About SRR Consulting

SRR Consulting is the research shop for real estate investors, owners, and agents who need actionable investment strategy, market and property-level analysis, and ongoing research content. For real estate data providers and SAAS clients, SRR Consulting works with development teams to create research-oriented applications and products to monetize data science and predictive analytics.

SRR Consulting was founded by Sara R. Rutledge in 2018. Ms. Rutledge has a diverse, twenty-five-year background in real estate research and economics. Her rich experience working with data providers, brokerage services, and investment management makes SRR Consulting unique in its capabilities to support a wide variety of real estate decisions.

Ms. Rutledge began her real estate career in 1999 with Atlanta-based Jamison Research Inc., learning about the industry directly from market participants. The firm was acquired by CoStar Group Inc. and Ms. Rutledge moved into research for brokerage services at Delta Associates, then the research affiliate of Transwestern Commercial Services. She jumped at this role for the opportunity to initiate market research coverage of major metros in her native state of Texas. Her success in creating new market coverage for Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston led to the responsibility for additional market coverage in Austin, Phoenix, Los Angeles/Orange County, and Chicago.

She joined the U.S. research team at Invesco Real Estate in 2005 to apply additional strengths in econometrics and statistics. Ms. Rutledge developed biannual investment strategy in an interdisciplinary team for direct real estate investment in major metros across the western U.S. and the industrial market nationally. This involved quarterly, individual market forecasts by property type, a task she completed for her market set while managing forecast quality control for the team. For property sector strategy, she developed an econometric model to analyze relative real estate investment performance across markets for each property type. She also developed an econometric model to forecast U.S. real gross domestic product and lead the economic view underpinning the team’s real estate forecasts.

During her tenure at Invesco, Ms. Rutledge spent four semesters as an Adjunct Professor of Research Methods at her alma mater, the University of North Texas. The course was taught in her former department, the Institute of Applied Economics, which has since been combined into the Department of Economics.

Ms. Rutledge next moved into a leadership role, joining CBRE as their Director of Research and Analysis for Texas. She led research functions and staff for Texas and Oklahoma, ensuring accuracy and comprehensiveness of their proprietary data and reporting, preparing white papers, delivering presentations, and engaging with the media. She integrated research activities in energy-driven markets into CBRE’s global Energy Industry Vertical and prepared an Americas-level report on real estate opportunities in these areas.

Her expertise in working with real estate data and managing research processes opened a new opportunity to join real estate’s investment management industry association. Ms. Rutledge left Texas for Chicago to serve as the Director of Research for the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF), managing all research activities for the association. She provided outreach and education for NCREIF data product releases via a live webinar presentation, in-house Performance Report, and ad-hoc member and media inquiries.

Ms. Rutledge also worked with an early-stage data science start-up serving the real estate industry. As Managing Director of Real Estate Products at StratoDem Analytics, she ensured existing and new products within their research platform met the research needs of the real estate industry. She was responsible for product development, content creation, and UI/UX design and worked with prospects and clients to incorporate the SAAS platform into existing research processes.

In 2022, Ms. Rutledge took a hiatus from SRR Consulting to join StepStone Real Estate as Managing Director and Head of Global Market Research to build-out their team-wide House Views process. The resulting biannual report and webinar informed clients about the global macroeconomic view, real estate performance projections, and country/property type portfolio positioning. She also work with StepStone Group leadership and risk management to define firm-wide macroeconomic views underlying private equity investment strategies. After developing and running these projects for two years, Ms. Rutledge relaunched her business in 2024 with new subscription options added to her bespoke research services.

She has co-authored two academic papers on real estate performance topics. The Real Estate Research Institute-funded “No Encore for Non-core? Property-level returns in the private real estate market” added a property-level analysis to existing research on the benefits, or lack thereof, of including non-core real estate in core portfolios. In “The Impact of Hurricanes on the Value and Returns for Commercial Real Estate”, published in Business Economics, she explored the duration and impact of the most damaging hurricanes on real estate values with her NCREIF colleague, Dr. Fisher.

Ms. Rutledge is a full member of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and serves on ULI Chicago Women’s Leadership Initiative Advisory Board and is active in the ULI Research Forum. She previously served on the Real Estate Research Institute Advisory Board and National Association for Business Economics (NABE) Board of Directors. She remains an active volunteer for NABE, serving on the Business Conditions Survey Committee and Commercial Real Estate Roundtable and Meetup. She speaks at industry events, is available to the media, and has been published in Institutional Real Estate Investor Americas.