LATEST NEWS

Real Estate Foresight Updates, Media Coverage, Conferences
Join our distribution list

PROVEN VALUE FOR A SPECTRUM OF CLIENTS

Real Estate Foresight has over 6 years of experience and track record in China housing markets, serving a range of clients, with strong C-level references


Property Developers

From the in-depth project market due diligence to strategy development and city selection models, REF supports clients in more data- and analytics-driven decisions – in the market that is no longer ‘easy money’ for developers, with high land prices, more competition and discerning buyers
Request a Sample / Demo

Private Equity Real Estate Investors, Funds, Lenders

Independent and fast assessment of opportunities and underwriting assumptions, extensive and ongoing market research, and support for investor communications, help clients through all stages of the China investments
Request a Sample / Demo

High Yield, Long/ Short, Event Driven Funds, Investors

Investors in securities can gain the edge through a much finer, granular view on what’s really happening in the (often misunderstood) China housing market and its sub-segments, related data, and in how to interpret the latest events
Request a Sample / Demo

Global Macro

Deep insights into the China housing market inform the persistent macro questions about ‘the bubble’ and ‘the systemic risk’ in China, with the economic significance of the sector, impact on the commodities markets, its ties to shadow banking, local government debt and policy makers sensitivity to the sector
Request a Sample / Demo

ONGOING RESEARCH, ANALYST CALLS, BESPOKE PROJECTS, THEMATIC PAPERS, AD-HOC NOTES

Spot the turning points in the cycle | Pick the right cities and districts | Verify your critical project assumptions | Monitor your project | Communicate to your stakeholders | Stay on top of the news cycles


China Property

MACRO VIEW
With flagship China Property reports and private briefings, we help clients form a view, identify turning points in the market, and provide clients with extensive analysis of latest data, qualitative and policy factors

CityScreener

CITIES & DISTRICTS
With CityScreener™ reports, we help clients identify opportunity areas and support clients in top-down multi-criteria city selection and assessment and monitoring of exposure, based on relative attractiveness of cities

Quantiviable

ANALYZE ONLINE
With QuantiviableTM we provide clients with an online analytics companion – an interactive charting tool that uses our ranking-data for evaluating relative attractiveness of districts, developers or cities on multiple criteria

CITY INSIGHTS

CITY REPORTS
With City Reports, we help clients gain quick and practical insights into housing prices and sales volumes dynamics, inventory, land sales, new starts, at a city and district level for major cities.

Due Diligence

DEEP DIVE
Through in-depth market studies, we support clients in due diligence and strategic project decisions, providing an independent assessment rigorously grounded in a combination of data-driven primary and secondary research

PROJECT SALES

PROJECT ANALYSIS
With Project Detail Analytics, we help clients monitor sales at a project level, collecting, crunching and visualizing the data in an innovative way.

How are we different?

We apply advanced data analytics tools and combine data science and technology with on-the-ground research, with a track record in accurately forecasting the Chinese housing markets.
Combining Data Science With
On-The-Ground Research

Technology solutions and skills we have developed enable us to provide clients with unique insights by capturing and analyzing larger volumes of data as well as making sense of extensive qualitative content.

Thanks to collaboration with data partners, especially Beijing-based SouFun - China Index Academy, we are able to build our proprietary analytics on top of private raw data.

At the same time, thanks to our specialization and focus on China property markets, we stay very close to the market talk and engage with wide range of market participants on a daily basis, which gives us first-hand insights into what is going on. Our founder Robert Ciemniak is a frequent speaker, moderator and panelist at key industry events on China.

  • Track record

    … with house price forecasts, city selection, due diligence market studies

  • Technology & Analytics

    … driven, working with small and big data and proprietary tools

  • Data Partners

    … include SouFun-China Index Academy in Beijing

  • Independence & Specialization

    … independent from brokerage, fund raising, securities trading, and focused on China real estate markets

Core team

We work through our core team of analysts / data scientists and software engineers, with support from our network of experts.
Robert Ciemniak
Robert Ciemniak
Founder-CEO & Chief Analyst
Robert started the company in 2012, after 13 years at Thomson Reuters in two major roles as Global Head of Real Estate Markets (London/Hong Kong) and earlier as Head of Corporate Foresight in Group Strategy in London. He holds a dual MBA degree from London Business School and Columbia Business School in New York, and MSc from Warsaw School of Economics. Robert is also an international master in chess and author of a book about the Internet and competitive strategy (1999).
Erica Chung
Erica Chung
Analyst
Erica Chung is a Quantitative Analyst at Real Estate Foresight. She is majoring in Economics and Finance at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, graduating in 2016. She also studied abroad for a semester at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in the United States and achieved a 4.0 TGA on the Dean’s List. She is passionate about data analytics and research and had gained past work experience through internships and university projects.
Gavin Li
Gavin Li
Software Engineer
Gavin Li finished his M.Phil degree in the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2016, with research focusing on developing machine learning models in online social networks. He also received his bachelor degree from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2013, graduating with first honor in Engineering. He previously worked as an analyst at Deloitte Consulting in 2013 and was responsible for system implementations. He is familar with LAMP, mobile app development and big data processing toolkits. He passed CFA level 1 & 2 exam on first attempt and currently is a CFA level 3 candidate.
Andrew Ness
Andrew Ness
Senior Advisor
Andrew was formerly Head of Research, Greater China for DTZ/Cushman & Wakefield and Head of North Asia Research for DTZ. Prior to DTZ, Andrew was a Lead Consultant Asia Pacific with Urban Land Institute, and worked for CB Richard Ellis for 16 years, as Executive Director, Asia Research and Director, Greater China Research & Consulting, and earlier had played an instrumental role in establishing the operations of Richard Ellis Ltd in Beijing in 1988. From 1985 to 1988 he served as a Deputy Representative with the National Council for U.S. China Trade (now the U.S. China Business Council) in the Beijing Office.

OUR NETWORK OF EXPERTS

We are pleased to collaborate informally with a distinguished group of independent experts and analysts. On client request, we can form a project-specific team with relevant expertise from across the network or direct the conversation to the right person. Please contact us to discuss your requirements or connect with a Member directly.
David Schlesinger
David Schlesinger
FOUNDER, TRIPOD ADVISORS
David Schlesinger is the founder of Tripod Advisors, a consultancy that advises on political risk analysis, strategy and on running complex, dispersed global organizations with an emphasis on China and media. He was formerly Chairman of Thomson Reuters China, responsible for government relations and businesses in financial markets, legal and regulatory databases, scientific information and journalism.
Lijun (Isabel) Cao
Lijun (Isabel) Cao
SENIOR CHINA ADVISOR
Isabel is a China expert with 18 years of experience in China, Hong Kong and London. Senior editor with EuroFinance, an award-winning journalist with Xinhua News Agency in China, Afghanistan and the UK. C-level conference producer with The Economist Group in Asia in More recently, Isabel worked with The Economist Group in Hong Kong, where she was Senior Programme Editor and managed projects in Asia Pacific region, and Head of Programmes, Greater China, for EuroFinance.
Jan Skopecek
Jan Skopecek
ENGAGEMENT MANAGER, MCKINSEY & COMPANY
Jan Skopecek is an experienced manager and business development professional with international track record of developing, running and transforming business across several sectors – financial markets, telecommunications, high tech, energy and prime materials, with significant expertise in commercial real estate investment, asset management and professional media, data and IT infrastructure. He is currently working for McKinsey&Company, based in Prague.
Patrick Lecomte
Patrick Lecomte
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND RESEARCH FELLOW, ESSEC BUSINESS SCHOOL (SINGAPORE ASIA CENTER)
Dr. Patrick Lecomte is an executive director in charge of the Advanced Master in Financial Techniques (among top 5 best Masters in Finance globally- Financial Times ranking June 2015) and a senior research fellow at ESSEC Asia Pacific (Singapore campus). He specializes in real estate finance, and financial innovation applied to commercial real estate. His research on property derivatives has won numerous awards sponsored by the Fannie Mae Foundation, the Homer Hoyt Institute, the American Real Estate Society, and the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties.
Dipyaman Sanyal
Dipyaman Sanyal
Founder and CEO, dōnō consulting
Dipyaman Sanyal (Deep) is founder and CEO of dōnō consulting. He is also Adjunct Faculty for Analytics and Finance at Institute of Management Technology (a leading Indian business school). A quantitative analyst and economist, Deep’s primary expertise is in real estate and related securities. He has worked in research and analytics for Sorin Capital, Blackstone Group, REIS, Dow Jones Indexes and Thomson Reuters in New York and India.

OUR DATA PARTNERS

We are collaborating with the world's leading providers of real estate, financial, demographic and economic data, research and analytics, including:

SouFun-China Index Academy SOUFUN Demographic Consulting Real Capital Analytics