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Wharton News Director of the Real Estate Center, Professor Joe Gyourko has been named a Fellow of the Homer Hoyt Advanced Studies Institute. The Institute is a uniqueand effective forum for fostering academic work that improves the quality of decision-making in real estate and land economics. Fellows are chosen for their leadership and accomplishments in the field of real estate. REIT’s are stirring from a two year slump and "historically, it has been profitable to buy at these levels" notes Wharton professor Chris Mayer in an article in the Wall Street Journal (02/15/00). The returns on REITS are "lower than traditional stocks but higher than bonds" says Mayer. The article recommends that investors consider a REIT mutual fund as a solid, long term investment. Professor Anita Summers, Emeritus Professor of Public Policy, Management, Real Estate and Education at Wharton gave a talk to the "Philadelphia Committee on City Policy" this month. The discourse was entitled "Can Philadelphia survive without major changes in Federal and State grant policy?" and was based on an analysis of socioeconomic and fiscal data for metropolitan Philadelphia and surrounding areas. The data confirms that the poorest communities exert the highest tax effort and that intergovernmental flows do not fully offset the public services burdens of the poor. State funding flows are unrelated to poverty rates, as are federal nonredistributional funds. Land use data bears out the increased absorption of land for development but in areas of major highway corridors the growth has not hit zoning limits. Professor Summers concluded that there should be a revision of State and Federal allocation formulas and serious attention should be given to land-use policies.
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