Congrats to REFIC’s Managing Director, Joseph Cahoon – his recent office development project, the new Cirrus Logic corporate headquarters building at 6th & West Ave, won ABJ’s office project of the year!

Congratulations go to the REFIC MBA team for their first place win in the University of North Carolina’s Real Estate Development Challenge on February 15, 2013. This year’s team members were Courtney Blackburn MBA ’13, Mason Gilmore MBA ’14, Ziad Haddad MBA ’14 and Richard Long MBA ’14. They will divide a prize of $10,000.

The other universities competing in the Challenge were Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Georgetown, London Business School, Northwestern, NYU, UCLA, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USC and  Vanderbilt.

This win comes on the heals of a 4th place win by another McCombs MBA team in the 2012 McCombs Real Estate Challenge.

Kudos go to all of these outstanding students who have represented the McCombs MBA program this school year.

Jay Hartzell, chair of the Department of Finance, and Jung-Eun Kim, a McCombs Ph.D. student, have co-authored the Real Estate Finance and Investment Center’s first white paper. The paper, “Returns in the Nontraded REIT Industry: Evidence from Full-Cycle Events”, was produced in conjunction with Blue Vault Partners, a firm that specializes in nontraded REITs. 
Professor Hartzell was quoted in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal about the specific qualities of non-traded REITs and their performance. To see the WSJ article

Texas URE information Sessions begin next week!
October 16th at 5:30pm (GSB 2.120)
October 25th at 5:00pm (GOL 2.110 The Main Jury Room)
October 30th at 5:30pm (GSB 2.120)
Degree-seeking undergraduate students at the University of Texas at Austin are invited to attend.  Register online.

The new Undergraduate Real Estate Certificate Program (“Texas URE”) kicks off its first semester, and students across campus are already showing great enthusiasm for the program.   Read more about the program’s launch or visit the program’s website.

The Undergraduate Real Estate Certificate has made its way through final approvals. We are very excited about this opportunity for students to receive a truly multidisciplinary real estate education. More info to come….

Real Estate Students from the McCombs School of Business Undergraduate and Graduate Real Estate Societies will visit San Antonio on March 23 to examine the Hotel Contessa and Broadway project and visit various Real Estate Companies.

The Real Estate Finance and Investment Center at the McCombs School will then host a reception at La Gloria for UT affiliates in Real Estate. For more information on the reception, please email Christina Griego.

Real Estate professionals will get together to discuss leadership and ethics based on their own past experiences and give advice to our students.

The forum is made up of Michael Dardick of Granite Properties, Steve Feinberg of Cerberus Capital Management, Mark Gibson of HFF, Steve LeBlanc of TRS, and Sam Mitts of USAA Real Estate Company.

Corporate executives are often accused of earning ungodly amounts of money, but new evidence suggests their compensation packages have qualities similar to those offered to church leaders, albeit on a much larger scale.

Jay Hartzell, chair of the McCombs Department of Finance, researches the relationship between performance and compensation of the clergy. In his studies, he has examined performance-based incentives for pastors and the importance of a pastor’s talent in determining the success of an individual church. In each case, he identified parallels to the corporate world. Read full article

Article from the Daily Texan…

Real estate graduate students from 16 universities across the country competed for cash prizes and top honors at the McCombs School of Business’ 10th annual Real Estate Challenge this week.

This year’s challenge attracted some of the most distinguished real estate students from programs across the nation, including the winners from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and attracted leading corporate sponsors. Glenn Lowenstein, a partner at the Lionstone Group real estate firm, said his firm sponsors the competition because the partners really believe in the Real Estate Finance and Investment Center at UT and want to offer graduate students a real-life experience. Read full article