Frankfurt School and SAFE Host First Annual Workshop in Real Estate Finance

On 24 and 25 August 2026, the Real Estate Institute at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management hosted the inaugural Annual Workshop in Real Estate Finance. Under the theme “Housing Market Frictions and Access to Homeownership”, the two-day event brought together researchers from universities and institutions around the world. The workshop was organised by Professor Cristian Badarinza, Associate Professor of Real Estate Finance at Frankfurt School, and Dr. Claes Bäckman, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Leibniz Institute for Financial Research (SAFE), with the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action Grant  “Young Homeownership” of the European Union. 

The workshop focused on the factors that shape access to homeownership and how different market conditions affect house prices, housing supply and mobility. Discussions covered financial constraints, market liquidity, transaction costs, regulation and imperfect information, among other topics. 

“We are delighted to bring together researchers from different countries and institutions at Frankfurt School for the first Annual Workshop in Real Estate Finance. The opportunity to discuss and support the development of new theoretical and empirical frameworks that quantify housing market frictions is particularly valuable in this rapidly changing and highly uncertain global environment,” says Badarinza. The two-day programme presented current research on housing affordability, housing supply and regulation, real estate intermediaries and urban development. Further contributions examined the impact of natural disasters and property insurance on housing markets, as well as the interaction between housing markets and monetary policy. 

Researchers from a range of international universities and institutions participated in the workshop, including UC Berkeley, Columbia University, Northwestern University, University of Toronto, Peking University, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Italy and the Bank of Canada. 

The workshop featured keynote addresses by Andreas Fuster of the Swiss Finance Institute at EPFL and CEPR, and Timothy McQuade of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley and NBER.