We are delighted to announce the winners of the AREF Annual Awards 2024!
Now in their 13th year, the awards recognise achievement and contribution by our members and others who support the work of AREF.
The winners of the 2024 AREF Awards are:
Affiliate of the Year
Winner: Citco
Nancy Thompstone of Citco collecting the award
Citco were nominated for:
- Taking the risk to sponsor the first AREF Conference.
- Hosting the first FutureGen An Evening With event featuring Andy Baum.
Nominees included:
- Aztec Group
- CBRE
- Knight Frank
Outstanding Fund Achievement
Winner: Thriving Investments - The Mid Market Rent (New Avenue Living) Fund
William Kyle of Thriving Investments collecting the award
Judging Panel Comments: For yet another year, the Judging Committee for the AREF Outstanding Fund Achievement Award were placed in a fantastic position in reviewing responses from the fund community. In our opinion Thriving Investments stood out for a number of reasons, with the most interesting point being the nature of how they embraced the 'Just Transition' in a practical way with excellent case studies of leveraging apprenticeships that enable local people to upskill and in also building first class green homes, providing long term benefits to those communities. We recommend that this approach be shared within the investor community to demonstrate how progress can be made and integrated into investment decision making from the start. Particularly important for the real estate sector to ensure a long term future in the investments market through adopting Just Transition principles.
Those shortlisted included:
- Aviva Investors - The Lime Property Fund
- Royal London Asset Management - The Royal London UK Real Estate Fund (RLUKREF)
- Swiss Life Asset Managers - The Property Income Trust for Charities
Research Award
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'
The John Cartwright Award for Outstanding Individual Contribution
Winner: Patrick Groves, CMS
Patrick Groves of CMS collecting the award.
Patrick was nominated for this award for his many years of participating in the FutureGen Committee and now in the Education & Training Committee, specificially his work in:
- Planning and moderating all three debt panel events for the AREF Debt Event Series.
- Contributions in the planning of the AREF Conference.
Other nominations included:
- Chantal Beaudoin, Knight Frank Investment Management
- Clare Grimes, GRE Finance
- Simon Marx, Lothbury Investment Management
- Jessica Pilz, Fiera Real Estate
Congratulations to all our winners and many thanks to everyone who submitted an entry.
Click here for more information on the AREF Awards, including previous years winners.
This year, the AREF Annual Dinner was proudly sponsored by JTC.
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