Professor Emeritus Aart Hordijk has a long and rich history within the real estate sector. After studying business economics at the VU, he started his career in IT, first at NCR and then at Shell. In 1983 he switched to real estate and learned real estate investing at the Matser group. From 1989 he was allowed to set up the Research branch at Zadelhoff Makelaars, where he was the lead author of the report 'Vision behind the facts'. This was the first time an overview of investment transactions in the Netherlands was presented.
In 1991 he transferred to the ABP Real Estate Research team. Most other pension funds and insurers also decided to place their real estate portfolio remotely during that period, but the question then became: 'how can the performance be measured?' Aart was asked to lead a working group that had to design a benchmark system to measure not only the market average return but also the relative performance among themselves. When that was completed, he was asked to set up such a system under the banner of the ROZ Real Estate Council, which resulted in a partnership with IPD that had been successful in the UK for 10 years. From 1996 the figures were published annually, later quarterly.
Hordijk taught the subject of valuation theory at the UvA for many years and he developed a doctoral research project on the same subject. In this way, he was able to further develop his scientific side, eventually resulting in an appointment as professor in the Troostwijk Chair in valuation at Nyenrode Business University, later in the ROZ chair in valuation at TIAS.