Tag Archives: GRES

ULI/Gerald D. Hines Urban Design Competition

Posted on by
Reply

Hello, readers! As promised in my last post, I am here to tell you about my excellent adventure with the Hines ULI Real Estate Competition!

This November, my beloved Mentor/Peer Advisor/Graduate Real Estate Society President talked me into participating in this competition, even though I was 100% confident I would be unable to succeed since I had never actually built a real estate model before. I then realized that this would be an amazing opportunity to prepare for a summer internship in real estate, and it absolutely was.

Let me back up and explain this competition. UT had 9 teams participating, with one MBA student per team. There are around 200 teams competing in this competition nationwide. Our task was to take a case study based on a potential piece of property, come up with a design consisting of anything from office, commercial, multi family, retail, etc. etc., and make sure that it will be financially profitable by building a Pro Forma model and pricing out each property on the potential campus.

School started on January 17th. As did the competition. It continued throughout the first two weeks of school as I was put on a team with other graduate students in the school of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning. We received our case on the first day, and this year, the site happened to be in Houston! For me this was great, since I have lived in Houston my whole life and know the area like the back of my hand. Although I was not the designer, I was able to give them tips on what might and might not work in that area.

Hines ULI Competition

Hines ULI Competition

And so we began to plan. The days were long, the design was ever changing, and the task at hand was beyond challenging. As I mentioned earlier, it was totally worth it.

We did not have our final design until the last 3 or so days. This means I really couldn’t do much of the financial modeling until crunch time. Let me tell you, crunch time was intense. Luckily the 9 MBAs participating were all helping each other based on our past professional experiences and combining our research. I learned more during this process than I could have ever imagined. I now feel so much more confident going into a summer internship than I did before participating in this.

Now, the question people always ask me when I talk about this competition…… Did we win???

Unfortunately, I don’t know yet! The judgement process is a long one, and there are 200 teams participating, so I am not exactly holding my breath. I am just glad I was able to participate in such an experience and would highly suggest it to any first year real estate students next year who really need exposure to the financial side of the business!

Sidenote – If you have emailed me with questions about the Real Estate program here at McCombs (or with any other questions for that matter) and I haven’t gotten back with you, please email me again! I try my best to keep up, but as you now know, my first few weeks of school were pretty swamped and I might have lost track of a few of you!

A real estate student with some free time

Posted on by
Reply

Hello, blogosphere! I know it has been a while since my last post (…wow… November!) so let me tell you what all has been going on in my student life. First of all… Finals. We all know how that goes, so that is a good enough excuse for me being MIA in early December. However, I then had a 5 week Christmas vacation… which was both awesome and well deserved for all of us after our grueling first semester!

Although many of my classmates took amazing trips to Thailand, Brazil, Australia, and many other places all over the world… I took an exotic 4 week long vacation to Houston, TX where I settled in to my high school room at my parent’s house. Fancy, I know. Other than sleeping until at least 10am about 70% of the time, I was marginally productive at other times! Our winter vacation is a great opportunity to start on that internship search, meet with companies, and do whatever else you need to do while you actually have the time to do so.

For me, I had a few goals for things to accomplish over the break, as follows:

1. Keep up with my informational interviews. As a real estate student, I am still learning about my options and different career paths I could take. The most helpful thing for me so far has been talking to companies. It is a little too early for real estate companies to be hiring summer interns since usually these opportunities are project specific, but it is always great to be making contacts and learning more about each company.

2. Get going with my new GRES officer position. I was recently appointed as the new VP of Communications for the Graduate Real Estate Society. My two main tasks will be starting up our new website (stay tuned, real estate people!) and also starting a bi-annual newsletter. I took some time over break to outline my goals, to-do’s, and people to contact. Both the website and the newsletter will probably roll out around March, but it is never too early to get organized.

3. Teach myself some real estate modeling. So, as a student with a construction management background, the main reason I went back to school was to get more exposure to the finance side of the business. I am very excited to be taking my first two real estate classes this semester with Professor Cahoon and Professor Hallman, who are both great professors with impressive real estate and finance backgrounds. For the first two weeks back at school, I am participating in the Hines ULI Real Estate Competition, where I am the MBA student on a team with architecture, landscape, and urban planning students to create a design and financial analysis of a potential real estate project in downtown Houston. The University of Texas has 9 teams competing in this national competition. Much more to come on this subject once it is over (January 31st). So in order to prepare for this, I signed up for an online class on real estate modeling just to catch me up to speed.

So, here I am, back to school! Day 2 has just ended after a day of classes and meetings with my competition team. To be honest, I was bored out of my mind by the end of my Christmas break. Business school has made me come to love being busy! Of course, the core classes are necessary building blocks to get you where you need to be, but I am very excited about the classes I have signed up for this semester now that the core is behind us. Although… I am sad now that I only have one class with my beloved Cohort 3… they are the best!

McCombs hosts the National Real Estate Challenge

Posted on by
Reply

Last week, McCombs had the pleasure of hosting 16 teams from the top MBA programs in the country to compete in the National Real Estate Challenge sponsored by companies like Morgan Stanley, The Blackstone Group, Hines, Prudential Real Estate Investors, JLL, Cerberus Capital Management, HFF, Clarion, Weingarten, RREEF, Kimco, The Lionstone Group, Archstone, Archon, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan, and GE Asset Management.

The National Real Estate Challenge is a great opportunity for students in the real estate concentration to compete on a difficult case and gain experience in handling these types of issues that will inevitably arise in their careers. Brian Thomas, a second-year McCombs MBA student who competed this year said “Quality case writing is crucial. A quality case with many dimensions allows students to stretch the boundaries of their knowledge, skills, and abilities. This year’s case was written by JP Morgan and had all the elements of a well-written real estate finance case.”  Within the context of an incredibly volatile real estate market, this case was centered on finding a viable deal structure and aligning interest for a portfolio of assets.

Brian Thomas, Jason Levine, and Allen Logue from the McCombs challenge team

Brian Thomas, Jason Levine, and Allen Logue from the McCombs challenge team

The teams received the case on the previous Thursday and had until Sunday evening to turn in their presentations. As you can imagine, this requires around-the-clock work during that short period of time. The teams submitted their presentations by 5pm on Sunday and then traveled to Austin on Wednesday for the competition.

On Thursday, each of the teams presented to a panel of judges and four teams were chosen to move on to the finals. These teams then presented their case to all of the judges and a winner was selected. This year’s grand prize went to the University of North Carolina, but every team presented an impressive solution to the case and the competition was tight. All teams benefit from this experience, especially given the opportunity to network with the judges from so many prestigous companies and with the teams from all of the other schools. “It’s a rare opportunity to bring together nearly 100 of the top real estate MBA students from the top 16 real estate MBA programs. In doing so, students get to learn from the perspectives/experience of their peers and learn more about the offerings at other programs” said Thomas.

One of the many perks of McCombs is the Real Estate Finance and Investment Center (REFIC) that we have available to us. REFIC is the first research center at a leading university to specialize in the intersection of real estate and finance. Without REFIC, events like this would not be possible. Brian Thomas says“Having the organization, resources, and infrastructure in place to pull off an event of this magnitude is not an easy task. The organizers do a great job making this event possible and contributing to its longstanding reputation.” As students, we are very appreciative of the real estate resources provided to us here at McCombs.

If you have any questions regarding the National Real Estate Challenge or would like to be put in contact with one of the students who competed on this year’s team, please contact me at your convenience.