Real Estate Initiative

Related Courses

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.

Darden offers a collection of courses designed to help students prepare for their real estate journeys. During the first year, students engage with the core curriculum and learn the fundamentals of business through rich case study discussions. After completing the core curriculum, students have the opportunity to take core electives and other related courses in real estate.

Preapproved non-Darden courses include:

PLAN 5200 Real Estate Development Process I (3 credit hours, Architecture)
ARCH/PLAC 5250 Applied Real Estate (4 credit hours, Architecture)

Related Courses

FINANCIAL REPORTING & ANALYSIS

Faculty

Justin Hopkins, J. Harvie Wilkinson Jr. Associate Professor of Business Administration

Course Description

This course will help students develop skills in accessing, interpreting, and analyzing corporate disclosures. While the course will focus on financial statements and their accompanying footnotes, we will also examine other disclosures such as proxy statements, press releases, and other reports. It is designed for students who intend to use publicly available information to better understand companies, the incentives corporate officers face as well as the conceptual limitations of the financial reporting model. As such, this course should appeal to those planning careers in financial management, consulting, security analysis, investment banking, credit analysis, etc.

Course Objectives

Recognize the incentives corporate officers face, and how these can be transparent to an analyst.
Understand how the various estimates and judgments affect reported numbers, and evaluating their reasonableness.
Appreciate the conceptual limitations of various methods of corporate reporting including the accrual and cash basis of accounting as well as non-GAAP reporting.

FINANCIAL STATEMENT ANALYSIS

Faculty

Paul Simko, Frank M. Sands Sr. Associate Professor of Business Administration

Course Description

This course is designed to provide a foundation for developing an understanding of the interpretation, screening, forecasting, and valuation tools that help one analyze information in corporate financial reports. The course includes but is not limited to topics related to understanding assessments of earnings quality, predicting financial distress, the use of ratio analysis, and the use of earnings-based valuation models as complements to more conventional discounted cash flow models.

The course is expected to help solidify and integrate core concepts from other finance and accounting courses, particularly the FY core ACC course, the FY ACC elective, and the corporate valuation modules in the FMP courses. Prerequisites are not required, but a solid understanding of accounting financial statements is expected. The FY core ACC course meets this need.

The course should benefit students planning careers in security analysis, investment banking, financial management or corporate finance. The course should also be beneficial to those interested in developing their own framework for using accounting data in their own investment decisions.

Course Objectives

Strengthening students understanding of the accounting framework.
Application of detailed ratio analysis for a variety of purposes, including using accounting data to provide a historical perspective on firm activities, assessing current profitability, and predicting financial distress.
Development of detailed and complete financial statement forecasting techniques
Understanding the application and links across common valuation techniques, including discounted cash flow, multiples, and earnings based valuation methods.
Identification and interpretation of unique accounting factors that may affect the evaluation of company, including adjustments for off-balance sheet assets, understated liabilities, evaluating earnings accretion, and identifying potential earnings management.

INVESTMENTS

Faculty

Richard Evans, Professor of Business Administration and Donald McLean Wilkinson Research Chair in Business Administration

Course Description

This course will provide students with an understanding of the theory and practice of investment decision making. The course is divided into three modules: asset allocation, manager selection, and market frictions. The first module examines the decision of how to allocate a portfolio across different asset classes (e.g., stocks, bonds, real estate). Using the tools developed in modern portfolio theory, students will examine the trade-off between risk and return, the optimization of the risk-return trade-off for a portfolio, and the role of forecasting expected returns in designing an optimal portfolio. The second module explores the process of selecting portfolio managers for the different asset classes included in the portfolio. Students will use the CAPM and multifactor performance models to analyze manager performance and select the best managers. The third module examines market frictions that impact performance and consequently, should be considered in the asset allocation and manager selection decisions. These frictions include manager incentives and risk taking, market liquidity, trading costs, and taxes. 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.

Course Objectives

Teach students a framework for assessing the risk and corresponding return for investments in equities and fixed-income securities.
Allow students to confront a variety of challenging investment issues that require them to identify acceptable alternatives, assess the opportunities and risks; make decisions; and defend those decisions.
Provide students whose career interests lie in the field of investment management and research with a solid foundation for pursuing this goal.

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

Faculty

Michael Ho, Professor of Practice

Course Description

This course examines Mergers and Acquisitions from multiple perspectives: strategic, tactical, financial, tax, legal, corporate governance, etc., thus providing a full picture of the complexity arising during an M&A transaction. The course discusses how to structure a deal and why: how to parse risks among buyer and seller, deal with potential anti-trust issues, and account for strategic and governance forces which may add to the probability of success in an M&A deal. Besides case studies and practitioner-expert presentations the course asks students to research a failed deal and provide learnings in the classroom. The course is important for students interested in Investment Banking, Private Equity, Hedge Funds, Consulting, Corporate Finance as well as General Management. M&A is a fundamental way to grow a business and inevitably business leaders will encounter M&A in their professional lives.

Course Objectives

Understand the complexity of an M&A transaction and the various aspects impacting the success -strategic, legal, financial, etc.
Understand the various risks arising in a deal and how to use tools to distribute them among buyer and seller

VALUATION IN FINANCIAL MARKETS

Faculty

Michael Schill, Sponsors Professor of Business Administration

Course Description

This course extends the fundamentals of financial asset and firm valuation examined in the required First-Year Financial Management and Policies course by exploring more complex valuation techniques and financial engineering applications. The course is organized across three modules. The first module introduces the partitioning of total firm cash flow across different claimants such as cash flow to debt holders or equity holders that is relevant for deals where specific financing matters such as project financing or leveraged buyouts. The second module examines fixed income markets and explores fixed income derivatives such as interest rate forward and swap contracts, emphasizing arbitrage-based valuation approaches. The third module investigates options markets with a focus on the fundamentals of valuing option contracts and hybrid securities. The course seeks to prepare students for careers in finance and to provide valuation skills employed in other finance elective courses.

Course Objectives

To develop student understanding of partitioned cash flow valuation, derivative securities, and financial engineering applications.
To prepare students for careers in finance including investment banking, corporate finance, and financial markets.