Real Estate Management

Research area

To achieve a built environment that performs well and delivers value to the end user in terms of spatial, functional and technical quality, cost effectiveness and sustainability, it is necessary to incorporate the interests, requirements and constraints of the various stakeholders in all phases of the lifecycle (from initiation to use) and at different scale levels (buildings, real estate portfolios, urban areas and markets). Real Estate Management therefore by definition has an interdisciplinary nature, combining the scientific fields of policy, geography and planning sciences, organisational studies, economics, law, mathematics and sociology with design and engineering – mainly architecture, urbanism and building technology.

Main research topics

The main research topics of the section Real Estate Management are led by principal investigators, who are full professors or associate professors. The topics are viable topics, within which several researchers are working on different research projects, and supervising the section’s PhD students and post-doctoral researchers.

Real Estate Management studies and develops strategies for sustainable management of buildings, portfolios, locations and (geographical) markets, in the use phase of existing buildings, and the initiation phase of adaptive reuse and new-build. The chair focuses on the user and the demand side of real estate, taking a life cycle approach, and applying design thinking. The main focus of the chair is:

  • the relationship between real estate quality (including sustainability), value and costs,
  • how adaptive reuse of real estate can add value and contribute to a sustainable built environment
  • the added value of real estate for an organisation.

Public Real Estate focuses on the challenges of managing public real estate portfolios by building theory on improving decision-making processes and finding new concepts for the built environment. The chair’s mission is to support organisations’ decisions about managing their public real estate portfolios, resulting in inspiring, meaningful, functional, affordable, resource-efficient and sustainable built environments. Current challenges are an increasingly dynamic and demanding community, pressure on available budgets and energy resources and professionalising the organisation that needs to implement (system) changes.

Housing systems aims to unravel the functioning of the housing market by focussing on demand, supply and price and their interdependence. To identify structural changes, both quantitative modelling orientated research as qualitative research is necessary, considering the role of different tenures, government policies and the role of financial institutions on the housing market. The societal goal is to deliver answers for the current problems on the housing market. The results are a steady stream of Phd defences, scientific and professional articles, more than 50 lectures per year for societal parties, monitoring key elements of the housing market, policy advices with impact for government bodies and the industry and huge media coverage.

Housing Management develops and evaluates organisational strategies for the management and (re)development of the housing stock to increase the socioeconomic and environmental sustainability of housing provision. In recent and coming years the chair mainly focusses on two themes: 1) how principles of a circular economy can be implemented in management and (re)development of the housing stock, and 2) how actors (residents, contractors, developers, investors, governments) can collaborate to attune housing provision to preferences and financial possibilities of households

Indoor environment focuses on people and their health and comfort, influenced by buildings and environmental factors, indoors and outdoors. People spend 80-90% of their time indoors. Diseases and disorders related to indoor exposure have increased. To better understand and improve the indoor environment, we need to acknowledge the fact that the indoor environment is more than the sum of its parts, and that its assessment should start from human beings rather than benchmarks.

Research leader

Dr. Hilde Remøy