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real estate financial modeling courses

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Real Estate Financial Modeling Accelerator (Updated May 2026)

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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S-Curve Forecasting in Real Estate Development (Updated June 2026)

One of the reasons Michael and I blog, is to force ourselves to be continually learning. I built the first version of my real estate waterfall model, because I wanted to better understand the mechanics of modeling an equity waterfall with IRR…
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Create Your First Excel Macro with AI

Most people in commercial real estate still think Excel macros are for “the IT guy down the hall.” You underwrite, you manage rent rolls, you crank out lender packages in Excel all day… but the moment someone says “VBA,” you are…
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Supercharge Excel with the ‘Excel 4 CRE’ Add-In – Now with AI (Updated Jan 2026)

Today, we're thrilled to share with the A.CRE community a new timesaving (and free) Excel tool: the 'Excel 4 CRE' Add-in! Over the past few years, we at A.CRE (together with various AI coding tools) have been developing and sharing this Excel…
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Excel Speed Tip – Insert or Delete a Row or Column Without a Mouse (Updated Dec 2025)

Using keyboard shortcuts is essential to improving the speed and efficiency at which you model real estate in Excel. One thing you'll learn early in your CRE career, the more proficient you become in using your keyboard without a mouse to navigate…
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Best Practices in Real Estate Financial Modeling (Updated Nov 2025)

Before you use one of our real estate financial models (i.e. Excel templates), or before you set out to build your own real estate analysis tool in Excel, it's important to keep in mind a few real estate financial modeling best practices. This…
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How to Prepare for the Real Estate Technical Interview (Updated Nov 2025)

So you've made it past the HR screening interview. You have the education and experience the company is looking for, but now they want to be sure you possess the real estate financial modeling skills necessary to do the job. They've asked…
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The Definitive Guide to Microsoft Excel for Real Estate (Updated Oct 2025)

Microsoft Excel is the primary tool used by real estate financial modeling professionals. Even while numerous non-Excel alternatives have attempted to de-throne Excel, the 35+ year-old software has shown to be surprisingly resilient to competition.…
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The Best AI Tools for Excel in 2025

At A.CRE, we offer what we believe to be the best AI training program for real estate and the best real estate financial modeling training program - period! From both sides of that training, we consistently hear the same question: “What…
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Excel Shortcuts For Real Estate Financial Modeling (Updated Oct 2025)

One of the lesser talked about, yet most impactful, skills in real estate financial modeling is keyboard efficiency. If you’ve ever watched one of our tutorials or Accelerator sessions, you’ve probably seen the models flying by, with formulas…
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Fix the 0% XIRR Issue in Excel Using XIRR + FILTER

Over the course of my career, I’ve modeled hundreds of real estate investments, from large portfolio roll-ups to complex mixed-use developments. And one issue I’ve consistently run into, especially when modeling portfolio or mixed-use cash…
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Excel’s Stale Value Formatting: What It Means and Why It Matters (Updated Aug 2025)

We recently received an email from an A.CRE reader using one of our real estate financial models with a curious question. He explained that many of the cells in his model suddenly had a strikethrough applied to the text. Naturally, he wondered…
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The Conditional Weighted Average – SUMPRODUCT with SUMIF (Updated July 2025)

Consider this scenario: you have a 50 tenant rent roll, consisting of various tenant types (i.e. small inline, large inline, junior anchor, anchor, etc.), and you want to calculate the weighted average rent for each tenant type. If I asked you,…
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Watch Me Build a Residential Land Development Model (Updated June 2025)

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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Microsoft has blocked the macros in my A.CRE model – What now?

When downloading and opening an Excel model from A.CRE, some users may get the ominous message: "Microsoft has blocked macros from running because the source of this file is untrusted." If you've received this message, you're probably asking,…
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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…