Deutsche Bank confirmed Sanders’ belief in the
value of the academic community keeping in touch with contemporary
real estate practices. In that spirit, he sought the creation
of a symposium that would bring together experts from the academic
and corporate communities to examine issues of interest to the
real estate industry. He found ready and willing contributors
in Harley E. Rouda, chairman of HER Realty, Inc., and his wife,
Marlese, who were looking for a way to continue their long-standing
support of real estate education at Ohio State.
Creation of a symposium is just one way the Real Estate Center
is widening its net to involve a larger segment of the real
estate community. "The symposium is an important component in
accomplishing the center’s mission and new focus," says Sanders.
While
maintaining its original mission of informing the public about
trends in the real estate brokerage industry and providing a
forum for the exchange of ideas, the center is extending its
reach to include securitization, asset management, valuation,
risk, and market and investment analysis.
Last
year, the center brought in researchers from schools across
the nation to lead seminars and workshops, presenting the first
in a series of regional roundtables that addressed issues in
corporate real estate, the emerging role of the commercial mortgage
real estate investment trust (REIT), the development of secondary
markets and securitization, and "State of the Market Real Estate
Forecasts" highlighting trends, predictions and activities shaping
the central Ohio real estate industry.
Sanders
is also bringing his knowledge of commercial real estate investment
and market trends to bear on the center’s tradition of sponsoring
research relevant to the industry. Recent
research conducted with Fisher College colleague Andrew Karolyi
investigates the reasons for the 1998 decline in the REIT. Another
of Sanders’ studies analyzes the default risks associated with
the 125% LTV loan that has characterized the home equity loan
business. Both papers have been made available to the public
through the Real Estate Center’s Web site, which contains listings,
summaries of monographs and abstracts of current research on
developments and critical issues in the industry. Plans are
in place for extending the site’s scope to include real estate
and economic information, such as housing starts, mortgage rates
and real estate returns, and guidelines on such matters as how
to reduce risk and what’s hot and what’s not in the industry.
As
Sanders says, "It’s all part of an effort to bring researchers
and practitioners together for the benefit of both. And ultimately,
that will benefit our students."
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