John M. Clapp

Emeritus Professor

Education/Professional Certification

Ph.D., MBA, Columbia University
BA, Harvard College

Areas of Expertise

Urban economics; real estate markets; retail markets, housing price indices; location of anchor stores; option to redevelop; Berlin housing; Connecticut housing.

Biography

John M. Clapp is emeritus professor of real estate at the University of Connecticut where he taught real estate markets as a source of cash flows and market valuation from 1981 through 2019. He is currently affiliated with UConn’s Economics Department and he is a faculty member at the Weimer School for Advanced Studies in Real Estate.

A 2019 grant from the Real Estate Research Institute (RERI) in Chicago will allow him to study adaptive reuse of vacant or largely vacant shopping centers. He is developing policies to facilitate investment in public-private partnerships that will repurpose unproductive retail centers. According to one report, “This is a huge sector that has a tremendous relevance to a lot of people,’’ Clapp said. “Retail sales and brick-and-mortar stores account for 20 percent of GDP. Disruption to that sector affects the general economy, jobs, tax revenue and more. People see the eyesores that a store closing creates, and town governments are acutely aware of the problem.’’

Prof. Clapp is a 2019 fellow of the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy in Cambridge, Mass. His research there is focused on separating urban land and structure values, a challenge because there are few vacant land sales. Separately valuing land and structures produces more accurate valuations over space and time.

His foundational research on real estate valuation has resulted in numerous articles in scholarly journals including The Quarterly Journal of Economics, The Journal of Urban Economics, Real Estate Economics, The Journal of Housing Economics, Journal of Regional Science, Economic Journal, Journal of Property Tax Assessment and Administration and the Journal of the American Statistical Association.  They have assisted with analysis of the aging of the housing stock, forces driving the evolution of urban areas, the value of public schools, retail closures and methods for property tax assessment.

He received his B.A. in economics magna cum laude from Harvard College, and an MBA and Ph.D. from Columbia University. To obtain a draft of any papers listed on Clapp’s vita, please email john.clapp@uconn.edu.