Neil has been Professor of Real Estate at the University of Reading since 1994 having been previously Reader/Professor at Oxford Brookes and lecturer at Reading and Nottingham Trent Universities. Before that he was a practising valuation surveyor in a combined residential and commercial property consulting firm based in the UK where he qualified as a Chartered Valuation Surveyor in 1975.
He specialises in commercial property appraisal and the commercial Landlord and Tenant relationship and over the last 25 years has undertaken a series of major research studies funded by the UK Government and the UK property industry into aspects of commercial lease regulation, valuation methods, client influence on valuations, depreciation, liquidity, and most recently, effective and headline rental value indices, capitalisation rates and development viability.
He has given keynote addresses to major academic and professional conferences including the World Valuation Congress in 1999 and the Pacific Rim Real Estate Society in 2000, 2005 and 2014. In 2002 he was awarded the International Real Estate Society’s annual achievement award for his work in real estate research, education and practice. His industry based activity includes current memberships of the RICS Valuation Standards Board and the Consultative Committee of the Investment Property Databank and he is a past member of the Management Board of the Investment Property Forum.
In 2001 and 2008, he was a member of the UK Research Assessment Exercise panel assessing the UK real estate academic output for the UK Government and he sits on a number of academic journal Editorial Boards. He has published well over 100 papers on the various topics listed above and the third edition of his textbook on Property Investment Appraisal with Andrew Baum was published in 2007.