About us
Today's bulwiengesa AG was formed in 2004 through a merger, as the predecessor company founded by Hartmut Bulwien joined forces with gesa GmbH.
It was in 1983 that Hartmut Bulwien set up the "Munich Institute for Market, Regional and Economic Research." Its focus was initially on the housing market while its clientele consisted of property developers and investors, with municipalities and financing institutes added later on. In the 1990s, the institute started providing professional consulting services for the office segment and for special real estate. Having systematically collected data from the start, it began to merge its data in the RIWIS database in 1990. This led to the creation of the bulwiengesa Property Market Index, among other things, a unique long-term index that has been used not least by the Deutsche Bundesbank since the early zero years.
In 1991, shortly after Germany’s reunification, the former Bulwien & Partner GmbH opened an office in Berlin in order to have a footprint in the East German states. In 1999, it was transformed into public limited company named Bulwien AG. Its stock has been held by senior members of the management in partnership, especially so since the merger.
To cover the retail segment, Bulwien AG began to collaborate with gesa GmbH in the mid-1990s. The core competence of gesa, which was part of the Coop Group before it became independent, was the evaluation of retail locations through detailed analyses and sales estimates. With the merger of the two businesses in 2004, the new company gained its Hamburg office.
In 2008, bulwiengesa opened another branch office in Frankfurt in order to be closer to its clients in the financial sector. In 2014, bulwiengesa appraisal GmbH was spun off as a subsidiary specializing in property valuations. The company’s first branch office in the Ruhr will open in Essen in 2020.
Hartmut Bulwien
For more than two and a half decades, Hartmut Bulwien, who holds a degree in geography, held a senior management position in the company he founded. In 2006, he left the company’s management in the care of long-standing employees in order to join its supervisory board, which he chaired from 2009 to 2018 and whose honorary chairman he has been ever since. In recognition of his achievements, Hartmut Bulwien was made an RICS Fellow and an Honorary Member of the IMMOEBS e.V. alumni association.
Also notable are his activities in the gif research society for the real estate industry (gif e.V.), which he co-founded in 1993 and which he actively served as a board member for two decades and as its president for ten years. He also co-founded Germany’s main real estate trade fair, Expo Real, and remains on its advisory board to this day. As a lecturer, Hartmut Bulwien taught at several universities, including the ebs Real Estate Academy in Oestrich-Winkel, the IREBS Real Estate Business School at the University of Regensburg, the Business Economics and Environment University (HfWU) in Nürtingen-Geislingen, the Institute for Architecture and Urban Development at the Biberach University of Applied Science, the German Real Estate Academy (DIA) Freiburg and the University of Technology Munich. In addition, he served on the Association Council of the German Association for Housing, Urban and Spatial Development, and was among the first members of the Immobilienweisen expert panel (2003-2009). Not least, he has frequently lectured at events and authored a number of publications.
For a full-length interview with Hartmut Bulwien, go to our company blog.
