Professor Jaime Pérez Luque, full professor of real estate at ESCP Business School in Madrid, member of the Advisory Board of the European Commission, and director of Monaco’s Real Estate Technology Program, has arrived in Budapest as a Visiting Fellow at the Corvinus Institute for Advanced Studies (CIAS) for the 2025–26 academic year.  

Professor Luque joined CIAS through an open call. He will spend ten months in Budapest, working full-time on research and engaging with scholars particularly in the Institute of Finance. His goal is focused and simple: “The outcome is going to be articles… and also a new network for collaboration with Corvinus in the future.” 

The title of his research at CIAS is “Credit Scoring and Dynamic Pricing Technologies in Real Estate”. He explains that the project is inspired by what happened before and during the 2008 financial crisis, particularly the surge in data-driven lending. His thesis is that technological change in the mid-1990s — specifically “internet and … access to PC and big data” — enabled lenders to use automated credit scoring for the first time, which fundamentally reshaped the mortgage market. These innovations allowed banks and new “remote lenders”, or shadow banks, to put together huge databases and to evaluate borrowers using hard, numerical data. 

The new tools improved prediction accuracy, but also encouraged shadow banks to massively expand lending. Their business model meant that mortgages were quickly securitised and sold globally. Professor Luque’s research shows how this transformation helped the credit boom before 2008, and how the weaknesses of this system contributed to the global financial crisis. Speaking about the lessons learned, the researcher highlights: “The banks make less mistakes than before, but they make mistakes.” 

At CIAS, Professor Luque is investigating the link between information quality and pricing. “The price of something depends on the information you have of that asset,” he says. “If you have better information, you put a more correct price”. In real estate finance, the “price” is the mortgage interest rate. Better information — such as a precise credit score — changes risk evaluations and therefore pricing. Understanding these mechanisms is crucial, he argues, to designing safer and more resilient housing finance systems. 

His project contributes not only academically but also to policy debates. Professor Luque has spent over a decade developing this theory, and CIAS gives him space to complete the papers and expand them: “This time at Corvinus allows me to finish and conceive ideas.” 

The real-world consequences of his research reach far beyond academia. Professor Luque serves as member of the advisory board of the European Commission’s Housing Task Force and is vocal about the current affordability crisis. “There is a housing crisis in most of our countries. Spain is broken. Hungary house prices went up by a lot,” he says. His strongest recommendation is a European housing investment platform combining private and public capital. ”We want to provide capital to developers… so they can build and provide housing with rents below market,” he argues. He stresses this is essential for the working class: “Not everybody can buy a house. You also need a cushion for the working class that don’t get to buy a house but have rents that are affordable.” 

He also highlights the enormous pool of European savings. “European savings in the European Union is 33 trillion euros. Half of that is outside Europe,” he notes. With better structures and lower perceived risk, these funds could support affordable housing. “If the risk goes down, then it becomes a very good investment,” he adds. 

For CIAS and Corvinus, Professor Luque’s presence means deeper international collaboration and a research agenda with clear societal implications. His project offers insights into how data, technology and regulation shape the homes people can afford. As he concludes, “Everything is very related.” His research at CIAS stands at exactly that intersection, combining rigorous research with urgent real-world challenges.