Real Estate Track

Return to: McIntire School of Commerce: Degree Programs   

Overview

Real Estate constitutes a large portion of the wealth, banking activity, and investment opportunities of the world’s varied economies. Characterized by localized, opaque, illiquid, highly cyclic, and relatively inefficient markets, commercial real estate investments tend to be ripe with both opportunity and risk. McIntire’s Real Estate Track is focused on providing a competitive edge to students that choose career or personal investment paths within this challenging environment. To this end, we have chosen understanding value as the RE Track’s theme given that valuation is central to real estate decision making. The value theme is framed within a broad model we refer to as commercial real estate’s three Ps–Principles, Perspectives, and Players–used to categorize and organize industry knowledge.

Within this strategic context, our program plays to key McIntire strengths–a talented, dedicated, team-oriented student body operating within an honor code system and an equally dedicated group of outstanding real estate professionals–both friends and alumni–who mentor students, guest lecture, and share their experiences through an evolving collection of proprietary real estate investment case studies. Their involvement facilitates our dedication to active learning through historic and live cases plus presentations by “master” real estate investors, decision-makers and their equally outstanding organizations. This in turn enables us to test academic theory and empirical evidence regarding successful analytical principles applicable to real estate investment decision making within an organizational context.

Our program considers optimal real estate development and investment patterns with the context of sustainable urban environments and stewardship of our planet’s natural resources –both being key elements in the University of Virginia’s land use philosophy and commitment to future generations.

Eligibility

McIntire’s Real Estate track is open to all fourth-year Commerce students whose academic requirements allow them the flexibility to take the required 12 credit hours consisting of three potential real estate classes and one approved elective or with Director approval two of the three real estate classes and two approved electives. We highly recommend that students take COMM 4790 - Fundamentals of Real Estate Analysis (3 credit hours) during the fall semester of their fourth year. This exposure to fundamentals of analysis provides a solid basis of basic theory and experience from which to build a solid analytical skill set related to the wide variety of commercial real estate alternatives across global commercial real estate opportunities. Many students find it difficult with their curriculum to enroll in both the fall and spring real estate offerings. We have made it possible to successfully complete the Real Estate Track by allowing the students to take two of the three fourth year Real Estate courses. If students are unable to take COMM 4790, we can assign a home study program over the semester break to assure their learning curve is on par with other Real Estate Track participants. We prefer that participants take the full offering of McIntire Real Estate course offered but other electives can be substituted for one of those required courses. Such electives may be chosen from the attached list of approved Commerce courses. Requests that deviate from taking the full array of real estate courses must be accompanied by a student’s formal written request and the Director’s subsequent approval.

Keep in mind that some students enter the RE Track with experience and may seek a more specialized course of real estate study relating to future professional objectives. Our flexibility with regard to course make-up provides flexibility in this regard as well. Our ultimate goal is to enhance the student’s ability to engage and excel in commercial real estate analysis and investment activities and, thus, we also encourage students seeking less than full exposure to the topic to seek out opportunities to take less that the full menu of courses. We are always ready to discuss appropriate avenues of study along these lines.