An authority on the economic productivity and strategic importance of the places in which we live and work, Stephen Roulac’s work bridges construction sites and high finance, the academy and the board room, intellectual innovation and entrepreneurism. His background include the highest academic credentials, innovative award-winning research, and teaching at leading universities, plus service as an investment manager, real estate expert, and over four decades as trusted primary strategy advisor to major decision-makers in all facets of business, government, real estate, and investing.

Retained by governments and also the savviest, most sophisticated and successful companies, entrepreneurs, and investors throughout the world, he and his team have created billions of dollars of value for his clients, working in 20+ countries, evaluating and investing in more than 100 countries, advising 1,000+ clients, involving in excess of $ trillion real estate interests. Stephen organized, led and had a major impact on developing the real estate consulting practices of two of the four major global accounting firms; Kenneth Leventhal (1983-1984, which subsequently merged with Ernest and Young), and Deloitte & Touche (1987-1991). Dr. Roulac has provided expert witness testimony on valuation, economics, damages and fiduciary investing standards in complex, high-stakes litigation in over 100 cases before public, private, government, legislative and regulatory (NASD, SEC) agencies.

His work is global in scope, and includes all property types, debt and equity positions, securities forms and specialized interests in real property, combining leading strategic management consulting skills with four decades of experience in addressing the implications of trends in the real estate property and capital markets. In 1974 he forecasted the explosive late 1970s growth in specific sectors of real estate market, which insight produced a $2 billion windfall for the Reichman Brothers. Ten years later, in the mid-1980s his insights into the precarious status of the office sector (identified more than five years earlier than other analysts) saved his institutional clients billions of dollars. Strategies Stephen developed for Merrill Lynch created over $1 billion above average market returns. For one of his leading investment clients, California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), Stephen and his team added approximately $2 billion of additional portfolio value and return through the investment strategies, policies, and procedures they designed.

Dr. Roulac’s advisory work, research, teaching and speaking focus on:

His advisory services for significant, complex, high-stakes real estate decisions include:

Enterprise And Investing Strategy: Chart direction, explore options, increase revenues and manage risks, business plans, investment policy, expansion, global markets, valuation, transactions, and systems.
Valuation, Financials Analysis, And Due Diligence: Analytics, models and opinions for high stakes property and financial decisions where sophistication, creativity, experience, expertise, bridging public securities and private interests, multiple perspectives, and/or outstanding credentials are required.
Place Strategy And Corporate Real Estate Services: Advise property users on their critical decisions through linking core business strategy to place strategy to corporate real estate strategy to real estate implementation, including real estate strategy site selection, and surplus property disposition.
Proprietary Research: Covering themes and forces that determine pricing and performance of places, businesses, industries, and property interests throughout the world, available in specialized member research services plus customized special projects.
Professional Speaking And Training: Entertaining, provocative, impactful keynotes, seminars, workshops retreats and training sessions that combine comprehensive strategic overview with specific implementation.
Dr. Roulac and his team work with:
Investors And Their Advisors – Desiring alpha returns and/or risk management via strategic advisory, valuation or investment management expertise and management services.
Substantial Property Owners – Facing major value, strategy, disposition, use, stewardship, conservation decisions involving such factors as high-stakes, opaque information, place issues, community relationships, competing priorities, complexity, and pioneering/innovative concepts without precedent.
Enterpreneurs And Real Estate Companies – Desiring world-class strategic innovation, expertise to realize extraordinary outcomes, business models, and decision systems.
Places And Governments – Seeking strategies, insights, models and systems to preserve legacy values, enhance place appeal and competiveness, and improve place performance
Dr. Roulac and his team have been retained for a number of signature engagements on behalf of prominent and/or very private individuals, entrepreneurs, corporations, institutional investors, and government agencies, whose identity remains confidential. He and his team have worked with diverse investment/corporate/entrepreneurial enterprises, leading law firms, trade associations, and nonprofits on significant strategy, and investment real estate decisions, as well as clients including:

Stephen has worked and traveled extensively, spending time in some fifty countries throughout the world. This hands-on experience has enabled him to gain first-hand knowledge of global economies, political regimes, market inefficiencies, and diverse business cultures. This, in conjunction with his deep theoretical knowledge and the empirical research he has conducted, enables a superior understanding of global market dynamics.

Leading Author and Academic

Dr. Roulac has made fundamental, innovative research contributions and has pioneered the applications of modern economic theory and securities analysis in ways that have transformed the property discipline. Currently Professor of Global Property Strategy at the University of Ulster in Belfast, Northern Ireland, for a decade, served on the faculty of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He has also taught at the graduate school of business administration at Dartmouth College, University of California at Berkeley, the University of Chicago and the University of California at Los Angeles.
Author of some 20 books, many of which are considered landmarks, plus over 400 articles, reviews, and columns, appearing in publications in Asia, Australia, Europe and the Americas. From the mid 1980s through early 1990s he wrote the “Property Strategy” column for Forbes magazine. His books include Stephen Roulac on Place and Property Strategy (Property Press); Modern Real Estate Investments: an Institutional Approach (Property Press), which is recognized as the authoritative treatise on contemporary real estate investment practice; and Real Estate Investment and Finance (McGraw Hill) recognized by Library Journal as ‘Book of the Year’. Consistent themes of some 100 reviews of Stephen Roulac’s books are “brilliant”… “must read”… “pioneering”… “compelling”… “provocative”… “very valuable”… “highly recommend”… “amazing”… “stimulating”… “challenging”.

Beyond his seminal work in Strategic Management and Place Strategy, his expertise embraces:

Finance and Investment

Development And Building

Thought Leadership

Stephen Roulac’s thought leadership role has been widely recognized. His research has been ranked first, second, third or fourth in several studies of leading property scholars, covering more than 4,000 researchers from some seventy countries. In additional to numerous awards for papers and articles, he is the recipient of:

He was recognized with the U.C. Berkeley Millennium Award (2000) as one of the individuals having the greatest impact on the real estate industry in the 20th century.
Stephen’s major contributions to the industry include:

Dr. Roulac has served on and continues to serve on numerous editorial boards of leading real estate and investment journals

Media and related comments on his work include:

He is featured on national TV (ABC, CNN, FOX) and quoted in international media.

Education

Stephen currently holds the CPA and CMC professional designations; he previously held the AICP and SRS designations.