MS in Real Estate

Experiential Learning and Industry Connections

The MS Real Estate degree curriculum includes a rigorous background from a top business School in quantitative financial analysis and management, and specifically prepares you for careers in the financial, management, and the operations aspects of real estate. The program develops business skills so you can add value for your employers quickly.

CUREC Master's Program Building

Admissions into the Master's in Real Estate Program

 

For additional information or to express your interest, contact Stephen Billings, Faculty Director of MS Real Estate.

Master's Curriculum

Core Courses

MSBC 5030- Quantitative Methods

Mathematical and Statistical tools will be used extensively throughout the program and your career in finance. Quantitative Methods builds the skills necessary to complete the program and thrive as a finance professional. Topics include analytical math and calculus, descriptive statistics, probability and distributions, sampling theory and sampling distributions, statistical inference, regression analysis and prediction and forecasting.

MSBC 5015 - Managerial Economics

This course covers the application of economic theory to financial decisions. Topics include consumer behavior, equilibrium, elasticity, cost functions, production decisions, competition, monopoly, strategic interaction, monetary and fiscal policies, aggregate demand and supply and their use in financial decisions.

MSBC 5020 - Financial Accounting

This course builds a foundation in financial accounting for finance professionals. Topics include financial reporting, revenue recognition, accounting for receivables, inventories and restructuring charges, long-lived assets, statement of cash flows, investments, corporate governance issues, long-term liabilities, leases and contingent liabilities, taxes, shareholders’ equity, financial statement analysis and ratio analysis.

MSBC 5060 - Corporate Finance

This class covers core topics in finance. Topics include the time value of money, arbitrage and the law of one price, risk premium, valuing default-free and corporate bonds, capital budgeting and the NPV investment rule, valuing stocks using discounted dividend models and discounted free cash flows models, percentage sales method for forecasting cash flows, constructing pro-formas, capital structure in Modigliani-Miller economies, the unlevered cost of capital, equity cost of capital and the OCC of a project using the CAPM, mean-variance analysis and the two fund separation result, the capital market line and the security market line, taxes and debt, the Modigliani-Miller formula with taxes, the Hamada formula for equity risk, the WACC formula, and, finally, firm valuation based on the WACC method and the APV method. This class will have many individual assignments (two per week), two group projects—one on firm valuation and another on portfolio analysis using the Bloomberg terminal—and at least two exams.

MBAX 6610 - Real Estate Finance

This course covers corporate financial decisions, which are the foundation for all finance applications. Topics include financial mathematics, security valuation, capital market efficiency, capital investment analysis including NPV and IRR, the links between finance and corporate strategy, capital market theory, risk, return and asset pricing, capital structure and the cost of capital, dividend policy and mergers and acquisitions. Students are required to use ARGUS-DCF® in this class. ARGUS-DCF® is widely used throughout the real estate industry by equity investors, lenders, commercial brokers, appraisers and property managers to analyze and manage income producing (e.g. apartment and commercial) properties. The students will receive some instruction on how to use ARGUS-DCF® during class. The take home portion of the mid-term exam will require students to use ARGUS-DCF® to analyze an income producing property. The secondary market for mortgages and mortgage backed securities (MBSs) will be examined in some detail. Topics covered include a survey of the private and public institutions that participate in the secondary mortgage market; pooling mortgages to create a MBS; and pricing MBSs. The course will examine both single-family property MBSs and commercial property mortgage backed securities (CMBSs). The homogeneity of the mortgage pool, prepayment risk, and default risk are examined in some detail. The course will also examine real estate investment trusts (REITs) and returns to real estate investments.

MBAX 6630 - Real Estate Economics

The course begins with an overview of residential and commercial property markets. We will identify the underlying economic determinants of real estate supply and demand, market equilibrium and short- and long-run adjustments to disequilibrium (e.g., cycles). The course then describes the three major approaches to estimating real property value: market (or sales) comparison, the income approach, and the cost approach. These techniques will be used to estimate market values for both residential and commercial properties. The course will then examine real estate market behavior. We will examine various theories of land price determination and use these models to understand how the private market allocates land to competing residential, office, retail, industrial/warehouse, hotel and other end users. This course draws heavily from topics taught in traditional urban and regional economics courses and treats real estate like any other scarce resource allocated in a market oriented economy. The student will examine how factors influencing the demand for real estate interact with the factors influencing the supply of real estate to determine market rents and how the flow of future expected income is capitalized to yield the market price of the property. The course will also examine the roles that local, state and federal governments have in real estate market outcomes.

Electives 

MBAX 6640 - Real Estate Law

This course is intended to cover many of the basic legal concepts relevant to, and inherent in, the real estate business. While many traditional real property law concepts will be covered in the course, the course is intended to introduce the student to the transactional legal aspects of the real estate business, including acquisition, disposition, development, investment, management, leasing and workouts, including tax implications. At the conclusion of the course, the student is expected to have acquired a basic understanding of these principles so that the student will have the ability to function with respect to these matters in many of the various aspects of the real estate business. In order to facilitate this process, examples and cases will be utilized in order to illustrate the principles being covered.

CVEN 5206 - Design Development

Developers must bring together multiple parties (i.e., contractors, architects, engineers, lawyers, bankers, city planners, etc.) to take a project from conception through development. In many ways, they are the conductor of an orchestra. Because the development process is a critical and necessary component to building, engineers and contractors working in the AEC industry should have at least a basic knowledge of the process. Whatever your future plans, gaining an understanding of the teams, phases, financial elements and building components will enable you to better understand how your specialty relates to the overall project, how to manage the design/build components of a development project, and should enable you to better communicate and understand the concerns of the other team members during the project. The course is discussion-based, requiring student participation through questions and presentations of current topics facing the industry. Students will apply class material to (1) create, write and present a proposal for a real estate development project; (2) present current topics in industry; (3) apply knowledge to assignments, quizzes and an exam.

MBAX 6815 - Sustainable Real Estate

By 2025, the Colorado Front Range is expected to grow by 1.5 million people, requiring the construction of hundreds of thousands of new homes and apartments, places of employment, shopping, entertaining and recreating, as well as systems of mobility and infrastructure that connect these places. How we develop in this uncertain future will not just tell about our future urban form, but how the quality of our communities are impacted, and the degree that they are sustainable. As Sustainable Real Estate Development has matured to the point of a viable and profitable alternative to the sprawling and resource inefficient development practices of decades past, this course will focus on the environmental values, limitations of natural resources, socio-economic, public health, technical and business precedents that has brought together this critical real estate development practice that is necessary for our future. Students will gain the background knowledge and the language of current Sustainable Real Estate Development practices. The course get to the “triple bottom line” of practices and projects, in concert with a firm understanding of the multiple drivers for the new emphasis on sustainability. It is heavily encouraged that each student attends the LEED GA Accreditation class preparation and become a LEED GA.

MBAX 6620 - Real Estate (NAIOP) Project Competition

This project course develops skills in real estate decision-making. Teams design, complete, and present a real estate project in a competition forum. Team members organize and assign responsibilities, interact with real estate professionals, and apply appropriate quantitative and qualitative tools and procedures.

MSBX 5605: Real Estate Risk Management
This course examines strategies for mitigating the legal, property, and portfolio risks associated with developing and operating income producing properties. The course begins by examining risks created by commercial property leases. The course then analyzes strategies for mitigating interest rate and currency risk; debt risk; and real estate development risk. The course also illustrates how the market values publicly traded Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). Finally, the course examines how risk changes with real estate portfolios consisting of multiple properties, and to optimally incorporate income property investments in mixed asset portfolios. The course prepares students to be asset and portfolio managers for private real estate equity funds as well as for large real estate institutional investors (e.g. Real Estate Investment Trusts and Pension Funds). The material in this course also helps equity investors, commercial property lenders and real estate developers understand the investment attributes that institutional sources of capital want for their portfolios.

Learn More About the Courses