The latest Real Estate Academic Leadership (REAL) rankings for authors and institutions show FSU College of Business faculty member Tingyu Zhou tied for the No. 4 ranking, with colleague Chongyu Wang tied for 10th in the world.

The real estate program in the Florida State University College of Business ranks No. 2 and two of its faculty members rank in the Top 10 in worldwide rankings that measure research productivity in the top three real estate journals.

The latest Real Estate Academic Leadership (REAL) rankings for authors and institutions show FSU’s real estate faculty tied at No. 2 with National University of Singapore. Among authors, FSU’s Tingyu Zhou ties for the No. 4 ranking, while fellow faculty member Chongyu Wang ties for 10th in the world.

FSU’s overall real estate faculty ranking marks a jump of three places from last year. It also reaffirms the preeminent standing of the university’s real estate program, which among public schools ranks No. 6 for its undergraduate program and No. 8 for its MBA specialty in the latest U.S. News & World Report rankings.

“This terrific news underscores the world-class reputation of our real estate faculty and programs and serves as yet another signpost on the path to preeminence of our college,” said Michael Hartline, dean of FSU’s College of Business.

The REAL rankings are based on research productivity from 2019 through Sept. 1, 2023, in The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, The Journal of Real Estate Research and Real Estate Economics. The rankings include 662 articles from 1,037 authors across 528 institutions, according to a Journal of Real Estate Literature article on the rankings.  

The rankings “highlight the people making the greatest contributions to real estate knowledge as measured by publication output” in those journals over the past five years, the article said.

FSU researchers were published 38 times. That tally includes 12 publications by Zhou, the Dean Gatzlaff Associate Professor of Real Estate, and nine works by Wang, an assistant professor. 

Zhou’s research interests include real estate economics and finance, and she serves on the board of directors of the Global Chinese Real Estate Congress and as associate editor of the International Real Estate Review. Wang’s academic publications also have included articles on real estate economics and finance, and his awards include the American Real Estate Society’s 2022 Best REIT Manuscript Prize.

Associate Professor Daniel Broxterman, the Francis Nardozza Fellow in Real Estate and the academic director of the FSU Real Estate Center, credited Zhou and Wang for their “timely analyses of the rapidly changing commercial real estate market in the wake of the COVID 19 pandemic.”

He also noted that the “REAL” rankings mark yet another indicator “that we have an impressive group of real estate scholars at FSU.” 

-- Pete Reinwald