David Hartzell examines issues related to the construction of institutional real estate portfolios, publicly traded real estate companies, real estate private equity performance, and real estate finance. He teaches courses in finance and real estate.

He is director of the Leonard W. Wood Center for Real Estate Studies. He also is the faculty advisor and also serves on the board of the UNC Real Estate Investment Fund, the real estate private equity fund that is managed by students in the real estate concentration at UNC Kenan-Flagler. The fund is the only student-managed private equity real estate fund in existence.

Dr. Hartzell and Andrew Baum wrote Global Property Investment: Strategies, Structures, Decisions (Wiley Blackwell, 2012), which is used by both students and practitioners of real estate. The book has been adopted for use at many universities in the United States and the U.K. including the University of Cambridge and Oxford University, where they have teaching appointments.

He brings valuable experience as a former vice president at Salomon Brothers Inc. in New York, where his primary focus was on institutional real estate finance and investments. His group was the first to bring commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS) to market.

He also worked as a research associate for The Urban Institute and as a financial economist for the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of Currency. He served as president of the leading academic real estate group, The American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association (AREUEA), in 2000.

Dr. Hartzell serves on the board of directors of Highwoods Properties, a publicly traded real estate investment trust (REIT) that focuses its investment and development in the office sector in southeastern markets in the United States. He serves on the investment committee and the audit committee of the board.

He has worked with numerous companies on a consulting basis, notably Heitman Capital Management in Chicago, with whom he has been affiliated since 1994. Additional consulting engagements have included the board of directors of Citigroup, CB Richard Ellis, Weil Gottschall, Cornerstone Research, Henderson Asset Management (U.K.), PRA Securities, Heitman/JMB Advisory Corp., JMB Institutional Realty Corp., Salomon Brothers Inc., Prudential Real Estate Investors, American Council of Life Insurance, Travelers Realty Investment Corporation, GE Capital, Metropolitan Life and ABP (Dutch Public Employees Pension Fund).

Dr. Hartzell served in many administrative roles since joining the faculty. He was the associate dean for MBA Programs, with administrative responsibility for the full-time MBA Program and all Executive MBA Programs from 1994-1998. For most of his years at UNC Kenan-Flagler, he served as director of the Real Estate Program and coordinator of the Real Estate Concentration in MBA Program.

He received his PhD from UNC-Chapel Hill and his MA and BS from the University of Delaware.