The AREF Research Award

About the award:

Launched in 2020, this award, unique in its approach, extends an invitation to all AREF members. Unlike traditional awards, no separate submission paper is required. Instead we want to spotlight the extensive research within our industry by showcasing published work from the period spanning 1st Apri 2023 to 31st March 2024.

Criteria:

We invite all member firms to submit original research, published by your firm or sent to your clients since 1st April 2023. A maximum of three pieces of research per firm can be considered for submission.

In line with the AREF Research Committees’ long term goals, the winner of the prize will be judged upon:

Its contribution to the UK institutional real estate funds industry
- The topical nature of the research and information presented
- New understanding it brings to an area
- The degree to which it helps the industry learn

Winner 2024:

Winner: Patrizia for their paper 'The role of amenities in strategic asset selection'

Dr Marcelo Cajias of Patrizia collecting the award

Judging Panel Comments: With 24 entries this year, the judging panel faced some tough choices and read many excellent research papers. There were some clear themes in the entries. ESG issues featured strongly, and there were also a number of papers on the residential market, technology, and looking at how to assess amenity rich environments quantitatively.

The winning paper by Patrizia - 'The role of amenities in strategic asset selection', looked at the role of amenities in influencing residential rents. The judges felt that it broke new ground in its approach and found the pan-European focus (including London) provided interesting insights into how different cities demonstrated slightly different relationships between rental value and amenity scores. Some relationships were quite nuanced, and residents in different cities were found to place different values on proximity to different amenities. The findings also demonstrated that the inconvenience of high concentrations of amenities in city centre locations can result in a reduction in rental value. It is a great example of how increasingly rich data sets can be mined for quantitative insights that help drive an understanding of asset level performance.

Others shortlisted included:

Aviva Investors for their paper 'Breaking Ground - Opportunities in life-sciences real estate'
Lothbury Investment Management for their paper 'London Office - Amenity & Accessibility' {for a copy of this Lothbury report, please contact [email protected]}.
UBS for their paper 'Future green investments: Emerging energy transition infrastructure beyond renewables'
UBS for their paper 'Green premium: Study of New York and London real estate'

How to apply:

The deadline has now passed for 2024.

Deadline:

The deadline has now passed for 2024.

The winning entry:

The winner will be announced at The AREF Annual Dinner in September.

The winning entry will be showcased on the AREF website. The author of the winning entry will also be invited to present their research to AREF members via a pre-recorded interview with one of the judges. This will be distributed to AREF members via various platforms including the AREF website, in the AREF newsletter, on AREF's social media platforms and via email. The winner will receive a winners logo to use in their marketing.

In addition, any other submitted reports the judges consider noteworthy will also be showcased on the AREF website.

The judging panel:

This award is being judged by a panel of committee members:

Kim Politzer, Fidelity - Chair
Alistair Dryer, LaSalle
Kasia Dziewulska, CBRE
Tom Goodwin, Mercer
Will Lawrence, CMS

click here to view the judging panel biographies:

Director of Research, European Real Estate, Fidelity

Kim Politzer joined Fidelity's Real Estate team in March 2018. She leads the European research team and is part of the senior management team. Prior to this, Kim was a Senior Director, and Head of European Research at Invesco Real Estate.

At Fidelity she works closely with the real estate investment team to apply both top down and bottom up research to support strategy for new and existing mandates.

With c.30 years’ experience, Kim began her career as a site researcher for Tesco before moving to Weatherall Green & Smith (now BNP Paribas Real Estate) where she worked in occupier research, specialising in the retail sector, and was also responsible for real estate forecasting across all sectors.

At Invesco, Kim provided a pan-European overview of the real estate market, and was responsible for Invesco’s European Real Estate House View. She sat on the Investment Committee, the Fund Strategy Review Committee and co-chaired the Investment Strategy Group.

Kim has an MA in Geography from the University of California, Los Angeles and an MSc in Econometrics & Forecasting from London Guildhall University.

She is a member of the Society of Property Researchers, the Investment Property Forum and the Society of Business Economists. Kim is also part of the Women Talk Real Estate network.

Head of Europe , LaSalle Global Solutions at LaSalle Investment Management

Alistair is a head of Europe at LaSalle Global Solutions. He moved over from Aviva Investors in 2018, where he was Head of UK Capital GIRE and a Senior Fund Manager, responsible for a number of key client accounts. Alistair joined Aviva Investors in March 2009, previously having worked at ING Real Estate for nine years, firstly in the research team and then in the Multi-Manager team.

Alistair holds an LLB in Law and an MSc in Management and IT from the University of Leicester. In 2009 he completed the IPF Diploma. Alistair is also a member of the INREV Secondary Markets and Liquidity Committee.

Global Director of Client Services, CBRE

Kasia Dziewulska has 20 years’ experience in Client Care and Research, and has been at CBRE since 2013. In her role, Kasia has strategic client responsibility within Research, including direct oversight of global and regional client relationships.

She provides client led leadership ensuring that clients benefit from CBRE’s in-house intelligence, thought leadership and data products. She closely collaborates with regional Client Care programs and is deeply passionate about CBRE becoming a true strategic advisor wherever the clients are based or expanding to.

Following a career in capital markets Research, since 2006 Kasia has been involved in client management and business development, working with institutional and private equity clients. Kasia was a Business Development Director at PPR (now part of CoStar) where she was responsible for growing global client relationships and where she gained a wide exposure to North American investors and institutions.

Prior to that, she was a Global Client Management Director at DTZ and a member of Corporate Finance Executive Board. She designed and implemented client management programs at the regional and global level working closely with all business lines. She was directly responsible for top 20 clients and also developed a unique client selection and review process to ensure the business focus on key growth relationships.

Terms & conditions:

Papers must have been published or sent to clients during the last year (1st April 2023 to 31st March 2024)
Papers can be submitted in any format (PDF/Word/Web).
Unfortunately, we cannot accept academic research.
The research need not refer to or use the AREF/MSCI UK QPFI data.
Submissions will be treated confidentially.
The deadline for the submission to be sent to us is {this is now closed for 2024}.

Previous Winners:

2023: JLL for the following research: "Sustainability and Value - Capital Markets: Central London Offices".

2022:
Patrizia for their report on 'Optimising the value of institutional real estate portfolios with machine learning – A Hedonic Machine Learning Approach’ (click here to view the winning report).

2021:
AEW - Paper: “Climate Informed Real Estate Returns In Europe” (link to paper).
(With a special mention to both: Fidelity for their “Future of the Office” paper (link to paper), which was the most succinct and informative research on another contemporary topic; and to CBRE (and Property Match) for their use of data and graphics in conveying information about the private real estate fund secondary market (link to paper).