Nino Dante Pedrelli came to Wisconsin’s real estate program with a unique background and skillset. Given his prior education in engineering and business, and his already significant accomplishments as a developer, it was a no-brainer to admit him to our PhD program. Once he arrived, we learned that he brought so much more to the table. A slightly tamed Boston accent, a love of Italy that infected anyone who hadn’t yet made the trip themselves, a sly sense of humor, and a deep curiosity about anything urban or real estate related, but most especially, an ability to connect with people – this is the Nino that we were fortunate to know and, yes, love. And as if that weren’t enough, if you knew Nino, you got to know Susan and Laura and Cara, and over time some of the extensions to their family, notably Laura’s husband Steve, and the newest Pedrellis, his beloved granddaughters Lina and Luca.
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| Cara, Nino, Laura and Susan, and friend -- circa 2010 |
Sadly, Nino was taken from us at an early age, after a long struggle with cancer. You can read his official obituary here, including more family details.
Every PhD student caps their studies with a dissertation – a significant piece of original research that adds something to the body of knowledge in our field, and also demonstrates one’s mastery of research tools. Most dissertations stick close to whatever the fad of the moment is, in terms of topic, model, data. Not for Nino. He painstakingly dug out data on real estate financial transactions from the 1850s and 1920s, rather than looking for a canned dataset to download and “torture until it confessed.” These early bonds and warrants were the precursors to today’s CMBS and other derivative markets. Nino brought modern time-series technology to bear on the problem, and showed how, and why, a century ago as well as today, “every real estate boom is followed by something else that starts with the letter B.” Let's take a quick look at some of the basic data:
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| Excess returns in mortgage bonds, Great Depression, from Nino's dissertation |
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| Nominal returns in land warrants, 1850s, from Nino's dissertation |
If you're like me, this introductory data from "Volatility and Performance Analysis of Two Past Real Estate Markets: Mortgage Bonds of the 1920's and Land Warrants of the 1850's" whets your appetite. You can download Nino's entire dissertation here, for your perusal. If you want the executive summary, here's a very short piece Nino wrote for the magazine Financial History.
While he was resident at UW, Nino also showed his chops as an outstanding teacher. If you want to learn more about something technical like urban economics or how to price a mortgage-backed security, geeks like Malpezzi or Shilling or Green are just what you want. Nino could geek out with the rest of us. But if you want to really learn development, well then, you want someone with experience in the trenches; and the ability to generalize and connect theory to practice and vice versa; and someone who knows how to teach those things effectively. Dozens of students confirmed that Nino was that rare master of all three, someone who set a template for his own and today’s outstanding UW lecturers that ensure our students emerge with the right balance of education and skills to “hit the ground running.”
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| Nino working in the Graaskamp Center, circa 1998 |
After completing his PhD, Nino eventually decided to refocus on real estate development and consulting, and moved to Minnesota; but he continued to teach real estate finance and development at Saint Thomas, continuing to give back to another generation of students.
Nino and I became close friends. We were delighted to find out that our Italian families were rooted only 50 miles apart, Nino’s in Parma, and Steve’s in small hill towns near Pontremoli. Some blog readers might have been privileged to participate in Nino's annual Parmigiana Reggiano ritual, but not everyone knew the struggles Steve and Nino endured in the early days, cutting up an 85 pound wheel of cheese covered with a rind seemingly borrowed from a rhinoceros. We tried every knife in the house, multiple saws, and guitar wire. Eventually we got the hang of it, and by the time Nino left Madison he’d obtained a set of the “tagliagrana” knives that the pros use. Of course, one wouldn’t spend an hour cutting up a wheel of cheese without sharing a good bottle of Montepulciano, which helped pass the time. Once you’ve got a share of the wheel, what do you do with it? Everything! On soups, pastas, a few chunks with a glass of wine. Nino also took Steve under his wing in the kitchen; every time Steve makes a variation of the risottos Nino taught him, Nino’s there again, in the kitchen in spirit, whether the rest of him is in Wisconsin or Minnesota or wherever he’s at now.
