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Wharton News The Journalism School & Nieman Foundation at Harvard recently announced that Professor of Architecture and Real Estate, Witold Rybczynski has been awarded the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, given for exceptional works of nonfiction. Professor Rybczynski received the award for his highly acclaimed book A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century. The book is a biography of landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted, one of the most creative and public-spirited Americans of the 19th century. It presents an intimate portrait of an artist, visionary, practical man of affairs and scholar of many disciplines. The prize jurors noted that in the spirit of Olmsted, the book is well-balanced, unassuming in its manner, and at the same time an original and imaginative work. Frederick Law Olmsted was the legendary creator of Central Park and a recent front page article on Central Park in the New York Times quoted Rybczynski at length. "Because Central Park looks like nature, visitors often forget that they are in a fragile, artificial environment," says Rybczynski. "Balancing the enforcement of park rules is equally delicate. The park requires cooperation and compromise to reconcile freedom with regulation." House buying just became a lot harder in certain areas of the country as escalation clauses (agreements by house buyers to top a competing offer by a set amount) are gaining in popularity. A recent article in The Washington Post quoted Real Estate Professor Chris Mayer on escalation pros and cons. Escalation clauses may be attractive to buyers, but sellers need to beware. "If a seller is smart, he’ll respond with a counteroffer that is near the maximum price listed in the escalation clause," said Mayer. "There is also the possibility that agents may give sellers bad advice. The agent may be more concerned about closing the transaction than collecting an additional few dollars from the total percent of the sale. Buyers like the clauses because they believe that they can buy at a lower price but sellers must be prepared to counteroffer aggressively." Professor Mayer was also quoted in an article in Fortune. The effects of the Nasdaq "stumble" in April have already been felt in Silicon Valley as house buyers are dropping out of bidding wars or letting almost–sealed deals fall through. Professor Mayer said that the decline in stock markets will eventually have an impact on housing prices but it takes sellers up to a year to fully recognize changes in the market. "Sellers won't lower prices until demand is fully tapped. The housing market is simply cooling down like the rest of the economy." The Western Finance Association has invited Professor Mayer to present a research paper entitled: Are Dividend Taxes Capitalized into Share Prices? Evidence from Real Estate Investment Trusts. He will be delivering another paper: Loss Aversion and Seller Behavior: Evidence from the Housing Market at a Berkeley conference on behavioral economics later this month. Professor Peter Linneman was a guest speaker at the 33rd Annual Real Estate Global Capital Markets Conference in New York. Associate Director Asuka Nakahara also attended the conference and was a member of a panel addressing the impact of technology and e-commerce on real estate. The Dayton Daily News recently quoted native-born Ohioan, Zell Lurie Real Estate Center Director, Professor Joseph Gyourko. The increase in rental housing has concerned some officials and homeowners in the inner Dayton suburb of Kettering. The newspaper reported on research conducted by Professor Gyourko, detailing how the record high in home ownership rates masks the widening divide between rich and poor in America. In an article written for Development Magazine which appears in the Winter ’99 issue,Professors Joseph Gyourko and Peter Linneman consider the implications of low inflation on real estate investing. They write that there are now increased risks associated with leverage and real estate owners must focus on finding ways to generate new income sources from tenants to realize cost savings. They point out that history suggests there is room for cap rates to fall by 100–200 basis points over the next few years which may be the biggest benefit of permanently low inflation for the real estate industry. Emeritus Professor of Public Policy, Management, Real Estate and Education, Anita Summers, has had a busy few months. In March she addressed the Sunday Breakfast Club. The Club provides a forum where area leaders have the opportunity to hear authoritative speakers and discuss pressing economic issues. Also in March, Professor Summers was the guest speaker at a luncheon given by the Philadelphia Committee on City Policy. She spoke on the issue of Intergovernmental Finance and discussed whether Philadelphia can survive without major changes in federal and state grant policy. In May, Professor Summers gave a presentation about her latest research into performance-based compensation at the Teacher Accountability Conference. The research assesses students educational progress and takes into account socio–economic background and other factors related to student performance. Professor Summers will be in California later this month at the invitation of the Milken Family Foundation to talk about the issue of teacher quality and merit pay at the Family Foundation’s National Education Conference. Professor Summers also contributed a paper for a book published by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy entitled Urban–Suburban Interdependencies edited by Rosalind Greenstein and Wim Weiwel. Summers’ chapter focuses on the regionalization efforts between cities and their suburbs. Associate Professor of Real Estate, Legal Studies and Law, Georgette Poindexter, presented a paper at the American Association of Law Schools Annual General Meeting. The paper was entitled: Economic Development and Community Activism will be published by Cornell in The Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. Professor Poindexter’s paper, Who Gets the Final No: Tenant Participation in Public Housing Redevelopment will be published later this month.
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