Mission
The Lied Center for Real Estate seeks to advance real estate knowledge, inform business practice, and address issues that affect the real estate industry and public policy. The center produces relevant and timely real estate research, supports educational programs in real estate economics and finance for students and professionals, and provides community outreach.
History
The Lied Center for Real Estate (formerly Lied Institute for Real Estate Studies) was established in 1989 by the College of Business (now the Lee Business School) at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to foster excellence in real estate education and research. The center was endowed in 1991 through a generous gift and a challenge grant from the Ernest F. Lied Foundation Trust. Through partnerships with business and community leaders, the Lied Center strives to improve real estate business and effective public-policy practices in Southern Nevada.
Council of Advisors
The Council of Advisors supports the institute in mentorship, career day, and community outreach. Prominent members of the real estate industry as well as the business, legal, and other communities make up the council. Council of Advisors
Board of Governors
The Board of Governors consists of academic and real estate professionals appointed to provide perspective about the institute’s goals and to steer the institute’s philosophy of community involvement. Board of Governors
Industry Partners
The Lied Center for Real Estatecollaborates with organizations to fulfill its mission to provide timely information for real estate professionals. Industry Partners
Faculty
Our excellent and experienced faculty members include:
Dr. Shawn McCoy
Director of the Lied Center for Real Estate
Dr. Shawn J. McCoy, who was born and raised in Las Vegas, NV, is the Director of the Lied Center for Real Estate in the Lee Business School at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). At UNLV, he is responsible for leading the Lied Center’s agenda of excellence in teaching and forging strategic partnerships to bring together real estate researchers, students, and industry and community leaders. McCoy also conducts policy-oriented research addressing issues that affect the real estate industry and public policy.
Dr. McCoy, who received the distinction of Lincoln Institute Scholar from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, specializes in the fields of real estate and housing economics, applied econometrics, environmental economics, and geographic information systems. He publishes extensively in the world’s highest-ranking peer-reviewed journals in these fields including Real Estate Economics and Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. At the national scale, his research bridges applied econometrics with highly refined geo-spatial datasets to identify drivers of regional economic resilience. For instance, in a recent study, Dr. McCoy and his colleagues were the first to estimate the causal effect that increasing a city’s level of economic diversity has on improving a local real estate market’s ability to withstand the impact of and recover from an externally generated shock. At the global scale, McCoy’s research focused international attention on the importance of monitoring the feedback loops between climate-related risks and residential housing markets as a means of fostering resilient cities. In this research area, Dr. McCoy has testified as an expert in real estate and global climate risks to governments and public agencies across 38 OECD participating countries. McCoy’s published work is featured frequently in local, national, and international media outlets including The Washington Post, The Associated Press, Reuters, U.S. News and World Report, Bloomberg’s CITYLAB, inman, National Association of Realtors REALTOR Magazine, Builder, and Architect Magazine.
Dr. McCoy has taught or teaches undergraduate courses in real estate finance, mortgage banking and applied geographic information systems, master’s level courses in statistics and econometrics, and applied microeconomics to graduate students in UNLV’s Executive MBA program. McCoy holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Nicholas B. Irwin
Assistant Professor, Department of Economics
Lee Business School
Dr. Nicholas B. Irwin is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the Lee Business School at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. A three-time graduate of The Ohio State University, he came to UNLV in 2018 and teaches both economics and real estate majors at both undergraduate and graduate levels. He has a broad range of policy-relevant research interests which all fundamentally revolve around the dynamics across individuals within real estate markets.
Dr. Irwin specializes in the fields of housing economics, urban economics, environmental economics, and land use. He has published extensively in the world’s leading journals across these areas including the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, the Journal of Environmental Economics, Land Economics, the Journal of Real Estate Research, and Regional Science and Urban Economics.
Dr. Irwin’s research follows two veins: the first explores the decision-making of homeowners as it relates to their housing investment decisions through the choice to install photovoltaic technology, reduce water usage, or engage in large-scale renovations. The second explores how homebuyers respond to information shocks related to environmental hazards, adjustments to school attendance boundaries, and changes in local public goods. Along this vein, Dr. Irwin is on the leading edge of the research frontier with novel research on the economic effects of including additional components of housing market dynamics such as market liquidity into traditional hedonic approaches for cost-benefit analysis. His research has shown that a failure to account for housing market liquidity changes will consistently underestimate the impact of pollution and changes in localized amenities. His research has been featured in both local, regional, and national media outlets, including the Las Vegas Review-Journal, KNPR’s State of Nevada, KSNV-3 (NBC) Las Vegas, Fox-5 Las Vegas, Telemundo – Las Vegas, the Associated Press, and US News and World Report.
David Jones, M.B.A.
Lecturer in Real Estate
David works as a Wealth Management Banking Advisor for The Northern Trust Company providing banking & financing advice and services to wealthy individuals and families. David has been a banker in Las Vegas for over 30 years, with over 11 years at Bank of America. He is experienced in commercial banking, equipment finance, SBA lending, commercial real estate, construction finance, and jet aircraft financing.
In August 2008, David graduated from the Pacific Coast Banking School held at the University of Washington in Seattle. He distinguished himself by being selected as “the best of the best” and was asked to join the faculty and return as an Alumni Associate Director. He holds an M.B.A. from Brigham Young University, where he also served as a Student Body Officer (Vice President of Athletics) overseeing the finances and activities of the BYU Cheerleaders. Throughout his banking career, David has managed his own commercial, small business, and real estate portfolios as well as successfully managed other bank employees. As the Real Estate Division Manager at Nevada First Bank, he oversaw and managed the growth of the Bank’s commercial real estate portfolio during the dramatic 2003-2006 real estate boom immediately prior to the Bank being sold to the Bank of Nevada. He also helped open a de novo bank: as a founder and shareholder of Service1st Bank of Nevada, which was capitalized with $50 million in 2006 and opened in Jan 2007. He served three years as the Southern Nevada NAIOP Chapter’s Education Committee Chair. David has also contributed his time to the UNLV Lied Institute of Real Estate Studies as a Real Estate Finance Instructor.
Prior to accepting the position of Associate Director of the Lied Institute for Real Estate Studies, David served on the UNLV Lied Institute Executive Committee. For several years David was the Construction Finance Instructor for NAIOP’s Developing Leaders Institute. David also worked as the Associate Director of the Lied Institute for Real Estate Studies, College of Business, at UNLV working with professors, students, and community leaders for the betterment and improvement of the real estate profession. David’s community involvement extends to other areas as well: for 6 years he served as a volunteer teacher providing early-morning religious education for local high school students. He also volunteered for the Prison Ministry at both the men’s and women’s Nevada State Correctional Facility/Prison in Jean, Nevada.