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Wharton News

Maisy Wong joins Real Estate faculty

Maisy Wong, Assistant Professor of Real Estate, received her Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and will be teaching real estate finance in the Spring term. Her research interests are international in scope, including real estate economics, public economics, and development economics. Her current project is on "the welfare consequences of residential desegregation policies, discrete choice and hedonic estimation of preferences, seasonality, and consumption smoothing in Indonesia." Wong chose to begin her teaching career in Wharton's Real Estate Program "because of the quality of the program in terms of my colleagues and the students. The Real Estate Center also provides strong support both financially and in terms of its distinguished network. Less than a month upon arriving on campus, I have no doubt that I made the right choice. Being the most junior faculty in the group, I have benefited tremendously from the advice of my senior colleagues. After just two weeks on campus, many faculty members have already offered to meet me for lunch/coffee. Everyone has made me feel like there is no question that is too trivial for an assistant professor to ask. Compared to fellow graduate students from MIT who are also starting as assistant professors, the support I have received has been phenomenal. I am confident that this is an environment I can be productive in."

Saiz speaks on immigration economics in Barcelona, Cambridge

Albert Saiz, Assistant Professor, was the keynote speaker at the Second INSIDE ("Insights on Immigration and Development Economics") Workshop in Barcelona, Spain, on July 2-3, 2008. The workshop was primarily aimed at research relevant to Spanish interests. Saiz presented his work "On Local Housing Supply Elasticity" at the National Bureau of Economic Research Summer Institute, on July 23, in Cambridge, Mass.

His research was cited in an article in April's Apartment Finance Today, "Immigration Transformation," by Bendix Anderson, giving an outlook for the future and some tips on how to market to immigrant renters. Saiz's research found that "in places where the population increased due to immigration, housing prices increased by the same percentage. So a town with a 1 percent increase in population due to immigrants would also see a 1 percent increase in housing prices. Immigration has helped create some of the nation's tightest real estate markets, said Saiz. 'You cannot explain prices in New York City without immigration,' he said. However, despite this trend, price gains often lag in neighborhoods dominated by immigrants compared to non-immigrant neighborhoods nearby, said Saiz. He found that in neighborhoods in which 30 percent of the residents were immigrants, home prices tended to be 6 percent lower than in non-immigrant neighborhoods."

Sinai, Gyourko sound off on the state of CMBS

Todd Sinai (pictured at right, top) was consulted for the July 23 Knowledge@Wharton article, Collateralized Damage: Commercial Mortgage Securities Are at a Standstill. Concerning the market for CMBS, "a younger cousin in the structured finance family," Sinai said, "It's pretty much gone… The liquidity crunch is across the board." The article continued, "Sinai believes there is little interest in the CMBS packages because they include both very secure and very risky bonds at a time when the market for the riskier elements is practically non-existent. Like their residential mortgage cousins, the CMBS are packaged in tranches, or layers, to offer protection for some buyers and higher yields for others. Without a market for the high-risk, high-yield layers, the overall package can't sell. What's more, Sinai says, for those deals sold so far this year, prices have been based on very few transactions, further distorting the market that had been steadily growing and stabilizing during the past decade. Due to the inactivity, 'You don't even really know where the market is,' Sinai adds. 'All of the CMBS issued this year [were underwritten] in 2007, and only got unloaded this year.'"

In the same article, Joe Gyourko (pictured at right, bottom) noted the CMBS market "took a huge hit around the same time as the credit crunch last August. . . Some of it was contagion from subprime. . . . The blowup in the housing market affected the commercial market, mostly for not very good reasons. Most commercial loans on shopping centers, office buildings and the like had nothing to do with the residential side. Some contamination was not justified, [and the result was] a dramatic widening in spreads. I think, though, there is one good, fundamentally-based reason why CMBS went down . . . In 2006 and 2007 in particular, the underwriting deteriorated. Loan-to-value ratios went up, and debt service ratios went down. People decided that there was too much commercial [MBS] out there." The CMBS market will be fine, eventually, says Gyourko. "Deals that are soundly underwritten, with reasonable assumptions on rents and values, will come back, he says. 'We need a securitized market.'"

Nakahara is recognized for teaching excellence

Asuka Nakahara, Lecturer in Real Estate, give the Convocation Address to all of the incoming first year MBA students recently. The faculty address is given by the Anvil Award winner by the Class of 1984 Award winner, notes Nakahara. "Both of these awards are for teaching excellence," he says. "I have been fortunate enough to have given the address to the Class of 2008 two years ago."

Georgette Phillips lectures in Argentina

Georgette C. Phillips, David B. Ford Professor of Real Estate and Vice Dean and Director of the Undergraduate Division, was invited to Argentina to speak at two different conferences. She was the featured speaker the Universidad de Mar del Plata and gave an open lecture at the University of Buenos Aires.

Wachter examines the subprime crisis and fallout

Susan M. Wachter has been in the news frequently in the last few months with widely covered stories concerning the subprime crisis, the Fannie and Freddie Mac bailouts, foreclosures, and the economy in general. She has been quoted and cited in The New York Times and in many other outlets including the Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Washington Post, USA Today, and Philadelphia Inquirer on the subprime crisis. She has been a guest on NPR (On Point, All Things Considered), ABC News, Nightly Business Report PBS 39 and the BBC. The text version of her interview concerning "America's House Price Time Bomb" on the BBC was the most emailed article for the day on July 29, 2008. Dr. Wachter has also delivered addresses on this topic to the Federal Trade Commission and the National Governors Association, and to a roundtable convened by the Ford Foundation.

Student Real Estate Clubs elect officers for the new academic year

The four real estate clubs have elected their officers for the coming academic year. Listed below are the names and emails of the presidents of each club, who will work closely with the Zell/Lurie Real Estate Center on projects that bring professionals and students together, such as the Ballard Executive Visitor Lunches, the eighth annual Career Fair (coming up on Friday, January 23), annual meetings, and the Career Mentor Program.

• Matt Doelger
• Sara Nasuti

• Ben Molever
• Scott Ziegler

• Sharifa Anderson
• Kendal Lucas

• Genevieve Cadwalader
• Lee Striar

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