–By Cynthia Corzo for FIU News
FIU Business has been ranked No. 1 globally for real estate research productivity by the Journal of Real Estate Literature. It is the first time that FIU Business has been ranked first in the world, tying with the well-known National University of Singapore, and the fifth consecutive year it has occupied one of the top two spots in the United States.
“This puts FIU Business on center stage with National University of Singapore, which is consistently ranked in the Top 20 and is the best in Asia-Pacific region,” said FIU Business Dean Joanne Li. “We are honored and humbled to be recognized with NUS.”
The 2020 Real Estate Academic Leadership (REAL) rankings highlight faculty and institutions demonstrating achievement in intellectual contributions to the field of real estate research from 2016 to 2020.
“These No.1 rankings demonstrate the significance of the cutting-edge research — relevant to academics as well as real estate practitioners — conducted by our Hollo School of Real Estate faculty,” said FIU President Mark Rosenberg.
Institutions and professors are ranked based on the number of publications in the top three peer-reviewed real estate journals – the Journal of Real Estate Economics, the Journal of Real Estate Research and the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics. During that period, FIU’s real estate faculty had 41 contributions.
“There is no doubt that top research schools from all over the world now view FIU Business very differently from the way they viewed us just a decade ago,” said Eli Beracha, director of the Hollo School of Real Estate. “We are playing in the major leagues and we are winning.”
Three Hollo School professors were ranked in the Top 5 globally of the REAL Author Rankings.
Eli Beracha 
William Hardin 
Zhenguo Lin
William Hardin III, associate dean of FIU’s Chapman Graduate School and former director of the Hollo School, who published 12 articles in the academic journals, was ranked No. 2. Professors Zhenguo Lin and Beracha, with 10 articles each, were tied at No. 3. In addition to the Master of Science in International Real Estate, offered in both traditional and online forums, the Hollo School at FIU Business offers an undergraduate degree program in real estate and houses the Jerome Bain Real Estate Institute, created in 1998 in partnership with the Miami Association of Realtors.
“Over the last few years, the graduate real estate program increasingly received more applications from top-notch, quality individuals,” said Beracha. “Students realize that at the Hollo School of Real Estate, they can learn from and interact with globally-recognized faculty, and they increasingly choose FIU over the competition.”