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Real Estate Financial Modeling Accelerator (Updated Jan 2025)

Before launching the Accelerator program, Michael and I received countless emails requesting a more structured, step-by-step real estate financial modeling training program. Over the years, we've covered hundreds of real estate modeling…
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Watch Me Build a Dynamic Mortgage Amortization Table in Excel (Updated September 2024)

There are a few basic, yet fundamental, real estate modeling skills you must master before anyone will take you seriously as a real estate professional. Building a mortgage amortization schedule is one of them. Virtually every model you…
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Deep Dive – Land Acquisition and Assemblage (Updated September 2024)

This is a topic I'm all too familiar with. You see, I cut my teeth in real estate largely sourcing and negotiating residential and mixed-use land acquisition opportunities.  I've put land deals together both as a fiduciary and as a principal,…
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Watch Me Build a Residential Land Development Model (Updated Sept 2024)

Over the years, we've created a sizable library of Watch Me Build videos covering Excel models for various real estate investment and property types. However, we've yet to create a Watch Me Build involving for-sale product. So this weekend,…
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Watch Me Build a 3-Tier Real Estate Equity Waterfall Model (Updated Aug 2024)

As I've mentioned in other Watch Me Build posts, one way to become a better real estate financial modeling professional, is to watch other professionals model. Thus, the more exposure you can get to other's methods, the more adept a real estate…
Real Estate Tokenization
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Exploring Tokenization in Commercial Real Estate

I have always been interested in developing technology trends, and, in the spirit of exploring future possibilities in our industry, I wanted to discuss a developing trend of tokenization in commercial real estate. If you're not yet familiar…
Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) Property
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A.CRE 101: How To Use The Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) Method To Value Income Producing Property (Updated Aug 2024)

The Discounted Cash Flow Method is a method to value a project by taking all future projected cash flows of the project and discounting them back to time zero (date of purchase) using a predetermined discount rate (the discount rate when used…
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How to Run Monte Carlo Simulations in Excel (Updated Aug 2024)

So you want to run Monte Carlo simulations in Excel, but your project isn't large enough or you don't do this type of probabilistic analysis enough to warrant buying an expensive add-in. Well, you've come to the right place. Excel's built-in…
Through The Entitlement Process
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Through The Entitlement Process: Identifying Risks and Strategies For Mitigation (Updated Aug 2024)

Investing in and developing an unentitled site, broadly speaking, is one of the riskiest, yet rewarding, endeavors in the commercial real estate industry. The entitlement process, in particular, is fraught with the potential for setbacks and…
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Analyzing Value-Add Investments in Real Estate Using Yield-on-Cost (Updated Aug 2024)

So a question recently came in around why a commercial real estate investor would use the Yield-on-Cost metric to assess a value-add real estate investment. This question came on the heals of several other questions also related to development…
SUMPRODUCT Weighted Average
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Using SUMPRODUCT to Calculate Weighted Average in Real Estate (Updated Aug 2024)

In my experience, using the SUMPRODUCT function in Excel to calculate weighted average is one of the most oft-used Excel techniques in real estate financial modeling. I learned this technique on day one of my first real estate internship and…
Using the Cash-on-Cash Return in Real Estate Investment Analysis
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Using the Cash-on-Cash Return in Real Estate Investment Analysis (Updated Aug 2024)

I’ve fielded a handful of Cash-on-Cash (CoC) return questions of late. So, I thought it would be worthwhile to write a post on what the Cash-on-Cash return metric tells me about a potential real estate investment. This article is a primer,…
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LinkedIn Job Search 101 for CRE Professionals (Updated Aug 2024)

Our goal with this post is to help you use LinkedIn most effectively in your job search. It's the first post in a series of a LinkedIn 101 networking series to help you get the most out of this resource. Because commercial real estate is such…
UNDERWRITING CAPITAL RESERVES
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The Road To A Stabilized NOI – Underwriting Real Estate Capital Reserves (Case Study – Case Only)

Achieving a stabilized Net Operating Income (NOI) in real estate requires careful planning and sound execution. One element that can cause confusion is when underwriting capital reserves. Should they go above the line (i.e., as an Operating…
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Analyzing a Real Estate Investment from the Perspective of an LP

We received a question from an A.CRE reader this week that I thought warranted a thorough response. The question was, and I paraphrase, "I am an LP looking for models to help vet syndication deals. Do you have any models that can be used to…
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Tips to Nail Your Next Commercial Real Estate Interview (Updated July 2024)

Recently, our team partnered with the Graduate Real Estate Council at Cornell University where we worked with their students in providing mock interviews with Cornell alumni. Our goal in this effort was to help these students at the beginning…