Foundation Chair at the REMI

Partnership with the Real Estate Management Institute (REMI) at the EBS Business School

In 2006, Aareal Bank AG endowed a professorship for the  Real Estate Management Institute (REMI) of the EBS Business School. The long-standing and established cooperation between academe and practice in the property industry has been extended for a further three years in 2010. Aaral Bank is thus showing an unmistakable commitment to Wiesbaden as a centre of higher education and research.

In June 2010, EBS was granted the status of the first purely business university in Germanyi. The cooperation between university and corporation offers a wide variety of opportunities for collaboration. The close network of business contacts provides EBS students an optimum mix of theory and practice. This intensive exchange is what makes EBS so unique. Additionally, this partnership facilitates research activities with a practical application, the identification of relevant issues and access to the requisite sources of information.

Rationale for Cooperating with REMI

Dr. Wolf Schumacher, chairman of the Management Board of Aareal Bank AG, on the reasons for the cooperation:

"There are two partners here who match very well because each aspires to innovate in its respective area, and each has an international orientation. In our view REMI is a valuable interface to the academic insights of real estate research. We as a bank and the sector as a whole profit from that." 

For Aareal Bank, cooperation with EBS-REMI is an integral part of training and continuing education at tertiary level. The partnership enables REMI to conduct research activities with a practical application, to identify relevant issues and to access the requisite sources of information. Hence numerous academic publications and research papers have been generated by the Aareal-endowed chair.

Prof. Dr. Nico Rottke, head of the institute, emphasises:

"Education lives off innovation and we achieve this from research.

It is REMI's task to offer state-of-the-art training and continuing education in real estate research at the highest level and to foster that research at the same time".

Aareal Award of Excellence

One of the key platforms in the joint partnership is the Aareal Award of Excellence in Real Estate Research. Since 2008, the Real Estate Management Institute (REMI) of the EBS Business School and Aareal Bank AG have been granting the "Aareal Award of Excellence in Real Estate Research" to academically-outstanding research work in real estate economics, thereby fostering up-and-coming research talent at the national and international levels.

Handbook on Real Estate Capital Markets

This English-language compendium edited by Prof. Dr. Nico Rottke illuminates the most important fields of the real estate capital markets and lucidly explains the connections between real estate and capital markets as well as the products and special features of the real estate capital markets. Practical examples and a comprehensive glossary round off this handbook.

Professional article: Increased expectations in property management research

In a professional article in the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung", Prof Dr Nico Rottke, head of REMI, goes into the details of the new challenges the property management research sector is currently facing and requires: "University lecturers and students have to take the changed market environment into account."

The financial crisis has revealed the problems of property management research in Germany. Loud voices are asking the question whether research has failed in this discipline. As a matter of fact, to date training focuses too strongly on the generalists. In the pioneering years, real estate economics has been a meeting point of numerous individual disciplines. However, the quality standard has reached a higher level. University lecturers and students have to take the changed market environment into account.