Corporate Real Estate Education at it's finest

Dr. Margaret Latshaw heard four presentations today from our students in regard to specific recommendations to local companies to help them solve a particular real estate dilemma with which they were faced. The local firms of Goodwill Industries, Century Tel, Interstate Bakeries and UMKC took time to meet with their assigned student group and share their coporate situations as it related to real estate decisions. The students took that information and combined it with what they learned in class and made specific recommendation to them in a formal presentation this morning. The student's preparation was outstanding and the representatives of those companies each provided invaluable insight in review and comment about each presentation.
All of this was preceded by yesterdays' session of a corporate relocation expert who flew in from Atlanta to provide her methodology on helping companies with their real estate decisions as an outsourced consultant. She was very insightful.
In addition, Rudy Beese, Attorney from SNR Denton shared a large amount of date in written format with oral explanations about the multitude of tax incentives and view about the "border wars".
Joy Hays and Curt Petersen from the Polsinelli Law firm shared with us some valuable insights about green leases and the clauses to look out for with practical experience woven in.

Truly two of the most intense days of information about Corporate Real Estate practices ever presented in just two days.

Next month is Dr. Jim DeLisle from the University of Washington who will share 5 days of insights from his "work in progress" textbook on the lastest techniques and tools related to Market Analysis and Feasibility Studies in Real Estate.

The REIT Industry

This is our 5th month of our Executive delivery of the Masters in Entrepreneurial Real Estate. Today, Dr. Randy Anderson enlightened the class on what REITS are, how they are structured, their history of returns and most importantly where they are headed in the near future. Opportunities abound in this area of real estate.

Real Estate Industry Predictions for 2012

Real Estate Industry Predictions for 2012

Day one of "Corporate Real Estate"

Dr. Margaret Latshaw, Started the class with introductions to JE Dunn (multi-billion dollar construction company) who shared their process of deciding where they were to put their corporate headquarters. Terry Dunn was accompanied by Greg Nook. They told the candid challenging story of their four year process step by step. They made some valuable observations about the real estate process.
Dr. Latshaw's personal experience working with Sprint, H&R Block and Bank of America has proven valuable in her design of this course. After JE Dunn's presentation, Margaret shared a academic discussion of corporate real estate based on our assigned readings, followed by a visit by Wayne Mathison who ran a 300 person corporate real estate department and is now a private consultant. We continued with a working lunch with Justin Chamberlain head of real estate from H & R Block and their retail portfolio. The challenges of opening up over 100 retail locations per month can be quite daunting. They outsource a large portion of their portfolio to Cassidy Turley and following Justin, we heard from Rich Etzkorn from Cassidy Turley who not only works with H&R Block but also is very involved with Edward Jones 12,000 locations around the country.
We'll close today with a review by me (Walt Clements) on some financial spreadsheets used to measure cost of occupancy that was introduced in our "on-line" sessions and then some presentation tips as the students prepare to make some presentations next month.
Holiday wishes to all.

First day of 'Capital Markets and Real Estate"

The “Capital Markets and Real Estate” course started yesterday under the instruction of Dr. Randy Anderson, the Director of the real estate program at the University of Central Florida. He comes with personal experience as a real estate investor as an individual and as a general partner in a private equity fund. His research in investment properties international and practical experience was evident as he shared his process for evaluating the four basic property types. Which property type should you be invested in and more importantly why? We learned which exogenous shocks to look for and how they impact our real estate investment decisions. We identified the major indicators to track and the free data websites from which to extract meaningful data and what it means. We discussed the possibilities of inflation, when interest rates were going to increase and more importantly. Most importantly he provides the factual data that makes Kansas City a prime location for institutional investment capital right now. He is an advisor to an investment firm who recently bought two large apartment complexes in Olathe, KS. Knowledge truly is Power!

Re = Rd + LR(Rp-Rd)

Another formula to measure leverage and corresponding risk associated with taking on more leverage. Practical insights were discussed concering what to consider when making forecasts of income and future sale price. Practical insights from experience.

That formula coupled with the simple Gordon Growth Model can provide some practical "back of the napkin" assessments when you consider real estate investing.

Dr. Anderson and Dr. Clark offered detailed explanations of how secondary markets work as well as the CMBS markets. How they work, and how we can use them.

Another information packed day.

November Update on Executive Masters Program

The third month of the Executive Master’s in Entrepreneurial Real Estate is now in session.  Yesterday we concluded the “Urban Planning”  course with a simulated case study and role play of the Polsinelli Building Proposal with members of the class playing the roles of,” Highwoods”,” Save our Plaza” folks, “Planning Commission” and “City Council”.  It was quite engaging and interesting.  This follows  personal presentations by Vickie Noteis who represented the “Save Our Plaza” group and Jan Marcusson, City Councilwoman. 

 In addition,  Forest City , Inc (one of our country’s largest developers)  sent, John Neely, one of their lead developers to spend the day with us to talk about how they consider the urban plan of a community and how they engage with the urban planners to decide whether or not they want to proceed with a development.  They were the re-developers of Stapleton Airport in Denver and many more extremely large developments around the country.  Some of the students are talking about potential transactions with him now. 

Today, we launch into the last two days of the Advanced Real Estate Finance course where the students will take their compounding and discounting business math skills to the next level on the HP 10B II and Excel Spread Sheets with over 40 preprogrammed templates to work from.  We will do “real estate development modeling” Front Door and Back Door Analysis and prepare  the final exam.

Very exciting!

- Walt Clements, Director of the LWREC