About
The Center for Real Estate and Finance, established in 2009, is the foremost clearinghouse for hospitality real estate and finance information. Defined by its intellectual capital, industry experience, and rigorous academics, the center is respected as a leader of real estate and finance. Built on a tradition of quality research in the hospitality industry and a growing real estate and finance faculty, the center is at the forefront of research in all areas of commercial real estate—from studying the behavior of real estate assets in investment portfolios to understanding real estate capital markets and science of hedging real estate risk.
The mission of The Cornell Center for Real Estate and Finance (“CREF”) is to accomplish three primary goals: First, CREF will act as the nexus between the practical real estate industry and the broad Cornell University community (faculty, students, and alumni). In this context, CREF will leverage the engagement of practicing real estate professionals to enhance the educational experience of Cornell’s graduate and undergraduate students studying real estate and to inform our Real Estate Faculty regarding industry trends to better prepare them as they design and teach courses. Second, CREF will be the leading purveyor of thought leadership on the topics of real estate and finance and to disseminate that thought leadership to the academic and practitioner real estate community. Finally, CREF will advance the reputation of Cornell University, the SC Johnson College of Business, and the Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration as an educational and thought-leadership force within the real estate community both domestically and internationally.