Citation
Arslanli, K.Y. (2015), "22nd Annual Conference of European Real Estate Society ERES, Istanbul, Turkey", Journal of European Real Estate Research, Vol. 8 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/JERER-09-2015-0033
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
22nd Annual Conference of European Real Estate Society ERES, Istanbul, Turkey
Article Type: Guest editorial From: Journal of European Real Estate Research, Volume 8, Issue 3
The 22nd Annual Conference of the European Real Estate Society (ERES) was held in Istanbul in June 2015 providing the opportunity to expand knowledge sharing into south-eastern Europe and showcase to the international community the potential of real estate investment and development in Turkey. In recent years, Istanbul has witnessed significant expanison of real estate activities on a physical scale that surpasses previous periods of the city’s growth and modern history. Hence, the timing of the ERES Conference was opportune coinciding with increasing interest and requirements of the real estate sector in Turkey.
The host institution for the Conference, Istanbul Technical University, has an educational history extending back to the eighteenth century, developed after the foundation of the Turkish Republic. Istanbul Technical University is well known as an institution of engineering sciences; nevertheless, urban planners, architects and urban economists constitute a considerable research team at the University. The Faculty of Architecture, the main venue of the Conference, has over 70 years of experience in developing scientific disciplines. However, hosting the ERES conference stimulated interest across a diversity of interested parties, including the Central Bank of Turkey, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, other universities and practitioners from real estate, achieving the objective of reaching across different sectors.
The heterogeneity of real estate was captured by presentations across a wide range of parallel sessions. In total, 281 paper submissions spanning more than 300 authors from 41 countries were received and organised into particular tracks. In this respect, I would like to thank our track chairs and their assigned reviewers for their contributions: Rianne Appel-Meulenbroek; Corporate Real Estate Management; Paloma Taltavull de La Paz; Housing Markets & Economics, Martin Hoesli; Real Estate Finance & Investment. At the PhD meeting, Prof Anil K. Bera from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign gave a keynote speech on the fundamentals of spatial analysis ranging from a general level of epidemiology, to spatial statistics, spatial econometrics and spatial real estate. In the context of real estate econometrics, the presentation argued that not only the spatial dependence of house prices, but also the dependence in the variability (risk) of prices need to be considered through the application of non-linear spatial autoregressive models.
At the opening ceremony of the conference, the keynote address from Prof Dr Vedia Dokmeci examined multi-centre development of Istanbul and its impact on real estate through investigating the spatial distribution of population, jobs, office rents, house prices and retail rents by the use of GIS techniques. Hierarchical analysis of multi-centre development was used to illustrate the multi-level distribution of sub-centres of varying sizes and their importance according to location and degree of integration with the rest of the urban structure. This was considered to result in a more balanced distribution of land prices and traffic than can be found in monocentric cities. Prof Dr Abdullah Yavaş delivered a keynote address on bubbles and real estate markets covering market dynamics, forecasting base structures and identification of the level of overpriced property from normal price appreciation. Differences of the Turkish real estate market from other emerging markets, loan structures on mortgages and the importance of investors and developers observing local market conditions in terms of their decision-taking were key themes discussed in the presentation.
Finally, as conference chair, I would like to thank the institutional support that the conference received and conference sponsors for their generous contributions.
Kerem Yavuz Arslanli
Institute of Social Sciences, Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey