Der deutsche Beitrag zur internationalen immobilienwirtschaftlichen Forschung

Abstract

Der vorliegende Beitrag gibt eine Übersicht über die bisherigen Inhalte immobilienwirtschaftlicher Forschung in Deutschland. Der Beitrag zeigt sowohl die Schwerpunkte als auch die weißen Flecken dieser Forschung im Inland und im internationalen Vergleich auf. Mit Hilfe des Konzepts der Familienähnlichkeiten und Kommensurabilität von Verhaltensannahmen gleichartiger Akteure wurden Cluster immobilienwirtschaftlicher Forschung gebildet. In einer empirischen Studie wurden 14.124 Forschungsbeiträge internationaler Konferenzen der IRES und AREUEA katalogisiert und den Forschungsclustern zugeordnet, deren deutscher Anteil im Fokus dieses Beitrags steht. Es zeigt sich, dass immobilienwirtschaftliche Forschung vor allem aus der Investorenperspektive betrieben wurde, wohingegen Themen aus Sicht der Immobiliennutzung und der Immobilienproduktion/-dienstleistungen weit weniger häufig Gegenstand der deutschen Forschung waren. Die Verteilung der Konferenzbeiträge auf die Cluster immobilienwirtschaftlicher Forschung in Deutschland ist eng korreliert mit der weltweiten Verteilung. Die Bewertung der praktischen Relevanz oder der konzeptionellen Qualität der Beiträge kann und soll durch die Untersuchung nicht vorgenommen werden. Jedoch können anhand der Ergebnisse individuelle Forschungsagenden validiert und gezielt z. B. in Richtung Mainstream oder Nische weiterentwickelt werden. Der Beitrag liefert somit einen innovativen Vorschlag zur Clusterung immobilienwirtschaftlicher Forschung und stellt zum ersten Mal ein umfassendes empirisches Bild über deren inhaltliche Ausrichtung in Deutschland im weltweiten Vergleich dar.This article seeks to identify the past activity and interest factors that drove German real estate research, as well as the correlation of these factors with international research activities. The aim is to provide a present view of Germany’s strong and weak areas of real estate research compared to the international situation.The findings of this paper are critical in providing a knowledge base of the status quo in real estate research. This overview can be used as a map for researchers to identify their positions in the community of real estate research and in consequence to focus on future research activities. Given that real estate research has expanded into a world-wide network, it is necessary to consider the international links of these findings. In this article, the analysis focuses on identifying the key areas as well as white spots of future research fields, but will not evaluate the respective research activities.Design: Data was taken from international real estate conferences as these bodies had the most diversified and relevant data both in term of quality and quantity. To ensure relevance to the study, the papers had to meet three criteria. They had to: address real estate or a real estate related services; analyze and discuss issues of economics, business economics or management; and apply a scientific approach in their study. In order to analyze the massive amount of data in the form of articles, cluster characteristics were identified and assigned to the data. For this, a “3-perspectives model” of real estate actors and activities was used. This model explains the goals, functions and claims of real estate for the user, producer, and investor. Research fields were defined through using this model, and within the perspectives differentiated by real estate type and activities.All data for the study was taken from conference papers of ARES, AREUEA, AsRES, ERES, LARES, MENARES and PRRES conferences between 1993 and 2012. This provided a total of 14.124 samples from 136 conferences held. The final analysis was then conducted with the grounded theory approach.Findings: Lead authors with German origins contributed to 3.8 %, or 533 papers in total. These were primarily found in ERES, ARES, and PRRES conferences. Overall, German participation in international research regarding real estate ranks fifth, after the United States, Australia, China, and UK. In the last two decades, the German share has risen from around 1 % in 1993 to more than 5 % in 2012. A similar growth rate was found in ERES conferences, where the German share grew from 5 % to nearly 15 %.In German papers, overall, the focus on the investor perspective was twice as big as that of the production or user perspective. Interestingly, this distribution shows a high correlation with international participation.In the more detailed and diverse subcategories, the priorities between German and international research were found to be much more heterogeneous. While the international focus was more on market cycles, housing-related topics, urban development, or brokerage, German research tended to focus on education, corporate real estate management, and property development. The 0.66-quantiles show that German real estate research has a higher subcategory density compared to international research: Two thirds of German research is covered by 26 different subcategories whereas the same is covered by 34 subcategories on an international level. A moderate statistical dependence of German research on international trends was found.It is worth noting that the topics of German research – compared to global activities – are in less-developed fields such as portfolio management, education, securities, investment, and IPO-related topics. Analysis from this study also shows that German research topics to a high degree affect topics that are internationally ranked top 10. According to the impact factor found, German research is especially important for topics like education, REITs, valuation, retail/office/logistics real estate markets, and investment topics. Additionally, an analysis of German research institutions show that universities are driving real estate research, with more than 70 % of all research done at universities.The findings of the study show that German real estate research –quantitatively analyzed – is well aligned with international priorities, and accordingly impacts and contributes to the body of knowledge. As to whether the outcome and subsequent research strategies are significantly relevant on a qualitative level will have to be further examined in future studies.