Real Estate Initiative

Real Estate Initiative - Courses

Courses

Courses and Partnerships

The Real Estate Initiative offers students a unique suite of courses to support their interests in commercial real estate finance, development, management and M&A. In addition, Darden is proud to partner with UVA's School of Architecture to offer a dual degree program as well as to create pan-University courses with Architecture and the McIntire School of Business.

ELECTIVE COURSES

  • Introduction to Real Estate Finance & Development

    This course introduces students to analytical techniques and terminology specific to the real estate industry. The real estate industry includes a broad range of real estate products, and each market for these products is unique. Students consider such topics as an historical overview of the industry, techniques of financial analysis and financing alternatives, commercial and residential development, current concepts of real estate development, cap rates, appraisal methods, commercial products such as office buildings and retail, residential products such as apartments and houses, leasing, and property management.

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  • Hot Topics in Real Estate

    This course brings a series of leading investment managers and experts in real estate to discuss the dynamic real estate landscape, with topics spanning the intersections of real estate finance, real estate development and management, urban planning, public policy and law, marketing, and modern architecture.

  • Independent Study in Real Estate Finance

    A Darden Independent Study elective includes either case development or a research project to be conducted by an individual student under the direction of a faculty member. Students should secure the agreement of a resident faculty member to supervise their independent study and assign the final grade that is to be based to a significant degree on written evidence of the individual student’s accomplishment. Each independent study proposal must be approved by the program director. (1.5 or 3.0 credit hours)

  • Darden Capital Management - Colonnade Fund

    The Colonnade Fund is a long-only equity fund investing in the best performing Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). The fund utilizes a bottom-up research approach with a strong emphasis on funds from operations (FFO) and dividend payouts to identify attractive investment opportunities. The Fund will seek to invest in single name positions in equity REITs, mortgage REITs, and infrastructure securities. In terms of allocation, the fund will strive to hold 65% of the portfolio in domestic REITs and the remaining 35% in real estate adjacent securities. Over the medium to long term, the fund will seek to outperform the FTSE Nareit US Real Estate Index.
     
    Additionally, the Colonnade Fund, in alignment with the broader goals of Darden Capital Management, aims to provide students with a unique learning opportunity to gain practical hands-on experience investing in real estate securities. Students interested in a career in real estate or the broader investment management industry would find this opportunity extremely useful.

    Students earn academic credit for participating as portfolio managers of the fund.

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Related Courses

  • Investments

    This course will provide students with an understanding of the theory and practice of investment decision making. Through readings and case discussions, students in the course will examine how equities are priced in efficient markets. Using insights from modern portfolio theory and equilibrium models of security prices (such as the capital asset pricing model), students will develop a framework for assessing the risk-return tradeoff. Using this framework, students will evaluate the validity of theory and conventional practice as guidance for managing portfolios. Topics will include equilibrium asset pricing, modern portfolio theory, market efficiency, index models, equities, and fixed-income securities. While the course is designed for students whose career interests lie in the field of investment management, the topics covered and tools developed in the course will be useful for personal investment as well. Valuation in Financial Markets is a prerequisite for this course.

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  • Portfolio Management

    The Portfolio Management course is designed for students interested in careers in investment management. Students are required to have taken Valuation in Financial Markets (GBUS 7603) and Investments (GBUS 8444) prior to taking this course. The objective of the course is to help students develop the analytical tools and insight necessary to manage an investment portfolio. The focus of the course will be developing and implementing an investment strategy. Throughout the course, students will learn the institutional details of the money-management industry (mutual funds, pension funds and hedge funds), examine a variety of different investment strategies and explore the impact of market frictions (liquidity, trading/transaction costs, short-selling constraints, etc.) on performance. The course consists of readings, case studies, exercises, guest lecturers, and the development and presentation of an investment strategy.

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  • Managing Investment Portfolios

    This is a course designed for students interested in careers in investment management. Students are required to have taken Valuation in Financial Markets (GBUS 752) and Investments (GBUS 8444) prior to taking this course. The objective of the course is to help students develop the analytical tools and insight necessary to manage an investment portfolio. The focus of the course will be developing and implementing an investment strategy. Throughout the course, students will learn the institutional details of the money-management industry (mutual funds, pension funds and hedge funds), examine a variety of different investment strategies (fundamental, quantitative, behavioral, etc.), and examine the impact of market frictions (liquidity, trading/transaction costs, short-selling constraints, etc.) on performance. The course consists of readings, case studies, exercises, guest lecturers, and the development and presentation of an investment strategy.

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  • Financial Reporting and Analysis

    This course is intended to provide students with a comprehensive conceptual and applied understanding of our society’s accounting and financial-reporting system and an in-depth look at the numerous factors that managers and executives must consider as they confront complex and difficult financial-accounting and reporting issues. Students will examine these issues from both a rigorous theoretical perspective and an informed practical perspective. Students also will explore such traditional issues as revenue recognition, cash-flow analysis, deferred taxes and leases, and contemporary issues such as pensions and other post-employment benefits, stock compensation, and financial derivatives. Although the primary focus of the course will be on accounting and reporting practices in the United States, students will also address the significant progress that has been made toward the convergence of U.S. GAAP and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). By the end of the course, students should be reasonably proficient at understanding, interpreting, and analyzing the information contained in corporate financial statements and their related footnotes and also able to judge the overall quality of a company’s financial reporting, identify critical accounting policies, and assess the reasonableness of those policies and their supporting estimates and judgments.

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  • Valuation in Financial Markets

    This course focuses on how financial assets and firms are valued in financial markets. It directly extends and strengthens the corporate finance principles from the required First-Year Financial Management and Policies course by applying valuation models to real financial data and assets. The course contains three modules: firm valuation techniques, option-pricing principles, and fixed-income valuation. The first module extends the First Year Financial Management and Policies course by considering more difficult firm valuations as well as alternate techniques for valuing firms. The second and third modules relate to the capital markets for which valuation principles from options and fixed-income instruments are used as building block to decompose the valuation of complex financial instruments.

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  • Mergers & Acquisitions

    This course is designed to provide students with a practical understanding of the merger and acquisition marketplace, addressing such topics as why companies grow through acquisitions, how acquisition or merger candidates are analyzed strategically and valued financially, and ultimately, whether and how mergers and acquisitions create value for stakeholders. Takeovers and mergers are a daily fact of life, have evolved into a critical part of every CEO or manager’s strategic toolbox, and will most likely affect every person who enters the corporate world at some point in their career. Whether a student chooses to be a senior corporate manager, an M&A practitioner, or merely an informed armchair observer, the course is intended to provide the analytical framework to evaluate an acquisition from a strategic, financial, structural, tactical, legal, and ethical perspective. Students will apply learned content to real business situations, including the opportunity to develop, create, and present an acquisition proposal to an actual corporate client during the class.

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  • Financial Statement Analysis and Corporate Valuation

    This course uses reported accounting data that provides a foundation for the application of tools and techniques to derive the measurements that aid in corporate valuation. Students will develop an understanding of screening, forecasting, and valuation tools that aid in the analysis and exploitation of information contained in financial statements. The course includes but is not limited to topics related to the use of ratio analysis, the theory and development of cash-flow and earnings-based valuation models, identification of financial statement management, and the impact of accounting principles and assumptions on valuation. Course content will encompass three modules. The first strengthens students’ understanding of key accounting relations and how detailed ratio analysis can provide a historical perspective on firm activities. An emphasis also is placed on the role of non-financial information used as supplements to required accounting reports. The second builds on this foundation with an explicit focus on common valuation and earnings-forecasting techniques that include financial model building using discounted cash flow, multiples, and earnings-based valuation methods. The final module identifies the critical accounting factors that may be unique to the given firm under evaluation. These factors will include identification of and adjustment for off-balance sheet assets and liabilities, multi-national operations, and detecting earnings management. This course should appeal to those planning careers in financial management, consulting, security analysis, investment banking, or credit analysis.

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Dual Degree Program with the UVA School of Architecture

Darden has partnered with the UVA School of Architecture to offer a three-year dual degree program in which students take courses at both Darden and the School of Architecture to simultaneously earn an MBA and a Masters in Urban and Environmental Planning (MUEP). For students interested in real estate, in addition to the courses listed above, the MUEP curriculum also prepares them to tackle the critical challenges that come with global urbanization and rapidly transforming social, ecological, and technological systems to ensure a sustainable, equitable and healthy future for cities.

Please contact the Darden admissions team for more information.