Robert M. White, Jr. named 2021 recipient of the PREA Graaskamp Research Award
The MIT Center for Real Estate is pleased to announce that Industry Partner Robert M. White, Jr. was recently presented the Pension Real Estate Association (PREA) Graaskamp Research Award at PREA’s 31st Annual Institutional Investor Conference in Chicago. The PREA Graaskamp Award is presented biennially by PREA and is named in honor of James A. Graaskamp, whose research and teaching sought to bridge the gap between academia and the marketplace. Voted on by the PREA membership, the Award recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to research on the real estate asset class.
Robert White, this year’s recipient, is the founder and president of Real Capital Analytics (RCA), a data and analytics company focused on the capital markets for commercial real estate. RCA has been a leader in fostering market transparency and pioneering research to better quantify property prices, liquidity, and capital flows. Mr. White founded RCA in 2000 with a goal to bridge the information gap between commercial real estate and other asset classes. It was the first firm to comprehensively track commercial property transactions on a national basis and today tracks the commercial property investment markets globally. Mr. White oversees the firm’s R&D initiatives and was a principal architect on the team responsible for the industry’s first transaction-based commercial property price index which has evolved into a suite of over 350 indices globally.
Mr. White is passionate about promoting real estate research and academics. He is a frequent lecturer at university programs and a supporter of numerous real estate programs. He has actively supported numerous academic researchers by providing data and mentorship, resulting in scores of published papers using RCA data that have made a meaningful contribution to our knowledge of the asset class. Mr. White himself has credits as an author on several highly-cited research papers.
Mr. White has served on the board of directors for PREA, is currently a member of its Research Committee, and serves on the advisory board for the Real Estate Research Institute. He is a Counselor of Real Estate, a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, and a Fellow of the Homer Hoyt Institute. Please click here for more information on his important contributions to the industry.
