Editorial—ZfB Special Issue “Real Estate Finance”

Real estate research has a much longer tradition in Anglo-Saxon countries than in Germany. From a (German) research perspective, real estate with its core subfield real estate finance was rather a research niche in the past. However, its relevance is likely to rise in the future. This might not only be due to the subprime crisis. With real estate locking up a large share of capital of non-property companies, managing real estate has become a major issue for the last two decades. Apart from that, real estate represents an important asset class from an investment perspective. Therefore, this special issue of the Zeitschrift für Betriebswirtschaft intends to take a closer look at the status quo of German real estate research activities by presenting four articles with three of them focusing on special problems in the field of real estate finance. In order to get a broader insight into the whole research field as well, this special issue starts with an international overview of real estate and real estate finance as a discipline.