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President's Letter | Summer 2026Dear AREUEA members, I hope this summer is treating you well. As my year as your President has passed its midpoint, I want to share what we have accomplished together since January and where we are heading. In January, we framed our agenda for the year – a set of priorities for strengthening the Association across six areas: our flagship conferences, our journal, our global presence, our junior scholar ecosystem, our research infrastructure, and our member engagement. I am happy to report real progress on every one of them. Our Conferences in the U.S. Our National Conference 2026 returned to Washington, D.C. from May 27–29, this time at The Watergate Hotel, and it was a genuine highlight of the year. We welcomed 271 participants for three days of outstanding research and lively discussion across 26 paper sessions, four panels, two keynote luncheons, and one Women in Real Estate Network breakfast. Enormous thanks go to Lu Han, our First Vice President and Conference Chair, and to her Program Committee for assembling such a strong and wide-ranging program. A few things stood out:
Conference program, photos and videos are available here on our website – please take a look, and you may well find yourself in them. Looking ahead, our 2027 AREUEA-ASSA meeting will be in Washington, D.C. on January 3–5, 2027, organized by our Second Vice President, Jacob Sagi. I also want to share some good news on that front: after a formal petition to the ASSA, we have secured an additional session for 2027, bringing us to 23. Our Journal Real Estate Economicscontinues to thrive under Managing Editor Eva Steiner, who completed her first full year at the helm. REE's impact factor has increased from 2.0 to 2.5 over the past year, according to the latest Clarivate analysis reported on the REE website, and the journal ranking in the business/finance and economics categories has increased by several places. The editors were pleased to announce the appointment of an outstanding 2026–2029 Editorial Board, which can be seen here. We have also made strides in getting our authors' work in front of readers. New article alerts now go out through AREUEA's official LinkedIn account, giving each accepted paper visibility with a professional audience well beyond our membership. And the REE Podcast, launched last year, has built a genuine following – each episode offers a short, accessible summary of recently published work. Together these efforts have expanded the journal's reach considerably, and I would encourage you to follow both. On the governance side, the Publications Committee, chaired by Jacob Sagi, and the REE Editorial Team have been working to make our editorial processes more transparent and more responsive. At the May Board meeting we discussed and approved a new trial policy on solicited papers. Please keep sending your best work to REE – the journal is only as strong as what we collectively choose to submit to it. Our Global Presence We are just back from our International Conference in Medellín, Colombia, hosted last month by Universidad EAFIT from July 23–25. We received over 150 submissions – a wonderful signal of interest – and the conference featured 80 papers across 26 sessions and three panels. My sincere thanks to our EAFIT hosts and to Jorge De la Roca and the International Committee for their work. For many of us, myself included, this was a first visit to Medellín, and it was a wonderful experience: a lovely city, a beautiful campus, and warm people everywhere we went. The visits to Parque Arví and Comuna 13 were particular highlights, and I am sure that many of us will return. You can find a recap of the conference here. This was our first International Conference in Latin America, and I hope it will not be long before we return. Broadening AREUEA's global footprint has been one of the Board's priorities, and the pipeline ahead reflects that: in 2027 we will meet in Seoul in a joint conference with the Asian Real Estate Society, and in 2028 we head to Europe. On the 2028 Europe conference, the call for proposals is now open, with a deadline of November 1, 2026. If your institution might be interested in hosting, please reach out to Tingyu Zhou, Chair of our International Committee. These conferences are enormously rewarding to host, and I would encourage you to consider it. Our Junior Scholar Ecosystem Investing in the next generation of researchers remains, to my mind, among the most valuable things AREUEA does. Our Junior Scholar Program paired mentors and 12 mentees this year, and the three dedicated JSP sessions in Washington were among the liveliest on the program. The Pipeline Scholars Program brought 14 undergraduate and early-graduate students to the conference for a dedicated program of mentoring and career conversation. Thanks to Kyle Mangum, who chairs our Mentoring Committee, and to Shawn McCoy, who leads the Pipeline Scholars Program, along with all the mentors who gave their time. We are also working to knit these efforts together more coherently. Kyle Mangum, Jeff Lin and Tess Scharlemann have been asked to develop a proposal to better align our Junior Scholar Best Paper Award with the junior scholar paper sessions and review process, so that the pathway from mentoring to presentation to recognition is a clearer one. WREN, under Stanimira Milcheva's leadership, continues to expand its programming. The Board approved a new WREN Spotlight Webinar Series, to be coordinated with our virtual seminar infrastructure. Watch for announcements this fall. Our Research Infrastructure Data access is, increasingly, a binding constraint on the research many of us want to do. Our Data Availability Committee, chaired by Arther Acolin, has launched AREUEA Data Insight. The Data Panel in Washington made clear how widely this constraint is felt across our membership, and that conversation has already prompted concrete follow-up. We will have more to share on new efforts in this area before long. Separately, our Professional Conduct and Inclusion Officer, Tess Scharlemann, has proposed an ad hoc working group on AI and its implications for our profession and our practices. This feels very timely, and I expect we will have more to report soon. Our Members Our membership and sponsorship base continues to strengthen. I am pleased to welcome Arnold Ventures as a Partner sponsor, joining Data-Axle. Thanks to Steve Billings and the Membership Committee for their work in building these relationships. Our finances remain sound, with assets tracking modestly ahead of budget at mid-year. Two opportunities to get involved: First, we are launching a search for a new Treasurer. Steve Bourassa will step down after the January 2027 ASSA meetings, having served the Association with great care and diligence – we owe him our thanks. If you are interested in the position, or would like to suggest someone, please contact Joe Tracy. Second, and more broadly: nearly everything described in this letter was produced by members volunteering their time. Our committees are always glad of new energy. If there is an area where you would like to contribute, please let me know. A Closing Thought One of the things I have come to appreciate in this role is just how much AREUEA does relative to its size – three major conferences a year, a leading journal, mentoring programs at multiple career stages, a virtual seminar series, policy forums, and the new data initiative. None of it is staffed the way a large organization would staff it. It runs on the willingness of members to take on work that benefits our community. So my thanks go to our officers, our committee chairs and members, our conference organizers and hosts, our editors and referees, our mentors, and to Shelley at Travelink, and Ailey Fang (Wisconsin), AREUEA PhD student helper, who keep the machinery running behind the scenes. And thanks to all of you for the papers, the discussion, and the community that makes this Association worth belonging to. Enjoy the rest of your summer. I look forward to seeing many of you in Washington, D.C. in January. Warm regards, Siqi Zheng Previous President LettersPresident's Letter | Winter 2026President's Letter | Summer 2025President's Letter | Winter 2025President's Letter | Summer 2024President's Letter | Winter 2024President's Letter | Summer 2023President's Letter | Winter 2023President's Letter | Summer 2022President's Letter | Winter 2022 |
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