As a REALTOR®, you may know the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University from presentations at association meetings, its logo on research reports, or articles that cite its data. But there’s more to the Real Estate Center.

What Is the Real Estate Center?

The center is a publicly funded research organization housed in the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University in College Station. It studies financial, socioeconomic, public policy, trade, legal, land use, and local market analysis issues related to real estate. To communicate its research to license holders, the center publishes a quarterly magazine, Tierra Grande, an email newsletter, and other publications. See what else the Real Estate Center does at recenter.tamu.edu.

How the Real Estate Center Helps Your Business

The center’s publications are a resource you can use to educate yourself on important topics relevant to the industry and your business, such as home values, water regulations, resource extraction, demographic shifts, and legal developments. Texas REALTORS® also partners with the Real Estate Center to offer benefits like MarketViewer, the data tool exclusively for members, and produce research reports with local market data. This partnership allows Texas REALTORS® to provide the most accurate data possible to members.

How the Real Estate Center Came to Be

The Real Estate Center was created by the Texas Legislature in 1971 after Texas REALTORS® leaders, such as Julio Laguarta, and representatives from Texas A&M University worked together to craft a plan for the research center and win the support of lawmakers. Laguarta—a former president of Texas REALTORS®, the Houston Association of REALTORS®, and the National Association of REALTORS®—was one of the initial advocates for the creation of a research center dedicated to real estate in Texas and was first chairman of the center’s advisory committee.

Work officially began in 1972 at the Real Estate Center with a broad mandate to “conduct studies in all areas related directly or indirectly to real estate and/or urban or rural economics.” Among the first research projects approved by the center were a study of the Texas housing inventory and a survey of the over 66,000 real estate license holders in Texas. The center quickly expanded to study data from MLSs across the state, building permits, and rural land and second homes. Over time, the center rebranded from its initial title of the Texas Real Estate Research Center and moved from the Texas A&M University’s College of Agriculture to the Mays Business School.

Learn more about the first 45 years of the Real Estate Center.