Entries by Spencer Burton

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Using OpenAI’s ChatGPT to Create an Excel Macro for a Real Estate Model

At some point in the past few months, you’ve undoubtedly heard about ChatGPT. It seems everyone is talking about it. But how useful is the tool actually? And in particular, how useful is it to real estate financial modeling professionals? In this tutorial I show one very real, very helpful application for the engine that […]

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We Need Your Help – Survey for A.CRE Events (2023)

We need your help to improve our event programming! Last year the A.CRE team organized a combined 43 events, including virtual webinars, in-person meetings, conference keynotes, student speaker events, an A.CRE retreat to Mexico, and various happy hours. During our in-person trips to New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, the unanimous feedback we received […]

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Learning Real Estate Financial Modeling in Excel

We’re often asked by our readers how we learned to be proficient in real estate financial modeling. The question usually arises because the person wants to know how to model real estate in Excel to either land a job in commercial real estate (e.g., private equity, development, acquisition, debt) or to analyze their own deals. […]

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The Advanced Mortgage Amortization Module (Updated Jul 2022)

In recent months, I’ve been working on an advanced real estate investment amortization table with interest-only capability, fixed and variable interest rates, multiple interest calculation methods (i.e. 30/360, Actual/Actual, Actual/365, Actual/360), monthly and annual periods, duration calculation, lender yield calculation, average life calculation, static and dynamic debt service payments, loan assumptions, and more. This module […]

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Watch Me Build – American-Style Real Estate Equity Waterfall (Updated Jun 2022)

A few years ago, I recorded my screen as I built a 3-tier real estate equity waterfall model. What I didn’t mention in that Watch Me Build video, is that the kind of waterfall I built is colloquially called a European-style equity waterfall. And while that type of waterfall is extremely common, both in the […]

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Tenant Sales and Occupancy Cost in Retail Underwriting (UPDATED JUNE 2022)

When underwriting a retail investment, rollover risk is an incredibly important consideration. You, as a prospective debt or equity investor in the property, need to understand how secure the cash flows you’re buying are; or in other words, how likely each tenant is to renew their lease at the end of their lease term. This is […]

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Forecasting After-Tax Cash Flow in Real Estate Analysis (Updated May 2022)

When modeling real estate investments, industry practice is generally to stop at before-tax cash flow. And this makes sense in most instances. No two owners of real estate have the exact same tax situation and no two properties necessarily have the exact same tax treatment. So comparing the projected returns of two properties on an […]

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Scenario Analysis Tool using the Equity Waterfall Model (UPDATED MAY 2022)

I received a question this morning asking how to use scenario (or sensitivity) analysis with our Real Estate Equity Waterfall Model. I started to answer the question via email, decided to build an Excel file to go along with my answer, and ultimately concluded that a video would be the easiest way to walk you through […]

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Real Estate Capital Account Tracking Tool (UPDATED MAY 2022)

I’ll be the first to admit that real estate asset management doesn’t get the attention it deserves on AdventuresinCRE.com. The real reason for this is that we’re not necessarily asset management experts. I spent some time working in asset management as an intern and I took my fair share of asset management courses during my graduate real […]