Tag Archives: real estate

McCombs takes home the win in the UNC National Real Estate Development Challenge!

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This past week has been kind of a blur. After late nights at McCombs, early flights, and endless preparation for the UNC Real Estate Development Challenge, all of our hard work came together and really paid off. Out of 16 teams from Top 20 MBA programs in the US and Europe, we won first place in the challenge, and it was a blast.

Winning Texas MBA Team

With my teammates right after our win!

This year, the case was based in Houston and we were presented with the challenge of preparing a development presentation with a plan of how we would use the space. Our team focused on a 10 year project with four major phases. Our main focuses were on affordable residential development, an HEB grocery store, outdoor park space along the bayou, and some mid-rise offices in the long term.

Our team was comprised of Richard Long, Ziad Haddad, Mason Gilmore, and myself. The four of us brought in our background experiences in finance, real estate lending, architecture, and construction management. We were able to divide up the work and everyone had a crucial contribution the the plan. In the end, we knew we had a great development, and we were excited to present.

Once we found out we were going to the finals, we were thrilled. We rehearsed a few more times, and presented to a room full of judges and students with our highest hopes. We waited for the judges to deliberate, and finally, we were given our first prize winnings of $10,000.

I literally cannot put the excitement we felt into words. This was easily the most rewarding moment of my entire MBA experience. The opportunity to compete in such a challenging competition is a learning experience I will never forget.

I’m still so excited about all of this and can’t wait to light the UT Tower burnt orange with my teammates in honor of our national victory!

Time to hang up my hardhat…

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After an amazing summer here at Midway, my internship has finally come to an end. Going in on May 21st was so exciting… and now 14 weeks, involvement on 6 different development projects, and many new professional relationships later… it is over.

I am sad, yes. I want to keep working on these projects because they aren’t finished yet. I also get to hear about all of the new projects they have coming up, and I want to be involved on those too. I am hopeful that there will be an opportunity for me here when I graduate, and I am going to do my best to stay in touch with the team and come check out construction progress whenever I am in Houston.

So… on the other end of the emotional spectrum… I am really really really excited to get back to Austin. I do love my parents & coming home to a mother who has run my errands and picked up my groceries… but man am I ready to have my apartment back! I move back to Austin this Monday, and start school on Tuesday. That won’t be stressful at all…………………………

Anyways, what a summer! Such an experience and I never would have found myself at such a great company without my professional development at McCombs. Business school has opened up so many opportunities for me, and for that, I will always be grateful.

See y’all on Monday, McCombs!

Summer Internship in Real Estate Development

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Hello, readers! Long time since my last post… and it seems that I write that every time I post. I will do my best to make sure that changes, but you will see as an MBA student (and summer intern) how busy things can get! Last time I wrote, I was looking for an internship and trying to figure out where to live for the summer. A lot has happened since then! I moved back to Houston for the summer and started my internship at Midway Companies on May 21st. Let me start from the beginning of my search…

Starting around November and December, the dreaded internship search began. For real estate internships, you really have to do all of the work yourself. For me, I generally knew what I wanted to do, so I started by paying attention to my surroundings. See a project being built that looks interesting? Look at the sign. Who is the developer? Google them. Find their website. Find a contact. Figure out how to contact them. That’s basically what I did.

So, how did I find Midway? Anyone who has lived in Houston is likely familiar with CITYCENTRE. It is a big new outdoor retail/office/hotel/restaurant center where the old Town & Country mall used to be. Really cool project, and mixed-use projects are exactly what I was looking for. So, I did my research. After about 6 or 7 guesses, combining first name with last initial, first name with last name, first initial underscore last name, etc etc… I finally didn’t get an “undeliverable” bounce-back message! Better yet… I even got a response from the development director that I had emailed!

We set up a meeting. My first visit to the Midway office was in early January. I knew it was a great fit. I had a great conversation with my now-boss and held out hope for the remainder of the semester. We met one more time in April so I could interview with the two other development directors. Two weeks later, I received and accepted my offer to spend my summer with Midway Companies.

Now I am well into my internship. I have been so busy that the time has just flown by. I am essentially assisting in the development of 2 new buildings out here at CITYCENTRE, as well as the tenant buildout projects going on in the various spaces. I love it. I love that there is a lot going on, I love managing multiple projects at once, I love that this is one of the coolest spots to work/live/shop/eat in Houston, and most importantly, I respect the people I work with and the company overall.

So, that’s my check-in for now! If you have emailed me and I haven’t responded, I seriously apologize. Email me again! Nag me until I respond! Adios.

ULI/Gerald D. Hines Urban Design Competition

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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

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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!

A Top MBA and Home Ownership? One Student’s Surprising Discovery

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Upon relocating to Austin from Washington DC, MBA/Advertising Dual Degree Candidate Dan Driscoll was shocked at how low the cost of living was compared to other large cities. Excited about the opportunity to be homeowners, Dan and his fiancée, who were renting an apartment near campus, began looking at buying a home. They eventually settled on an apartment in the North-Central part of town and their experience was so positive that Dan wanted to share his story and make more prospective students aware of this option. The following post was written by Dan himself.

Quick: name the U.S. News top-20 MBA program where you can afford to own a nice, spacious home in a truly urban setting.

Sounds like an oxymoron, right? Here’s a hint: this MBA program is in the same city that ranks #1 on Kiplinger’s 2010 Best Cities for the Next Decade list, #2 in Parenting’s Best Cities for Families and #12 in Bloomberg’s 2011 America’s Best Places list. It is also just 20 minutes from Money Magazine’s #3 ranked “Fastest Job Growth” county.

Still stumped? Does it help to know that this top MBA program is located in The Live Music Capital of the World?

That’s right, it is the full-time McCombs MBA at the University of Texas at Austin. Continue reading →