The finance paradigm dominates Real estate curricula throughout the world since the beginning of the 1980s. Initially cash flow and investment analysis paved the way for capital asset pricing theory and option models. Real Estate has to a great extent been influenced by corporate finance. An initiative from the Swedish banking sector creates a new profile for research and teaching at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Focus is on retail banking and the role of the financial industry in the urban management process. Research projects are formulated that deals with the organizational, technical, ethnical and legal interface between the financial service provider and the customer, as well as projects that are about new techniques for market analysis related to housing and creative instruments for young house-buyers equity and debt financing. The research is complemented with new bachelor and master programs directed to both the real estate and banking sectors. The aim of the paper is to describe and evaluate the initiative in an international university context.