USD President's Report and Honor Roll of Donors 1996

Many of the large real estate firms in San Diego have departments that predict the future demands of the construction industry. So it was somewhat surprising when the advisory board for the School of Business Administration's Ernest W. Hahn Chair of Real Estate Finance suggested that USD get into the business of forecasting real estate demand. But the more chairholder Mark Riedy and the board considered the idea, the more sense it made. The industry would gain another, more objective player in the forecasting game, and students would have the opportunity to consult with industry gurus and to experience the high stakes of business forecasting. The Real Estate Forecasting Project was born.

accuracy of our fo recasts," says graduate student Colleen Mezouari. "We couldn't have finished the project without their help." Although the opportunity to hobnob with San Diego's business elite was heady, the students also felt the pressure to make the Real Estate Forecasting Project's initi al venture a success. While undergraduates learned about their ass igned regions by talking to real estate agents and visiting the neigh- borhoods, the 12 graduate students broke into teams and became experts in their areas of business rea l estate. THE W ORLD IS W ATCHING The work at times seemed daunting, but Anderson says the students kept up their enthusiasm fo r the project, and adds they had a vested interest in getting their numbers right. The import- ance of the Real Estate Forecasting Project to the local industry means high visibility fo r the results - and the participants. "When you combine teaching with this kind of app li ed research , you don 't really have to se ll it to the students," says Anderson , who enlisted help for the project from fellow profes- sors Andrew N arwold, Andrew Allen and Alan Gin, who already produces the highly respected USO Index of Lead ing Economic Indicators. "When the industry is standing by and waiting for the results, students don 't ask why they're do ing it." Riedy hopes the student and fac ulty enthusiasm, coupled with industry interest, will spur the project on to success and recogniti on in the future. His goal is to make the students an indispensable source of info rmation in the San Diego real estate market. "Right now we're learning from the industry and relying on the firms in town to help us with access to the data we need. We hope to take that information and create a product that in the future will bring the industry to us for the num- bers," Riedy says. "The best career preparation fo r our students is figuring out how to make these projects work. The best incenti ve fo r them is working with an industry that rea lly cares about their results."

REAL-WORLD REAL ESTATE Economics professor Joan Anderson has taught undergraduate and graduate sections in business fo recasting fo r man y yea rs. This fa ll , however, she sensed a different air about the students in her classes. They were about to take their classroom exercises to a new leve l. Anderson 's forecasting students, who are stud ying highly specialized business techniques, fo r the first time brought those techniques into the business world through the schoo l's fl edg- ling Real Estate Forecasting Projec t. As the real estate industry in San Diego watched, Anderson and her students worked to prepare timely fo recasts fo r local real estate demand in 1997 . Anderson herse lf will present the results at the School of Business Administration's first rea l estate conference in January, organi zed by Mark Riedy, who holds the Ernest W. Hahn C hair of Real Estate Finance. "The students know that we upped the ante considerably this year," says Anderson, explaining that her undergraduates analyzed res idential rea l estate while the more advanced grad- uate students tackled projections fo r the commercial real estate sector. "Their results will be announced in front of industry experts, so they knew what they were do ing was for real." A HIGH-STAKES G AME As in any game where stakes are high, the potential payoffs fo r students also are bountiful. The project employed two under- gradu ate students last summer to research the past data on which the forecasts will be made. Both summer researchers ga ined an edge on the job market because of the contac ts they made while collecting the info rmation. "I hadn 't thought much about real estate as a caree r, but the research I performed showed me many poss ibilities in the industry," says se nior Aaron Blumenkra nz, who worked to assemble a database at the San Diego Association of Rea ltors over the summer. "The fo recasting experi ence also will make me more marketable when I graduate." Both the undergraduate and graduate fo recasting classes consulted th roughout the semester with the major players in San Diego's rea l estate industry, prov iding a unique opportunity fo r students to learn from and develop relationships with potential employers and mentors. The enthusiasm and willing- ness to help on the part of profess ionals in the fi eld greatly enriched the process. "The first few guest speakers filled us in on the historica l aspec ts of the rea l estate business in San Diego, and later in the semester we worked with industry experts to refine the