Real Estate Financial Modeling Accelerator (Updated Nov 2024)
Prior to launching the Accelerator program, Michael and I fielded email after email requesting a more structured real estate financial modeling training program on the site.
Over the years, we've covered hundreds of real estate modeling…
Best Practices in Real Estate Financial Modeling (Updated Nov 2024)
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…
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…
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,…
Using COUNTIFS, SUMIFS, and AVERAGEIFS Excel Functions in Real Estate Underwriting (Updated Aug 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…
Supercharge Excel with the ‘Excel 4 CRE’ Add-In (Updated Aug 2024)
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 year, we at A.CRE (together with our new favorite companion, ChatGPT!) have been developing and sharing this…
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…
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…
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…
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…
An Overview Of IPMT and PPMT Excel Functions – Uses And Drawbacks (Model + Case Study)
We recently received an intriguing question in the Q&A section of the A.CRE Real Estate Financial Modeling Accelerator regarding the uses of the IPMT and PPMT Excel functions. As such, I’d like to take the opportunity to discuss it.
First…
Quick Thoughts on Evaluating Real Estate Investments Without Opening Excel
In our industry (commercial real estate), the ability to quickly evaluate investment opportunities is crucial for staying competitive. I know I've found in my professional career, that having a clear framework for evaluating - and then either…
Watch Me Build – Modeling a Rent Schedule in Both Excel and Using AI (Updated May 2024)
In this Watch Me Build video I show you how to build a custom rent schedule module for long-term leases. The foundation of the module is a simple INDEX/MATCH combination that takes a rent schedule and models the rent cash flows across the entire…
Hide and Unhide Tabs using Drop-down Menus in Excel (Updated Apr 2024)
I'd like to share a handy little trick I learned this week for hiding and unhiding tabs in Excel using drop-down menus. Now this method requires you to use some basic VBA code and to save the Workbook as a Macro-Enabled file but don't be intimidated…
The Definitive Guide to Microsoft Excel for Real Estate (Updated Apr 2024)
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.…
The Conditional Weighted Average – SUMPRODUCT with SUMIF (Updated Apr 2024)
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,…