Dr. Tobias Just
Deutsche Bank/AICGS Fellow

Dr. Tobias Just is senior economist at Deutsche Bank Research. He focuses on the analysis of global real estate markets, with an emphasis on studying the German property markets and the impacts of regulatory changes on investment opportunities in German real estate vehicles. Besides focusing on this issue, he also develops econometric risk-tools for quantifying global sector-related risks. Occasionally, Dr. Just covers additional topics like global migration and demographic trends or technological convergence.

After his apprenticeship at the mail-order group Otto-Versand, Dr. Just studied economics at the University of Hamburg and the University of Uppsala/Sweden. Having fallen in love with economics, he decided to stay in this field a bit longer and work as researcher at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Hamburg. His main research topics were environmental, political, and constitutional economics. While working at the university, Dr. Just lectured on international economics at the Europa-Kolleg Hamburg and finished his Ph.D. thesis on the scope of national governments in enforcing ideologically-motivated economic policies in a global economy (Globalisierung und Ideologie). This thesis was awarded the university science prize in 2001.

Since then Dr. Just has been working at Deutsche Bank Research, Deutsche Bank's think-tank for economic, financial, and societal trends. He has been playing an active role in the IFD (Initiative Finanzstandort Deutschland) working group on introducing Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) in Germany. He regularly lectures on real estate economics at the ebs Immobilienakademie and the Technical University in Berlin. In 2005 he was elected by major real estate journalists as one of the 44 "leading heads" in German real estate.

Dr. Just's Project Outline

Real Estate Investment Trusts are a liquid, tax transparent indirect investment vehicle into the property market. They combine the advantages of the transparent and liquid stock market with the relatively stable real estate markets. In the U.S., REITs have existed for more than 40 years and REIT-like structures have been introduced in roughly twenty countries since then (e.g. Japan, France, Netherlands, and Australia). It seems that REITs are developing into a global standard for investing indirectly into real estate.

Although real estate stocks and tax transparent real estate vehicles exist in Germany, a REIT-like investment vehicle is still missing. With more and more countries copying the U.S.-REIT structure (UK wants to start REITs in 2007, even India is ready to implement them in the near future), Germany is at risk of introducing REITs too late in the game. Therefore, the IFD, a working group of private and public banks and the finance ministry, has started to analyze the potential benefits and risks of REITs in Germany. Today, both real estate and finance industry, the minister of finance, and one half of the grand coalition all strongly support REITs. However, as the second half of the current coalition is not yet convinced, the G-REIT legislation is still on hold.

Having worked on the potential economic effects of G-REITs, Dr. Just will go one step further and assume a workable G-REIT regime by 2007. The important questions he will answer are: what should an efficient REIT look like? Should it be big and diversified or small and specialized? Which are the best fit property types for a REIT -- or does it matter at all? Do REITs offer a risk premium and in case they do, are they stable? As there is extensive academic literature on the U.S.-REIT system for most of these questions, and as not many people in Germany seem to be aware of this literature, Dr. Just will try to summarize the key findings of these papers in order to derive lessons for future German investors and real estate professionals.

To contact Dr. Just while he is at AICGS, please click here.