Ideas for an interesting real estate thesis topic?

[Stella L.]

Hi everyone,

I am in the final year of my bachelor degree and would like to choose a real estate topic for my final thesis. I was wondering if anyone had ideas of research questions that would be helpful/relevant for people currently working in this field.

I will be finished writing it after 2-3 months and would be happy to send the final copy to anyone interested :)

Thank you in advance!

Stella

[Ned Carey]

@Stella L. Well there is a lot of talk about a crash coming in real estate. A discussion of what causes, what are signals of, what metrics to look for, etc regarding a housing crash could be interesting.

There are a lot of directions you could take this. The effect of interest rates in absolute or real as adjusted for inflation, rents relative to cost to own, or is there a correlation between rental downturns and price downturns. 

How about is there a single metric that could be a predictor, or does it take at least two metrics to predict a crash. Does it take 3,4 or more factors to predict a crash. 

Similar but slightly different is in past downturns was there one primary cause or multiple causes. your research may shoe there is typically one cause of a crash but it is a different cause every time so it is not predictive. 

You could go a totally different direction. How many people who call themselves investors ever get to doing a deal? How many deals does the average investor do? How long before a new landlord gets burnt out and sells his properties?