Two researchers from Hong Kong say in a new report that faculty from UConn’s Center for Real Estate and Urban Economic Studies, part of the School of Business, are the most prolific real estate researchers in the world.

Researchers J.C. Jin from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and E.S.H. Yu from the City University of Hong Kong, reviewed more than 30 years of submissions to the top three real estate journals in the world – The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, the Journal of Real Estate Research, and Real Estate Economics – and found that UConn professors clearly outdistanced their peers in the number of research articles accepted by the three journals.

”The University of Connecticut (UConn) was found to rank as the top school in the world for real estate research. Its total publication in the three major real estate journals is prominently greater than the rest of the schools, and its rank as number one is robust and remains intact regardless of the use of old or new faculty members over different sample periods,” the researchers wrote.

The researchers made the distinction between old and new faculty because the former director of the center, C.F. Sirmans, left UConn two years ago, taking with him a massive portfolio of journal submissions that makes him the most prolific individual contributor to the journals, ranking him first in the study’s “Hall of Fame.” Since moving to Florida State University, that school has leaped from 23rd in the rankings to second, behind only UConn.

While missing Sirmans, UConn maintained the top spot by having three faculty included in the Hall of Fame: director John Clapp (8); Thomas Miceli (26), an economics professor; and Chinmoy Ghosh (29), a professor and head of the Department of Finance. No other university had more than two faculty in the top 50.

Clapp says finance professors John Harding and Katherine Pancak, and Stephen Ross, an economics professor, also have made major contributions to the center’s success.

U.S. News & World Report, in its 2011 ranking of colleges and universities, ranked UConn’s real estate specialty for undergraduates ninth in the country.

“The rankings are important to the School of Business and to UConn,” says Clapp. “It shows that we’re a center of excellence; shows the kind of excellent programming we have here.”

While a great deal of the group’s contributions to the three journals has been basic research, Clapp says much of the work is brought into the classroom, where students and professors discuss the most recent research on many aspects of real estate.