PREA James A. Graaskamp Award - 2021 Recipient

PREA's biennial James A. Graaskamp award was presented to Robert M. White, Jr. at PREA's 31st Annual Institutional Investor Conference on October 26th in Chicago.

Robert M. White, Jr. is the founder and president of Real Capital Analytics (RCA), a data and analytics company focused on the capital markets for commercial real estate. Headquartered in New York City with offices in London, Stockholm, Singapore, Sydney and Silicon Valley, the firm has widely been credited as 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 wide 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 publish volume and pricing trends on a monthly basis. Among its innovations, RCA developed a methodology to track the origin of capital for commercial property and analyze the significant influence of foreign and domestic capital flows on property prices. In 2007, Mr. White commenced a global expansion and today RCA remains the only firm comprehensively tracking the commercial property investment markets on a global basis.

Mr. White is a frequent speaker at industry events and has authored numerous articles for industry publications in addition to directing the editorial content of the firm's own Capital Trends publications. He also 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. In addition to RCA's own R&D initiatives, Mr. White has actively supported numerous academics with their own research projects by providing data and mentorship. This legacy has resulted in scores of published papers using RCA data that has made a meaningful contribution to academic literature. Mr. White has credits as an author in several highly cited published research:

"Using Revisions as a Measure of Price Index Quality in Repeat-Sales Models", Marc Francke, David Geltner, Alex Van de Minne, Robert White, Journal of Real Estate Finance & Economics, January 12, 2019.

"A Cross Sectional Analysis of Cap Rates by MSA", Doina Chichernea, Jeffrey Fisher, Norm Miller, Mike Sklarz and Robert White, Journal of Real Estate Research, Vol. 30, No. 3 2008.

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. In 2017, he established the Platform for Commercial Property Price Dynamics at MIT's Center for Real Estate and in 2019 he endowed a professorship in real estate finance at the University of Virginia's McIntire School of Commerce.

Mr. White has served on the board of directors for the Pension Real Estate Association and is currently on 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. In recognition of his outstanding professionalism and commitment to service in the real estate industry, Mr. White was presented with the James D. Landauer/John R. White Award by the Counselors of Real Estate in 2014. In 2013, Mr. White received the ICSC Award for Outstanding Service to the Research Community and in 2018, accepted the Innovator Award from University of Wisconsin's Graaskamp Center for Real Estate.

Before founding RCA, Mr. White spent 14 years in the real estate investment banking and brokerage industry at Eastdil Realty and Granite Partners. He is a graduate of the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia.