About.

The Trust is regulated by the UK's Charity Commission and Companies House.

Our Goal

The Trust aims to raise its global profile through cutting edge knowledge support for property professionals, end users, private, public and third sectors and the academic community for the public benefit. The Trustees look to provide a role model as a grant awarding entity in the disciplines of land, real estate, and construction. As a charity, the Property Research Trust supports, delivers, and disseminates high quality, independent reliable knowledge, and future thinking through funding rigorous, robust research.

Our Ambitions

• To be a role model as a grant awarding entity and a leader in excellence for research delivery.
• To have long-term balance, planning and focus where appropriate.
• To have high global engagement with the research community and their wider stakeholders.
• To have a proactive approach to applications.
• To look for proposals that address real knowledge gaps.

The Trustees

Chair/ Trustee
Sarah Sayce

Sarah is a Chartered Surveyor and Professor in Sustainable Real Estate at the University of Reading. She is also Emeritus Professor at Kingston University.
Sarah’s research currently focuses on sustainability and valuation, but her research interests also cover planning and professional education matters. In addition to authoring journals and books, she has held grants from industry and government bodies and worked on EU funded sustainability projects. She is an advisor to the Property Working Group of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Finance Initiative and she actively engages with having previously served on their Governing Council.

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Trustee
Rob Harris

Rob has over 30 years’ experience specialising in real estate research and consulting. He works with property investors, developers, advisors and policy makers; and he advises corporate occupiers directly, preparing corporate workplace strategies. Rob established Ramidus Consulting Limited in 2003 as a specialist, independent built environment research and advisory business. Much of Rob’s work involves providing insights into property market dynamics, socio-economic trends, investment opportunities and the changing needs of occupiers. He seeks to understand the implications of social, economic and technological change for the design, provision and management of real estate. His interests and knowledge range from the workplace to the city-region, all driven by the common theme of demand-led research. Rob writes and presents widely, and has published many industry reports.​

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Trustee
David Proverbs

David is a Professor of Construction Management, and Dean of the Faculty of Science and Engineering, at the University of Wolverhampton.  David has 25yrs experience in higher education, has held strategic leadership roles at three UK universities and was Chair of the Council of Heads of Built Environment (CHOBE) between 2012-2016. His research has pioneered the development of flood recovery approaches to the benefit of many Governments, Agencies, Charities, Companies and Institutions world-wide.

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Trustee
Alan Dalgleish

lan is the founder of Hong Kong based Asian Property Intelligence and was previously Chief Executive of ANREV, a not-for-profit association for investors in unlisted real estate covering the Asia Pacific region, which counted as its members some of the largest real estate investors and managers in the world.  Prior to this he ran the consulting business in Asia for CBRE, based in Singapore.  Alan has 35 years of experience in real estate markets in the Asia Pacific region and an extensive senior-level business network.  The common thread in Alan's real estate career is capital markets research and consulting.  Alan is a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and holds the FT Non-executive Director diploma.

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Trustee
Richard Holt

Richard is Head of Global Cities Research for Oxford Economics, where he provides advice to clients in the real estate and government sectors on the factors shaping economic prospects for cities around the world, and the implication for their strategies. He was for several years a non-executive director of creative industries specialists BOP Consulting, as well as a Visiting Research Fellow for the UK Commission on Employment and Skills and is currently a non-executive director of Without Walls, that supports outdoor arts festivals across England. He has published books on America’s role in the world economy and on Britain’s Chancellors of the Exchequer, and in 2020 he was the joint winner of the Society of Professional Economists’ prestigious Rybczynski Prize for the previous year’s best piece of writing on economics: How Robots Change the World: their impact on regional inequalities.

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Trustee
Sara Wilkinson

Sara is a chartered building surveyor and Australia’s first female Professor of Property. Sara has developed and led property programs in the UK, Sheffield Hallam Uni and Australia at UTS. As an active member of RICS and API, she contributes to accreditation of courses nationally and internationally. Her transdisciplinary research program sits at the intersection of sustainability, urban development and transformation, with a focus on green cities and preparing our urban environments for the challenges of climate change. She is interested in using new technologies to deliver sustainable building outcomes.
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Trustee
Patrice Derrington

Patrice is currently the Marc Holliday Professor and Director of the Real Estate Development program at Columbia University in New York City.  In her industry experience on Wall Street, she worked as a property investment banker, advisor, and fund manager for major individual and institutional clients. She is a registered architect and has led numerous urban development projects. Her academic credentials include teaching awards, notable contributions to research, and the recently published Built Up: An Historical Perspective on the Contemporary Principles and Practices of Real Estate Development.  

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Trustee
Mark Johnston

Mark is an Associate Solicitor at Maples Teasdale, a Specialist Commercial Real Estate law firm.  Mark advises a wide range of clients in the Commercial Real Estate Market, including institutional investors, private equity funds and property companies.  Mark is involved with a broad spectrum of transactional work, with a focus on Retail, Logistics and Strategic Land.  He has a particular interest in how the renewed focus on sustainability by landlords and occupiers will influence the property industry and how the repurposing of commercial property will evolve in the coming years.

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Trustee
Edward Yiu

Edward is a Chartered Surveyor and an Associate Professor at the University of Auckland Business School, New Zealand. Edward is currently the chairperson of the Research Development Taskforce of the Faculty Research Committee at the School. His research interest focuses on property economics, urban studies and housing policy.   
Before joining the School, he was the elected candidate representing the Architectural, Surveying, Planning and Landscape Functional Constituency in the Hong Kong Legislative Council, the chairperson of the Asian Institute of Intelligent Buildings as well as one of the Associate Directors of the Institute of Future Cities in the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

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How we are regulated

The Charity Commission

We are a charity registered in the UK and regulated by the Charity Commission.
Our Charity Commission Registered number is 1085587.​ Companies House registered number: 4044051.
Until January 2021, the Property Research Trust was known as the RICS Research Trust.