Motivation
The Latin American Real Estate Society (LARES) is an academic organization extended to the market, aimed at encouraging the development of diverse studies within the field of Real Estate, including urban and regional studies, cities, urbanization, and major trends and disruptions that reshape human space.
In 2026, the 25th International LARES Conference will take place in the city of São Paulo, on November 04th and 05th, serving as an important space for researchers, professionals, and academics to meet and discuss the impacts and future projections for Real Estate in light of current circumstances in Brazil and around the world. The event this year highlights the interactions between Technology, Data and Real Estate.
The growing availability of large-scale digital datasets is transforming the way researchers and practitioners analyze real estate markets and its cycles. Transaction-level records, satellite imagery, geospatial data, large administrative datasets, and platform-generated data are creating unprecedented opportunities to study real estate with greater temporal and spatial precision.
At the same time, the real estate sector is undergoing major structural changes driven by financial innovation, technological platforms, and new sources of market information. Proptech companies, financial institutions, and data analytics firms are increasingly relying on advanced quantitative tools to understand housing demand, price dynamics, credit conditions, and investment opportunities.
These developments create an important opportunity for dialogue between academia and industry. While researchers are developing new methods to study real estate markets, private-sector actors are building data infrastructures
Motivation
The Latin American Real Estate Society (LARES) is an academic organization extended to the market, aimed at encouraging the development of diverse studies within the field of Real Estate, including urban and regional studies, cities, urbanization, and major trends and disruptions that reshape human space.
In 2026, the 25th International LARES Conference will take place in the city of São Paulo, on November 04th and 05th, serving as an important space for researchers, professionals, and academics to meet and discuss the impacts and future projections for Real Estate in light of current circumstances in Brazil and around the world. The event this year highlights the interactions between Technology, Data and Real Estate.
The growing availability of large-scale digital datasets is transforming the way researchers and practitioners analyze real estate markets and its cycles. Transaction-level records, satellite imagery, geospatial data, large administrative datasets, and platform-generated data are creating unprecedented opportunities to study real estate with greater temporal and spatial precision.
At the same time, the real estate sector is undergoing major structural changes driven by financial innovation, technological platforms, and new sources of market information. Proptech companies, financial institutions, and data analytics firms are increasingly relying on advanced quantitative tools to understand housing demand, price dynamics, credit conditions, and investment opportunities.
These developments create an important opportunity for dialogue between academia and industry. While researchers are developing new methods to study real estate markets, private-sector actors are building data infrastructures that generate new empirical possibilities. Bringing together scholars, industry practitioners, and young researchers can help foster collaborations that advance both scientific knowledge and market understanding.
The Young Scholars Initiative (YSI) of the Institute for New Economic Thinking promotes such exchanges by creating spaces where early-career researchers can interact with leading scholars and practitioners. In this context, the proposed YSI@LARES workshop, organized in conjunction with the annual conference of the Latin American Real Estate Society, aims to explore how new data sources and analytical tools are reshaping the study of real estate finance and housing markets.
The workshop will be held as a full-day event on November 03, ahead of the LARES conference, bringing together graduate students, early-career researchers, academic experts, and professionals from the real estate industry.
Objectives
The workshop aims to achieve three main objectives.
First, it seeks to advance methodological discussions on the use of big data in real estate research. The increasing availability of large administrative datasets, platform-generated data, and geospatial information is creating new possibilities for analyzing housing markets, credit dynamics, and real estate cycles. The workshop will provide a space for discussing these methodological frontiers.
Second, the event aims to bridge academic research and industry practice. Real estate firms, proptech companies, and financial institutions increasingly rely on data-driven tools to monitor market dynamics. By bringing practitioners and researchers together, the workshop will encourage knowledge exchange and identify new avenues for collaboration.
Third, the workshop intends to support the development of young scholars working on real estate, urban and regional economics, urban and regional planning, urbanism, civil engineering, and related disciplines. Through mentorship sessions and research presentations, early-career participants will have the opportunity to receive feedback on their work and expand their professional networks.
Workshop Themes for Call for Papers (CfP)
Possible themes for paper submissions include:
- New data sources for real estate market analysis
- Big data and methods in real estate modeling
- Real estate platforms and market transparency
- Credit markets and real estate cycles
- Spatial analysis and urban housing dynamics
- Private equity, Real estate investment and financialization
- Data-driven approaches to housing policy and affordability
- Data for Real Estate Investment Analysis
- Market Intelligence for Real Estate
- Artificial Intelligence (IA) in Real Estate
By focusing on these topics, the workshop will highlight how new forms of data and analytical tools are changing both academic research and industry practice in real estate markets.
Participants and Mentors
The workshop will bring together academic researchers and professionals from the real estate and financial sectors.
Industry mentors will share their experiences in building data-driven approaches to real estate markets and finance. Potential participants include professionals from leading firms and institutions such as:
- Ramon Azevedo, Co-Founder e CEO da Morada.Ai
Academic mentors will provide methodological guidance and research feedback to workshop participants. Academic mentors include:
- Ricardo Enrique Truffello Robledo, Director of the Observatory of Cities at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
- João Meyer, FAU/USP and LARES (Confirmed)
- Renan P. Almeida, Cedeplar/UFMG and LARES (Confirmed)
Besides paper presentations by young scholars, the workshop proposes lectures by the special guests, Ramon Azevedo and Prof. Ricardo Truffello.
Structure of the Workshop
The workshop will take place over one full day and combine lectures and research presentations.
The morning session will begin with an opening panel session discussing the role of new data sources in real estate finance and housing market analysis, by Ramon Azevedo (Morada.AI) and Prof. Ricardo Truffello (PUC-Chile).
The workshop will conclude with research presentations by young scholars, who will present ongoing projects related to the topics covered by the workshop. Each presentation will receive feedback from academic mentors and practitioners.
Organizers
Italo Spinelli, FIEMG and Cedeplar/UFMG
Veruska Bichuette, FAU/USP
Glaucy Herdy, FAU/USP
Working Groups
Urban and Regional Economics
Complexity Economics
