Real Estate Forecasting Limited, was established, by Chris Simmons, at the start of 2000. The company carries out property forecasting in the UK. Real Estate Forecasting has grown from a fledgling business, to one supplying many of the key players in the Commercial Real Estate industry. These include medium to large Chartered Surveyors, Property advisors, REITs and Fund Managers. The largest of the REITs has a market capitalisation of over £5bn, and the combined funds under management of the Fund managers are in excess of $1trillion. Equally some of the advisors are small companies, property advisors, looking for help when dealing with their own clients.
Chris Simmons has more than 30 years experience of working in real estate investment markets. After graduation from Cambridge, Chris worked as an Actuary for six years in the Insurance division of Towers Watson. He advised on valuations, business plans, appraisal values and bonuses. Between 1992 and 1994, he worked in Market Research, devising surveys and analysing the results, using statistical techniques.
In 1994, Chris joined Insignia Richard Ellis as Chief Economist in the Research Consultancy Division. Within the Research Consultancy team, he was responsible for establishing reliable and accurate forecasting techniques as well as developing research analysis methods. As a Divisional Director, his responsibilities included managing a specialist team of 20 economists and analysts. He has been directly involved in the development of a unique indexation package, designed to track the performance of funds between valuations. He also developed a property scoring system to assist in portfolio stock selection. Chris was responsible for establishing an innovative ranking matrix model to identify suitable locations for office and retail occupiers. This was used by a number of major UK companies, to assist in their decision making.
He has been, for a number of years, a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries and a Chartered Statistician with the Royal Society of Statisticians. He has been an examiner and a tutor in both the Economics and Statistics papers for the professional examinations of the Institute of Actuaries.
Born in 1964, Chris was educated in Lewisham, South London, and graduated with a First class degree and a Townsend Scholarship in Economics, Management Science and Statistics from St John’s College Cambridge. He has been a Governor of a local school from 2007-19, most recently as the Chair of Finance. He lives in Pulborough and plays Bridge, in his spare time, in Sussex and Surrey.
