Cornell to Compete at Sixth Annual National Real Estate Challenge
On Thursday, November 1, sixteen graduate student teams from leading schools will compete for top honors and cash awards in the National Real Estate Challenge, in Austin, Texas. The case-based competition is held at the University of Texas’ McCombs School of Business and features leading business and real estate schools from around the country. Cornell has fielded a team each year since the inception of the competition, and this year will compete against teams from Berkeley, Chicago, Columbia, Duke, Harvard, Kellogg, NYU, and Wharton, among others.
Each school is allowed only one team of four to six graduate students and is required to provide a 20-minute case presentation to a panel of real estate professionals. The winning team will receive $5,000, while the second and third place teams will receive $2,000 and $1,000, respectively. This year’s case will be distributed by Goldman Sachs & Co. and will be judged by professionals from Goldman and from lead sponsors such as Bank of America, Credit Suisse, GE Real Estate, ING Clarion, The Lionstone Group, Morgan Stanley, Transwestern Investment Company, and Weingarten Realty Investors.
Senior Lecturer Brad Olson, lead faculty adviser to the team , believes the competition “is a great way for students to come together in an intense and challenging environment, and to test the development and finance skills they are learning in school.”
The Cornell team is comprised of students from both the Johnson Graduate School of Management and the Program in Real Estate. Participants include Zsofia Kondor (PRE ’08), Daniel Lentz (JGSM/PRE’09), Brian Semel (PRE ’08), Ramandeep Walia (JGSM ’08), Benjamin Weissbourd (JGSM ’08), and Rachel Wilson (PRE ’08). Matthew Monson (JGSM/PRE ’09) and Timothy Yeager (PRE ’09) will serve as alternates and are guaranteed a spot in the competition next year.
“The competition is a fantastic opportunity to combine Cornell’s learning environment with real-world challenges,” said Lentz. “Actual deals are complex and have many different risks and compromises which must be considered. The intense preparation, collaborative team effort, and sheer volume of faculty and advisor coaching makes the experience invaluable for anyone considering a career in either investments or development.”
This year’s case study requires student teams to examine an investment opportunity on behalf of a global real estate opportunity fund, and to focus on a number of possible obstacles surrounding the acquisition such as financing and tenanting of the property. Students will also address issues concerning the investment process, post-investment opportunities, and exit strategies. Representatives of Goldman Sachs & Co.’s fund will present a retrospective on the actual investment and its performance following the completion of the case competition on Friday afternoon.
The case competition is a chance for students to deal with real estate issues, to work together in a group setting, and to test their skills in a concentrated time period. “What I value about preparing for the competition is that it forces you to bring together skills learned in different classes and apply them to a single, complex scenario that encompasses all phases of a Real Estate project,” said Kondor.
Next semester, students from both the Program in Real Estate and the Johnson Graduate School of Management will vie for spots on next year’s case competition team.