MS.RED SUMMER 2013 COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

Being The Client

Professor Brooks McDaniel

1.5 Points

This course will study the relationship between the developer and the architect, and will explore the development process with respect to design, project management, schedule, and risk. The objective of this course is to gain an understanding of the role of the full development team, expose the students to a variety of case studies, and provide a framework for decision making during the development process.

Development Market Analysis

Professors Ryan LeVasseur and Shuprotim Bhaumik

1.5 Points

Critical factors in national, regional, and urban real estate markets that determine development opportunities. Course topics include business and construction cycles, regional and urban economic trending, restructuring of urban space dynamics, hotel and retail feasibility and demand analysis, commercial and industrial location theories, and demographic analysis and projection techniques.

Finance Modeling II

Professor Min Suh

1.5 Points

This is the second level financial modeling course further developing the fundamental skills and higher level modeling techniques required to create real estate specific financial models utilizing the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet software. Topics include core real estate form construction, asset specific modeling components, flexible model construction, leverage integration, analysis techniques and best practices. This course is intended for students with no exposure to real estate specific financial models and unrelated financial modeling experience.

Students will be able to demonstrate capabilities and knowledge through homework assignments and casework.

By the end of the semester students will be able to:
- Translate and demonstrate advanced Real Estate Finance concepts utilizing Excel
- Demonstrate competency in constructing core real estate financial model forms
- Construct various asset class specific model forms
- Analyze various complex real estate financial model forms

Global Property Investments in Emerging Markets

Professor John Tsui

1.5 Points

This course will provide very practical case studies coupled with lectures from senior executives focused investment in real estate assets and entities in global developed and emerging markets. Cases will focus on bottom up valuation approach vs. the widely used top down valuation approach. Land residual technique, plus extraction technique as a way to reconcile the top down approach via the value derivation of land and building value and comparing land value as a percentage of total value. As an alternative to land residual technique reconciliation, cases will illustrate partitioning of cash flow and residual value.

Curriculum will encompass case studies ranging from an overview of emerging market property investments and its risks, restructuring of a busted convertible loan of a Chinese property company, anchored shopping mall in China, sale lease back and “built to suit” logistics warehouse in Brazil, acquisition of distressed empty office building in Berlin, investing in high yield and special situation in China and India, structured debt and hybrid equity and quasi debt securities investments in a Chinese listed property entity.

History of Real Estate Development in New York City

Professor Kate Ascher

3 Points

The History of New York City Real Estate Development offers a historical survey of the last four centuries of real estate development in New York City. It relies not only on existing sources, widely available and held by Columbia libraries, but also on material from the collection of Seymour Durst – a patriarch of one of New York City’s foremost real estate families and a passionate collector of New York City historical memorabilia. His collection was recently gifted to Avery Library, and is in the process of being transported, catalogued and distributed there.

The course is structured primarily as a series of lectures, the first half in chronological order, the second half loosely thematic with additional focus on specific case studies. Because of the size of the class, where possible original materials from the Durst Collection will be reproduced and made available on Courseworks for students. Students will be encouraged to visit with the materials which will be made available at Avery for the purposes of the mid-term project. In addition, students will be required to make one or more field trips to particular locations they are studying, in addition to visiting “The Greatest Grid” exhibition currently at the Museum of the City of New York.

The course will cover the period from the original Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam in the early 1600’s through the present time. However, each presentation will also contain thematic elements, using real estate developments to examine social and economic forces of the period. These topics range from the earliest systems of landholding and the evolution of the Manhattan street grid through the development of the nation’s first public housing projects and the construction of the world’s tallest skyscrapers. The latter part of the course will touch specifically on modern themes that continue to shape the real estate environment of the city today. These include the continued regeneration of a once-industrial waterfront, the ever-evolving nature of public-private partnerships in development, and the seminal connection between transportation hubs and real estate.

Institutional Real Estate

Professor Andre Kuzmicki

1.5 Points

The course examines institutional real estate investment strategy and decision-making. Topics will include portfolio theory and the role of real estate in an institutional portfolio; investment styles; manager and vehicle selection; and, risk assessment. Extensive use will be made of cases. The objectives of the course would be to establish a context for institutional approaches to real estate; expose the students to a variety of investment vehicles and structures some of which they may examine in greater depth in subsequent courses; and to further their investment evaluation skills, emphasizing both qualitative and quantitative analysis.

Real Estate Finance I: Fundamentals

Professor Manish Srivastava

3 Points

Prerequisites: Familiarity with excel functionality, concepts of net present value, and other financial formulae. This course is an introduction to the methods of financial analysis for real estate investments. Topics include methods of valuation, cash flow forecasting, computer modeling, debt, leverage, and deal structures. Emphasis is placed on the financing of individual projects. This course requires greater than average preparation time. It is heavily oriented toward numerical analysis and makes use of case studies and computer spreadsheet analysis.

Real Estate Investment Analysis

Professor Frank Gallinelli

1.5 Points

This course is intended specifically to benefit those students who have a somewhat limited background in finance by offering an "applied finance" approach to mastering key real estate investment concepts. Using several different property types as examples, the course evaluates various scenarios of potential acquisition, cash flow, financing, resale, and partnership. The course analyses specific metrics to identify what appears to be favorable about each investment, what is problematic, and what might be missing from the scenario as presented. The course objective is for students to learn to recognize and understand key concepts and metrics through an inductive approach. By examining the specifics of each property and the market it is in, they will apprehend the relevant financial concepts using this inferential method.

Residential Marketing

Professor Elisa Orlanski Ours

1.5 Points

This class will review case studies and lessons learned from programming residential Master Plans to Micro Units, with a focus on public programing (outdoors spaces, lobbies, amenities, hotel services and mixed use components) and private planning (new construction vs conversion, relationship of multiple towers, view studies, unit mix, residential guidelines for cores and back of house/front of house circulation).

The Transaction Process: Debt, Equity and the Art of Negotiation

Professor Mitchell Adelstein

1.5 Points

This elective will teach practical methods and techniques used by investors, lenders, and equity investors: i) how to underwrite value-add opportunistic income-producing real estate, ii) finance positions in real estate using various debt facilities and/or equity vehicles, and iii) understand the transaction process through group participation in a mock transaction case study. The class will be split up into “Deal Teams” that will be responsible to underwrite and negotiate a deal to purchase, finance and close the transaction. The Deal Teams are encouraged to make a deal – in other words – the Buyers want to buy, the Lenders want to lend, the Sellers want to sell and Equity Investors want to invest. Each group will present their analysis and discuss the transaction process during the final session. Upon completion of this elective, students will be able to demonstrate capabilities and knowledge through case study and will be able to:

• Understand the roles of each key player in the transaction process
• Learn best practices in sourcing debt and equity capital
• Construct various debt and equity underwriting models
• Learn the art of negotiation by participation in a mock transaction

U.S. Housing Policy

Professor Deborah VanAmerongen

1.5 Points

This course will provide an overview of the interventions that the government has undertaken over the past several decades to address housing need. The focus will be on policies enacted by the federal government, but will also cover states’ and municipalities’ roles in administering federal programs, and tools they have utilized to aid in the provision and preservation of housing. This course is intended to provide useful background for students to go on to study housing finance.

URBAN ECONOMICS

Professor Ryan Severino

1.5 Points

The course largely concerns the introduction of space and location to microeconomics.
It intends to give students of real estate development an understanding of the underlying
economic principles related to real estate. Economic theory can enable the understanding of the
existence of cities, their size, and how they grow. It can also be utilized to understand land rents
and uses, the economics of housing, and the economics of commercial real estate.

Day & Time Location Points

Real Estate Development Practicum 2013

Professors Abby Hamlin, Douglas Gauthier, and Studio Directors

6 Points

Real estate development is a dynamic, multi-disciplinary field that requires solid knowledge of the business of real estate and a full understanding of the art of building design and development. The Development Practicum is an interdisciplinary course that combines formal classroom training in real estate development practice with hands-on studio experience in the fundamentals of site and building design. The course is organized around the analysis of two (2) development sites in New York City. These case studies are the framework for students to acquire knowledge about the integration of physical and financial thinking that is the essence of development practice. In addition, they serve as a focal point for students to acquire the skill set necessary to conduct physical and financial evaluation of development opportunities.
The two components of the Practicum are a lecture series and the development studios. A developer will lead the weekly Practicum lectures. Their purpose is to introduce students to the various methods and measures developers use to analyze the risk and reward of prospective projects. Required readings and assignments will supplement the lectures. The lectures will cover a broad array of topics and sectors, providing students with a comprehensive understanding of the issues they must address and the techniques they must use in order to make successful development decisions.
For the development studios the class will be divided into smaller sections. A Studio Director, who is a trained architect, will lead each section. In studio, students will work specifically on the physical considerations of development, by creating basic design schemes for the two case study sites. They will complete site observations, zoning analyses, and massing studies, and will devise a typical floor plan and building program for each site. Through studio, students will learn the spatial norms of building design and their affect on the functionality and marketability of different building types. This experience will prepare students to make more confident and creative development decisions, and to become better, more informed clients for the architects and other design consultants who they will later retain.
The culmination of the Practicum will be a recommended development scheme for each site that shows a full analysis of the site’s physical and financial issues. Students will prepare this scheme individually so that each one gains the full benefit of devising an approach to development decision-making.