Faculty Directory | D. Sam Chandan

Sam Chandan is Director of the Chao-Hon Chen Institute for Global Real Estate Finance at the New York University Stern School of Business, home to the school’s applied real estate research initiatives, industry and policy engagement, and undergraduate and MBA real estate programs.

Prior to joining Stern in February 2022, Professor Chandan was the Larry & Klara Silverstein Chair and academic dean of the Schack Institute of Real Estate at the NYU School of Professional Studies. He is also founder of Chandan Economics, an economic advisory and data science firm serving the institutional real estate industry, a contributor to Forbes, and host of the Urban Lab on Apple Podcasts.

Among his diversity and inclusion initiatives, Professor 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 Institution of Chartered Surveyors (FRICS), the Royal Society for Public Health (FRSPH), and the Real Estate Research Institute (RERI), and a contributing member of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), Professor Chandan’s multifaceted applied research interests address real estate capital market, urban epidemiology, and the preparedness of global cities and other systemically important urban areas in managing and mitigating novel public health threats. 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, Professor Chandan secured the largest gift commitment in the program’s 54-year history to support the creation of a new center in Shanghai, and founded the NYU SPS CREFC Center for Real Estate Finance in collaboration with the Commercial Real Estate Finance Council. A first among academic real estate programs, he created endowed scholarships for the advancement of women in real estate, LGBTQ+ persons in real estate, and for graduate students who attended a Historically Black College or University (HBCU) for their undergraduate degree.

Professor Chandan holds editorial board appointments with the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics; Real Estate Finance; Commercial Real Estate Finance World; and, Summit Journal. He currently serves as a chair of the International Well Building Institute’s Health Equity Advisory Board.

Prior to founding Chandan Economics, he was the global chief economist at Real Capital Analytics (RCA). During his tenure as chief economist at Reis, now part of Moody’s Analytics, he was part of the executive team that took the company public.

He received his BSc in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, MA in Economics and MSc in Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and PhD in Applied Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.