6 March 2001 New Property Studies Professor takes up post

Irishman Billy McCluskey from the University of Ulster has taken up the professorship in Property Studies at Lincoln University.

Professor McCluskey succeeds Terry Boyd, originally from South Africa (who was appointed in 1993 from Australia, after an earlier term on the University's staff) and Texan John Baen who, in 1989, became New Zealand's first full professor in the area of real estate studies and pioneered the position.

Professor McCluskey comes to New Zealand from a senior lectureship in the School of the Built Environment at the University of Ulster at Jordanstown.

He joined the University of Ulster in 1986 and is left as Senior Lecturer in Real Estate and Valuation. Prior to the Ulster position he worked with the Valuation Office in London and then the Valuation Office in Northern Ireland where his main responsibilities involved the valuation of all types of property for property tax, compulsory purchase, acquisition, development and disposal.

His main professional and academic interests are in the field of valuation, specifically the comparative analysis of real property tax systems, public finance and policy, computer assisted mass appraisal modelling and the application of geographic information systems to property valuation.

A strength of his work has been its multi-disciplinary nature leading to the creation of collaborative teams of experts including valuers, statisticians, computer programmers, GIS specialists and public finance experts.

Professor McCluskey has an international profile in teaching and research in the real estate field. He was Visiting Professor of Real Estate at the University of Lodz, Poland, in 1996 and has been a recipient of the prestigious Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors Teaching Fellowship A ward.

Ian Collins, Journalist, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand.