D/SAM CHANDAN

Dr. Sam Chandan is the Founding Director of the C. H. Chen Institute for Global Real Estate Finance at the NYU Stern School of Business, where he leads the Institute’s industry and policy engagement activities, research initiatives, and MBA and undergraduate real estate programs, ranked #2 and #3 respectively among business schools by US  News and World Report. The Chen Institute was established in September 2022 and is supported by the largest-ever gift for an Institute or Center at Stern. In addition to the NYU Center for Real Estate Finance, it houses the school’s centers and initiatives in climate change, public health, and the built environment; property technology; real estate data science and artificial intelligence; and, real estate in emerging economies.

Prior to joining the faculty of Stern’s Finance Department in January 2022, Dr. Chandan was the Silverstein Chair and academic dean of the Schack Institute of Real Estate at the NYU School of Professional Studies, one of the world’s largest centers of real estate continuing education. He is also founder and non-executive chairman of Chandan Economics, an economic advisory and data science firm serving the institutional real estate industry; independent advisor to TruAmerica, one of the nation’s leading multifamily developers, owners, and operators with over $16.0 billion in assets under management; and, contributor to Forbes.

Among his diversity and inclusion initiatives, Dr. Chandan is Global Chair of the Real Estate Pride Council, an association of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender leaders in the professions of the built environment, and a member of the Real Estate Executive Council (REEC). In 2017, he founded the National Symposium of Women in Real Estate (WIRE), which has since grown into one of the industry’s largest annual mentorship forums connecting senior executives and early-career women in real estate.

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, Royal Society for Public Health (FRSPH), Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (FRICS), and Real Estate Research Institute (RERI), and a Contributing Member of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), Dr. Chandan’s multifaceted research interests address real estate capital markets, housing finance and affordability, innovation in financial technology and its application to real estate, urban epidemiology, and the preparedness of global cities and other systemically important urban areas in managing and mitigating novel public health threats.

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Dr. Chandan’s commentary on commercial and residential real estate markets and the broader economy has been featured regularly in national and global press, including the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, CNBC, and Bloomberg. Among his recent publications, he was the lead investigator for Regulatory Design and Real Outcomes, a study on the regulation of commercial real estate lending commissioned by the Commercial Real Estate Finance Council (CREFC). He holds an honorary appointment as the Economist Laureate of the Real Estate Lenders Association and has served on the real estate advisory council of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. 

While serving as dean of the Schack Institute, Dr. Chandan secured the largest gift commitment in the program’s 54-year history to support the creation of a new center in Shanghai, founded the NYU SPS CREFC Center for Real Estate Finance in collaboration with the Commercial Real Estate Finance Council, and created Schack’s flagship Hirsh Fellows Master of Science in Real Estate program. A first among academic real estate programs, he created endowed scholarships for the advancement of women in real estate, LGBTQ+ students in real estate, and for graduate students who attended a Historically Black College or University (HCBU) or Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) for their undergraduate degree.

Dr. Chandan received his PhD in Applied Economics from the Wharton School and was a Doctoral Scholar in the Economics Department at Princeton University. He served previously on the faculties of the Wharton School and the Economics Department at Dartmouth College. In addition to his doctorate, he holds graduate degrees in epidemiology from Yale University and in economics and engineering from Penn. He received his undergraduate degree in economics, finance, and public policy from the Wharton School. 

He has held editorial board appointments with the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics, published by Yale Law School; Real Estate Finance, published by Wolters Kluwer; Commercial Real Estate Finance World, published by CREFC; and, Summit Journal, published by the Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate (AFIRE). A recipient of the Council of Urban Real Estate’s Presidential Service Award, he currently serves as a chair of the International Well Building Institute’s Health Equity Advisory Board and on the advisory board of the Urban Land Institute’s New York Council.

Prior to founding Chandan Economics, Dr. Chandan was Global Chief Economist and Executive Vice President at Real Capital Analytics (RCA). During his tenure as Chief Economist and Senior Vice President at Reis, now Moody’s Analytics CRE, he was part of the executive team that took the company public.

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Academic Credentials (In Order of Precedence)

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• Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Applied Economics, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

• Master of Public Health, Epidemiology (MPH), Yale School of Public Health (Division of the Yale School of Medicine), Yale University

• Master of Science, Infectious Diseases (MSc), University of London (In Progress)

• Master of Science in Engineering (MSc), School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Pennsylvania

• Master of Arts, Applied Economics (MA), The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania​​

• Bachelor of Science in Economics (BSc), The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

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