Ole Miss Real Estate Initiative

Our Purpose

Real estate is perhaps the most complex good in society. It is intertwined culturally and economically in the very fabric of our lives.

Real estate is a necessary good – we all need shelter. Real estate is a consumption good – we all like “nice homes” in which to live. Real estate is an investment good – we all hope to participate in ownership and gain in wealth through that ownership.

Given its complex nature, it may come as a surprise that few open-source information outlets exist. Almost all that we know (or think we know) about real estate comes from societal antidotes or third parties that have vested interests in our real estate decisions. Some good information concerning real estate decision making can be founded in the academic literature; however, these articles are typically cryptic, untimely, and difficult to access.

All that said, we seem to be constantly in a national debate over all things real estate – property price, rents, buy versus rent, affordable housing, development pace, lending (residential and commercial income producing), occupancy, societal outcomes, wealth creation and management, legal issues, securitization, etc.

Thus, we have a huge demand for real estate knowledge with only a limited supply of readily available credible information. The Ole Miss Real Estate Initiative (OMREI) seeks to fill, to the extent possible, this information void, while simultaneously educating the best real estate students in the country.

OMREI has the dual mandates of:

• Recruiting, retaining, and placing the best young real estate talent in the industry
• Producing timely information to enable more informed real estate decision making across all market participants (buyers, sellers, landlords, tenants, lenders, developers, brokers, appraisers, and policy makers, among others).

OMREI’s initial contribution is through the Waller, Weeks, and Johnson Rental Index. Other open-source indices, position pieces, and data are soon to follow.

Great oaks come from small acorns.