In Conversation with Kim Politzer, 27 May 2022
In the latest SPR In Conversation online interview, Cleo Folkes (SPR committee member and former Chair) spoke to Kim Politzer, Director of Real Estate Research at Fidelity about her distinguished and varied career in property research.
Kim revealed that like so many property researchers, she had studied geography at university, where she gained an interest in the built environment, leading to a Masters dissertation on local consumer behaviour due to the arrival of the Brent Cross Shopping Centre. From there, she joined the graduate training scheme at Tesco, which she said provided a great start in real estate research; her first role in store location analysis gave a solid foundation in a number of key areas including demographics and planning. As well as enjoying some clandestine investigations of competing stores, she also benefitted from exposure to a lot of statistics and econometrics, which later stood her in good stead.
Kim’s success has clearly been based on constantly broadening her spheres of expertise. This was accelerated by her move to head up retail research at WGS (later part of BNP Paribas), where the market crash of the early 1990s led to a reduction in team numbers and the extension of her role to cover offices and industrial too – showing that adverse market events rarely prove negative for everyone. In her 16 years at BNP, she was promoted a number of times, becoming head of occupier research and forecasting before she left.
In 2006 she changed tack, joining Invesco’s investment research team under Paul Kennedy, whom she said had always impressed her. There, she continued to expand her skillset by taking a Masters in econometrics and forecasting, and took over running the team in 2006 when Kennedy left to join Adia. The role was then Europe-wide, which meant gaining familiarity with a wider range of data, often of weaker quality – at least initially – than that available in the UK. Kim suggested that this need to adapt methods to use varying data sources is also relevant today, though more in relation to emerging market sectors and subsectors such as life sciences.
Kim’s present position at Fidelity represents another change of direction, as they take more of a bottom-up approach to investment strategy across all asset types. This means a more thematic presentation of research to fund managers and more interaction with fixed income and equities colleagues on occupational market trends, which she enjoys. Looking back over her career, she has found investment research most satisfying, just because you are closer to the beneficiary of the analysis and can have an impact on financial outcomes for investors.
Looking to the future, Kim sees ESG as the major new area for property research, and another one where researchers will be in a position to make a real difference in the world. She has signed up for a CFA course on the subject later this year, reflecting her continuing quest to expand her level of knowledge. This professional inquisitiveness has clearly been a major reason for her success, and is a trait she would encourage in others. Learning to think broadly about all the different influences on real estate can only prove beneficial in the long run.
Tim Horsey