Where Next for Real Estate? Making teaching more relevant for asset managers

The UK investable real estate sector is undergoing fundamental change brought by broader economic/demographic shifts and the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI). As the market changes, the professional role is changing. For asset managers , this means more frequent rent reviews, alternative uses, addressing ESG compliance and becoming more proactive in anticipating tenant requirements including the likes of ‘defensive’ capital expenditure to mitigate depreciation and obsolescence risk. However you define the role, the industry requires multi-skilled and talented people to enter the profession. The challenge for the industry and academia, to equip new entrants to the profession, in the context of the wider impact on working life, positive and negative, posed by greater exploitation of artificial intelligence (AI) is formidable. This paper considered these major questions. It used a multi-faceted qualitative research approach generating primary data through semi-structured interviews, proving the opportunity for deep reflection across a range of senior real estate industry professionals to identify some of the fundamental changes in the profession and discuss the skills for new entrants to the market that would match opportunities being created. That was followed by a detailed exploration of these findings with senior academic real estate professionals considering about how current and evolving practice, content and assessment, can be adapted to match, more effectively, the requirements of the profession with current teaching practice. The paper goes beyond universities and reflects on some of the challenges the sector faces in terms of achieving greater diversity.