Entries by Spencer Burton

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Single Tenant NNN Lease Valuation Model (Updated May 2025)

I originally built this single tenant net lease (NNN) valuation Excel model back in 2016. Based on some feedback from a few of our readers, I’ve since made quite a few updates (see v2.0 updates video below). This model is an attempt to re-think how the industry underwrites single-tenant net lease investments. The model is […]

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How I Built a Real Estate DCF Web App with AI in Five Minutes

Over the past year, we’ve been experimenting heavily with (and successfully using) AI coding tools to push the boundaries of what’s possible in commercial real estate. We’ve used v0 to quickly scope frontend designs, and we’ve spun up various web apps using tools like Replit, Bolt.new, Lovable, and Cursor to support everything from content creation […]

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Real Estate Headline Sentiment Index – Help Shape It, Get Early Access

Want a better way to track what’s happening in CRE markets—before traditional metrics catch up? We’re partnering with Marquette University to build a powerful new AI-powered metric called the Real Estate Headline Sentiment Index (REHSI) —and we need 30-seconds of your time to help guide it (and in return, we’ll get you free early access!). […]

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Tutorial on How to Model Irregular Growth Rates in Real Estate

When building a real estate financial model, managing income and expense growth is rarely as simple as applying a fixed growth rate year over year. In real estate investment analysis, growth assumptions need to be flexible, dynamic, and reflective of real-world realities. One common challenge is modeling irregular growth rates, where: Growth occurs annually but […]

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Simple Acquisition Model for Office, Retail, Industrial Properties (Updated Dec 2024)

A few years back, on a sleepy Saturday afternoon while my kids were busy eating Halloween candy, I decided to create a simple real estate acquisition model in Excel for office, retail, and industrial deals. Since then, I’ve made various updates, including error fixes and functional improvements. The model calculates returns at the property and […]

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Using COUNTIFS, SUMIFS, and AVERAGEIFS Excel Functions in Real Estate Underwriting (Updated Dec 2024)

Why use COUNTIFS, SUMIFS, and AVERAGEIFS functions in real estate? When real estate analysts first start their careers, they’re often required to work with large data sets and to transpose property and portfolio information from one format to another in Excel. At first, being unfamiliar with many of Excel’s functions, they manually perform these operations. […]