Course list

Successful commercial real estate developers are master coordinators, working with multiple counterparts every step of the way to create and maximize value through real estate projects. To do this, they use a thoughtful, organized process—regardless of project size. This course offers a deep dive into the crucial early stages of that process. Using analytical tools and case studies, you will learn how to align your development vision—and subsequent decisions—with industry cycles, municipal objectives and regulations, market and site characteristics, and projected financial feasibility.

Real estate development projects have many moving pieces; the project manager guides and aligns resources to bring those pieces together into a coherent, financially successful whole. To develop critical project management skills, you will work through a case study and learn how to think like a project manager with guidance from Brad Wellstead, experienced former real estate development project manager and Cornell University faculty member. The practical tools and techniques you learn will allow you to confidently create a project schedule, set a realistic budget, and effectively manage resources, risks, and people.

You are required to have completed the following course or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

  • Introduction to Commercial Real Estate Development

Choosing the best available building site for your project is the first step in getting a commercial real estate project off the ground. In this course, you will develop a systematic, project-based site selection process. Using a set of building sites, you will evaluate each site's proximity to economic generators, as-of-right zoning, budget, and size fit to quickly and efficiently eliminate sites. You will then analyze the project's target market to assess each property's intrinsic and extrinsic qualities to further verify the project fit. Lastly, you will compare, contrast, and rank each site based on project filters. Ultimately, you'll efficiently and systematically select the optimal site for your project.

You are required to have completed the following courses or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

  • Introduction to Commercial Real Estate Development
  • Managing Real Estate Development Projects

In this course, you will calculate, compile, and organize your project vision, budget estimates, and materials into a single document called the development package. This document will not only help you communicate your project to potential investors, but it will also serve as a basis for developing a compelling financial pitch. To create the development package, you will clearly and concisely communicate your project vision and scope, then calculate and finalize your project's feasibility, schedule, and budget. You will also communicate the project team and culture, as well as address potential project impacts and how you will account for them.

You are required to have completed the following courses or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

  • Introduction to Commercial Real Estate Development
  • Managing Real Estate Development Projects
  • Real Estate Site Selection Analysis and Decisions

Real estate development projects have many moving pieces, involving millions of dollars and teams of individuals. From the initial spark of an idea to opening day, most projects take several years to complete. If you have a clear vision, a strong opportunity, a ready team, and a solid work and budget plan, it is now time to gain the attention and interest of potential investors. In this course, you will prepare a financial pitch for your project. To begin, you will dissect and examine the components of a financial pitch, understand your audience, and analyze industry best practices. Finally, you will refine and compile the project vision, culture, estimates, and data to compose and deliver a compelling, succinct, and effective financial pitch.

You are required to have completed the following courses or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

  • Introduction to Commercial Real Estate Development
  • Managing Real Estate Development Projects
  • Real Estate Site Selection Analysis and Decisions
  • Creating the Real Estate Development Package

After gaining the trust of investors, lenders, and municipalities by clearly communicating your project's vision, market opportunity, and feasibility, you must now turn to the nuts and bolts of bringing the project to life. In this course, you will analyze the required program needs of your project's specific market sector to create the Basis of Design document, which articulates the project's vision and rationale as well as the physical space and the functional and aesthetic requirements. This deliverable is the foundation for the project teams' choices and decision-making processes as they put your vision into action.

You are required to have completed the following courses or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

  • Introduction to Commercial Real Estate Development
  • Managing Real Estate Development Projects
  • Real Estate Site Selection Analysis and Decisions
  • Creating the Real Estate Development Package
  • Preparing and Delivering the Project Pitch

Despite your best planning efforts, additional challenges and opportunities arise during a project's life cycle. The difference between a successful project and an unmitigated disaster is how you assess and address these impacts. In this course, you will discover and apply methods to proactively identify, dissect, and mitigate project impacts while maximizing project opportunities. This will lead to decision-making processes to help you overcome and absorb the unexpected yet inevitable challenges every project faces.

You are required to have completed the following courses or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

  • Introduction to Commercial Real Estate Development
  • Managing Real Estate Development Projects
  • Real Estate Site Selection Analysis and Decisions
  • Creating the Real Estate Development Package
  • Preparing and Delivering the Project Pitch
  • Creating the Basis of Design for Real Estate Projects
Real estate investment has a long history, going back well before the advent of the stock market. But unlike investing in stocks, real estate usually requires the use of leverage: a property is acquired with a percentage of equity, the rest financed with debt. To make that risk pay off, investors must have a clear strategy, know whether investments will be profitable, and understand how best to raise capital. In this course, Jan A. deRoos, professor at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, uses real-world examples and practical tools to teach these critical components of profitable real estate investment.

Real estate investment is a popular way to accumulate wealth, but you don't have to be rich to get started. That's because there are many ways to finance real estate investments to raise the equity you need and structure debt beneficially. In this course, you will explore both sides of the financing equation to understand what equity and debt partners want, how to structure financing for a high likelihood of approval and rate of return, and how to perform analyses that are critical to success. Not only will these analyses upgrade your skills, the sophisticated spreadsheet tools you use can be applied immediately to real-life opportunities.

You are required to have completed the following course or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

  • Real Estate Investment Decisions

Is the value of your proposed property greater than its cost? Can you confidently forecast revenues for both new and existing properties? The ability to produce accurate estimates of rents, occupancy, and absorption is essential in making real estate investment and financing decisions.

In this course, you will explore the process of accurately forecasting real estate occupancy for properties facing significant new competition. You will forecast revenues and expenses using contemporary techniques, including real estate cash flows and benchmarking analysis. Given that forecasts are only as accurate as starting assumptions, you will also investigate how to use data to support your forecasts.

By the end of this course, you will have the strong foundation needed to create a successful and rigorous feasibility study and to use your skills to produce accurate, supportable forecasts.

You are required to have completed the following courses or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

  • Real Estate Investment Decisions
  • Financing Real Estate Investments

Without well-established rights to acquire, charge rents, and sell real estate, investors will not invest. Legal systems create these rules and institutions that facilitate the efficient identification and transfer of real property rights. So how do you tackle the legal aspects of real estate?

In this course, you will explore the various estates in real property, including how property ownership is registered or recorded, how real property interests are transferred, and how ownership can be shared. You will understand the vocabulary of real property rights, identify the limitations on property rights, and examine the major contracts that surround real property transfer.

By the end of this course, you will have the knowledge needed to connect financial and property rights, setting you up to increase the value of your property and transform fundamental property rights to your benefit.

You are required to have completed the following courses or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

  • Real Estate Investment Decisions
  • Financing Real Estate Investments

No survey of real estate as a financial asset would be complete without a discussion of appraisal. Understanding this critical piece of the process will set you up for success when you make complex decisions.

In this course, you will explore the classic triad of real estate valuation methods: the cost approach, the sales comparison approach, and the income approach. The appraiser's task is to produce an estimate of the value of the real estate using each approach then reconcile these values in a final market value estimate. You will not become an appraiser in this course, but you will understand how to use appraisals to make better investment decisions and potentially increase the value of your real estate.

Upon completion of this course, you will be able to use appraisals to make better decisions in a variety of areas in real estate. In the field, you will be able to use appraisals to support real estate investment decisions, asset management decisions, disposition decisions, refinancing decisions, and more.

You are required to have completed the following courses or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

  • Real Estate Investment Decisions
  • Financing Real Estate Investments

Real estate investment trusts (REITs) are becoming an accepted equity structure around the globe, and commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) create liquidity and lower the cost of borrowing for real estate developers and owners. Understanding their vocabulary and importance can set you up for successful, forward-looking strategies in your future projects.

In this course, you will consider public real estate structures and their markets with a focus on the practical aspects of public equity (REIT) and public debt (CMBS) structures and markets. You will concentrate on the impact that REIT legislation has on the operation of REITs and how CMBS is designed to manage the risks of default and prepayment.

By the end of the course, you will have a deeper understanding of real estate public markets as well as an ability to analyze how real estate performs as a security in the secondary market.

You are required to have completed the following courses or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

  • Real Estate Investment Decisions
  • Financing Real Estate Investments
Investing in proper management of a real estate asset is investing in future profitability. Excellent maintenance and tenant management can increase property values by lowering operational costs, increasing cash flow, and generating higher rents and occupancies. In this course, you will learn leadership traits and strategies for effective facilities management, best practices in critical areas like waste removal and reducing environmental impact, and how to manage overlapping maintenance activities and make outsourcing decisions. If leasing building space is critical to your operation, this course also will prepare you to analyze your property and the market to make sound leasing decisions.

As real estate asset manager, you are steward of an owner's property, responsible for managing it to help achieve the owner's goals and increase its value. To guide you in this challenging role, you need a comprehensive road map for decision making: the Asset Management Strategic Plan. This course focuses on teaching you how to build this strategic plan and on developing your understanding of the asset manager role, its activities, and different management approaches. Beyond best practices and expert insights, this course also provides you with ample opportunities to practice new skills and an applied toolkit for real-world real estate asset management.

You are required to have completed the following course or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

  • Leading Successful Property Management Operations

Within the commercial real estate industry, it is vital to develop a deep understanding of an asset's condition as well as the market in which it competes. There are several strategies for optimizing your occupancy and lease rates through an evaluation of the competitive landscape. This critical look at your market environment will enable you to best position your real estate assets in terms of lease structures, leasing trends, term expectations, and much more.

This course has been designed to simulate the way in which asset managers, along with those working in leasing departments, gather information and develop a leasing strategy. You will create a leasing strategy to convey the pertinent data about an asset and the market landscape to a particular audience. This course will train your eye to scan a property for key indicators of physical and financial health. Using a variety of downloadable tools, you will determine how to gather data for analysis that will provide insight and inform decision making for every step of the cycle of tenancy.

In commercial real estate, managing the upkeep of the physical asset is critical for multiple reasons, including occupant safety, meeting legal occupancy requirements, functionality of systems, efficiencies of systems, productivity of occupants, maintaining asset value, and more. Successfully optimizing the functionality of a building requires a strategic approach to maintenance activities and equipment selection, as well as continually seeking new technologies, devices, and practices to improve building performance and reduce departmental expenses. In this course, you will access important building management strategies and best practices, professional expert interviews, and exercises that bring various strategies to light.

This course has been designed to simulate the way in which asset managers, building managers, and other stakeholders gather, analyze, and use various forms of building maintenance information to make decisions. Throughout this course, you will develop a robust tool kit of skills and resources to deal with property management issues including labor, code, financial management, and renovations. As you build your knowledge and skills in facilities management, you will be able to offer valuable recommendations and ask pertinent questions that will improve any asset's physical functionality and enhance the business's financial performance.

Buildings rely on a variety of systems interacting to successfully support occupant safety and comfort. In managing an asset, it is important to have an understanding of all mechanical systems along with the ways in which they depend on one another. This knowledge becomes pivotal when ensuring code compliance, troubleshooting systems issues, or planning for improvements. In this course, you will explore the common issues, consequences, and solutions for the maintenance of building systems, including the building envelope (facade, windows, and doors), water, electricity, lighting, and heating/ ventilating/air conditioning (HVAC) systems. Once you have a handle on how these systems work, you will be able to identify areas for improved efficiency, which will, in turn, reduce cost and environmental impact. You will find that improved efficiency relies heavily on the monitoring techniques and preventative maintenance schedules explored in this course.

Large buildings are some of the leading consumers of resources such as raw materials, electricity, and water. They also generate an incredible amount of waste. Customers and potential lessees now expect asset management to be transparent in their deployment of sustainable practices. On the flip side of this expectation, it has never been easier to make, measure, and communicate improvement in the area of sustainable operation. In this course, you will discover the importance of depth, clarity, and transparency when developing a sustainability strategy. You will then determine how to align your everyday efficiency goals with your overall sustainability strategy through environmental policies and practices, as well as the products you choose.

Taking it a step further, you will investigate the popular “green” certification standards and the options available for new development projects and existing buildings. You will make on-site observations of a LEED-certified building and explore the criteria making the LEED and Green Globes programs the international benchmarks for green building design and operation.

Beyond building design, there are valuable opportunities to empower and encourage your employees and/or residents to adopt sustainable practices by establishing a “green team” within your building or company. This team usually includes individuals passionate about sustainability and preserving the environment, so they will often be happy to help ensure your sustainability goals are met, in turn having a positive effect on waste reduction and, thus, your bottom line.

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