George Mason University is opening a center to train and educate real estate professionals, with the hope of soon awarding master’s degrees in the field.
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The Center for Real Estate Entrepreneurship, announced Thursday, may seem like a counterintuitive venture, considering the sputtering residential real estate market.
Executive Director Greg Hero disagrees.
“Now is probably the best time,” he said. “To our mind, residential [markets] may indeed be suffering, but it’s precisely at that point where you want to take people who focus on one aspect of the industry and sort of lead them and educate and guide them … to another part of the industry.”
The program, which will start in the spring, initially will offer certificates and concentrations for other graduate degrees but may expand soon. Hero plans to present a case for creating a master’s program to the George Mason Board of Visitors, and then to the State Council of Higher Education.
To create the center, Mason will combine resources from the School of Management, School of Public Policy and the Volgenau School of Information Technology. The center initially won’t have a permanent, centralized location, Hero said.
He said the program, which was proposed by the real estate industry, would fill an educational gap in Northern Virginia.
“There are not a whole lot of educational opportunities in the broader real estate industries,” he said. “If you look nationwide, there are literally only a handful of schools who are renowned for real estate studies.”
