CU Real Estate Center

Erica Mark is featured on the front page of today’s Boulder Daily Camera as a graduating real estate senior. She is heading to Santa Barbara to work as a commercial broker there. Take a look at the article and graduation pictures!

Click here to read the article

The Rocky Mountain Real Estate Golf Challenge, a Ryder Cup style golf match between CU Real Estate Center supporters and supporters of the DU real estate program, was won, by default, by CU, as nobody from DU showed up.  Obviously intimidated by the mighty Buffs, DU was unable to generate any interest in the Challenge.  Undaunted, 50 CU supporters came out on April 30^th for a fun day of golf and networking at the Colorado National Golf Club.  It was a beautiful day and, despite the absence of DU, everyone had a great time.   The tournament, changed to a four-man best ball format, was won by the team from Western Development, shooting a stunning 24 under par (net) round, and winning by 9 strokes.  No wonder DU was intimidated.  Appropriately enough, Western Development was also the lead sponsor of the tournament.  Other sponsors included, Kutak Rock, Dividend Capital, K2 Ventures, Centennial Realty Advisors, David Chadwick, JE Dunn, Sherm Miller and Mary Sullivan, Brinkman Construction, City of Lakewood, CRL Associates, Richard Morgan, FastSigns and Flatirons Land Rover.   Thanks to our sponsors, all the golfers and our fantastic golf committee, led by Jeff Latier, with wonderful support from Laura Spitzmiller, Erin Marilley, Lisa Peck, Sarah Hoberg, Sherm Miller and Dan Minzer, this was the most successful golf tournament we have had in years.

Each year ARGUS Software sponsors a graduate student competition that requires teams to analyze a commercial property using ARGUS-DCF software.  The 2012 Real Estate MBA team consists of Craig Townsend, Blake Ottersberg, Jordan Swisher, Mitch Layden, and Tyler Field.  Teams from 29 universities competing in the 2012 competition are: Baruch, California State-East Bay, Chicago, Cornell, Clemson, CU-Boulder, Covenant University (Nigeria), Emory, Florida, Johns Hopkins, Laval, LSU, NYU, Penn State, UNC-Chapel Hill, St. Thomas, Technische University of Dortmund, Temple, Texas A&M, U. Alberta, UT-Austin, U. Baltimore, CU-Boulder, UPenn-Wharton, UT-Dallas, U San Diego, U Washington-Seattle, Vanderbilt, Wisconsin and York University.

For the past ten years, the Urban Land Institute has sponsored an urban design competition.  The urban design and development challenge is named in honor of Gerald D. Hines, a Houston developer. The competition was created to encourage teamwork among student planners, developers, architects and other professionals involved in the development process.  In 2012, about 700 students on 139 teams from 64 universities in the US and Canada submitted proposals to redevelop the 16.3 acre US Postal Service distribution facility in downtown Houston.  A team consisting of two Leeds School of Business MBA students (Alex Atherton and Chad Murphy) and three students from the Harvard School of Design (Michael Albert, Victor Perez Amado and Anna Cawrse) beat finalists from University of California-Berkeley, Michigan and Columbia to win the 10^th Annual ULI Gerald D. Hines Student Design Competition.   The development team’s winning proposal created a pleasant live-work environment by attracting households with various socio-economic characteristics to locate in downtown Houston.

This spring, six Leeds seniors experienced what they describe as the pinnacle of their undergraduate careers when they competed toe-to-toe with some of the best real estate students and programs in the world at the USC Marshall School of Business International Real Estate Case Competition.  The team included Brett Erb, Colleen Gawey, Erica Mark, Matt Riach, Nick Schoon and Cody Swift.  They competed against teams from the University of Wisconsin, University of Texas, Villanova, University of San Diego, University of Auckland, New York University and USC, with Wisconsin winning this year’s competition.

The students must audition for the team and then work throughout the semester with faculty and industry professionals honing their analytical and presentations skills.  Each week the team is given a real estate case including financial, economic, market, legal and political assumptions.  The team, acting as advisors to a fictional real estate equity fund, fully analyzes the case and makes recommendations to the fund managers as though they were considering the project.  The complexity of the cases and sophistication of the analysis are remarkable for the undergraduate level and push the students to new heights, requiring them to draw on and integrate a great deal of what they’ve learned at Leeds.  The case competition experience represents the best of active, experiential learning at Leeds.

Participation in the competition has proven a tremendous benefit to the students as they’ve moved beyond Leeds.  With their training and experience in the competition giving them a considerable advantage in the job and graduate school markets, team members have moved quickly and successfully into analytical and other positions in the real estate industry or on to graduate school.  “This was the most challenging and most rewarding thing I did at CU” said one team member.  “And it was a lot of fun too!”

For more information concerning the CU Real Estate Center’s involvement in the USC International Real Estate Case Competition, contact Curtis Sears (curtis.sears@colorado.edu) or Lisa Chambers (lisa.chambers@colorado.edu).

The Center organized a hard hat tour for the undergraduate real estate students on April 19^th. Sam Hosfelt at Kiewit Construction toured the students through the Kittredge Commons demolition and rebuild. Some of the students lived at Kittredge as freshmen and were excited to hear about the plans for the entire Kittredge area and pond (which is being dredged and reformed).  It was a great experience and a huge thank you to Sam and Kiewit for letting the students look behind the scenes!

A combined team of MBA students from CU-Boulder and Harvard took top honors at the ULI Gerald D. Hines Design Competition. Approximately 140 universities participated, and our team made it to the final round versus teams from the University of Michigan, Columbia University, and the University of California, Berkeley.  The students presented to the judges today and the announcement was made early this afternoon.

We are so proud of Alex Atherton and Chad Murphy!

Alex Atherton

Chad Murphy

The Winning Team, with Staff/Faculty

Here are a few shots from throughout the day!

Bill Reynolds and Rod Slifer - "Looking Back to See Forward" Panel

Chris Crosby and Bill Reynolds - "Looking Back to See Forward" Panel

"Looking Back to See Forward" Panel

Coach Jon Embry

Ken Gillis opening the conference

"Mountain Panel" planned and executed by current MBA students!

Sherman Miller, Stacey and Cal Fulenwider. Cal is the 2012 recipient of the CU Real Estate Center Leadership Award!

The Fulenwider Family and Craig Poulter

Alex Atherton and Chad Murphy, current MBA students from the CU Real Estate Center made it to the final four of the ULI Hines Design Competition with their teammates from Harvard University.Visit the link here to read an article about the selected site which also includes quotes from an interview with both Chad and Alex. Scroll to the bottom of the article to find the link to the full audio interview.

Our students do us proud!

Two students of the CU Real Estate Center made it to the final four  of the ULI Hines Design Competition.  There were 695 students on 139 teams from 64 universities competing in the first round.  Alex Atherton and Chad Murphy will compete against teams from Berkeley, Michigan and Columbia in Houston on April 6. Good luck Chad and Alex!

To read more about the competition, click here: http://educationviews.org/2012/02/27/the-final-four-teams-from-the-university-of-california-berkeley-columbia-university-university-of-michigan-and-a-joint-team-from-the-university-of-colorado-and-harvard-university-are-finalists-fo/