ADP Research

Issi Romem has been an economist and a fellow at ADP Research since 2021. He is the founder of MetroSight, an economics research firm with deep expertise in housing and urban and labor economics. He is an affiliate of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley.

Before establishing MetroSight, Issi was chief economist at Trulia, a housing portal, and senior director of housing and urban economics at real estate marketplace Zillow. He served as chief economist at construction platform BuildZoom Inc., advised the Rentonomics team at rental marketplace Apartment List, and worked as an economist at OnPoint Analytics Inc. and the Bay Area Council, a business association in San Francisco.

Issi’s research and writing on metropolitan growth patterns, construction trends, and housing have been featured in major publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and more. He regularly speaks at industry and research forums.

He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University. He holds a doctorate in economics from U.C. Berkeley, where he was advised by Nobel laureate David Card, Robert Helsley, and Enrico Moretti. He was an adjunct professor of econometrics in Berkeley’s economics department.