Nuevo Contenido en Español (Actualizado Enero 2025)
Ver y leer nuevo contenido en español. Este contenido ha sido creado por el equipo A.CRE para profesionales en la inversion inmobiliaria. Tutoriales, modelos financieros, educación, y mucho más.
Entries by Spencer Burton
Excel Pro Forma for Flipping Houses (Updated Jan 2025)
Before moving to the principal side of the business, I began my career as a self-described real estate investment specialist, largely working as a land broker but dabbling in other areas including the popular “single-family flip” space. In all honesty, I wasn’t qualified for the title. In fact, I had little to no actual experience […]
AI Tools for Commercial Real Estate (Winter 2025 Edition)
If you haven’t noticed, we’ve been exploring use cases, training, and tools related to AI in commercial real estate a lot lately! The reason is that Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to revolutionize the commercial real estate industry by transforming the way acquisitions, development, management, advisory, and marketing teams in the industry operate. AI tools […]
All-in-One (Ai1) Model for Underwriting Development and Acquisitions (Updated Jan 2025)
As many of you recall, in 2015 I set out to build an Excel alternative to the widely-used (and now discontinued) ARGUS DCF. With career moves and a lot of other A.CRE-related side projects, this undertaking has been slow going. Alas, in 2016 I released the first beta-version of the model – my All-in-One (Ai1) […]
Simple Acquisition Model for Office, Retail, Industrial Properties (Updated Dec 2024)
A few years back, on a sleepy Saturday afternoon while my kids were busy eating Halloween candy, I decided to create a simple real estate acquisition model in Excel for office, retail, and industrial deals. Since then, I’ve made various updates, including error fixes and functional improvements. The model calculates returns at the property and […]
Using COUNTIFS, SUMIFS, and AVERAGEIFS Excel Functions in Real Estate Underwriting (Updated Dec 2024)
Why use COUNTIFS, SUMIFS, and AVERAGEIFS functions in real estate? When real estate analysts first start their careers, they’re often required to work with large data sets and to transpose property and portfolio information from one format to another in Excel. At first, being unfamiliar with many of Excel’s functions, they manually perform these operations. […]
ChatGPT Projects vs Custom GPTs (Dec 2024)
At A.CRE, we’re always on the lookout for tools that can streamline our workflow and make our jobs a little easier. As the AI space evolves, OpenAI has rolled out two features that we’ve been putting to work in our day-to-day operations: ChatGPT Projects and Custom GPTs. These two features have unlocked new ways for […]
Real Estate Equity Waterfall Model with Catch Up and Clawback (Updated Dec 2024)
A question came up recently in the A.CRE Accelerator’s real estate waterfall modeling course regarding how to model GP Catch Up (i.e. Sponsor Catch Up) and LP Clawback provisions. I put together a quick video tutorial in response to that question, and in doing so I realized I had never shared to A.CRE a real […]
Excel’s Stale Value Formatting: What It Means and Why It Matters
We recently received an email from an A.CRE reader using one of our real estate financial models with a curious question. He explained that many of the cells in his model suddenly had a strikethrough applied to the text. Naturally, he wondered if a macro had altered a setting in the model or if something […]
A.CRE Apartment Development Model (Updated Dec 2024)
For several years now, our library of real estate models has been lacking a robust ground-up apartment development model. Sure, our All-in-One (Ai1) model has the capability to model multifamily development deals, but it’s more a generalist tool than a specialized one. As a result, I’ve found it wanting when used to model developments. So a few […]
Best Practices in Real Estate Financial Modeling (Updated Nov 2024)
Before you use one of our real estate financial models (i.e. Excel templates), or before you set out to build your own real estate analysis tool in Excel, it’s important to keep in mind a few real estate financial modeling best practices. This list combines industry conventions for modeling in Excel, with various suggestions specific […]
Real Estate Financial Modeling Accelerator (Updated Nov 2024)
Prior to launching the Accelerator program, Michael and I fielded email after email requesting a more structured real estate financial modeling training program on the site. Over the years, we’ve covered hundreds of real estate modeling topics in our blog, published hours of video, and shared 60+ real estate Excel models in our Library. Nonetheless, no […]
A.CRE Build-to-Rent (BTR) Development Model (Updated Nov 2024)
Build-to-rent (BTR) has become more and more common in CRE and now accounts for a meaningful share of development. In the past, we’ve recommended A.CRE readers use our Apartment Development Model for BTR analysis. However, as we’ve received numerous requests over the few years for a purpose-built BTR model – including an inquiry in a […]
Industrial Real Estate Development Model (Updated Nov 2024)
Allow me to share my Industrial Development Model in Excel. Over the past few years, I’ve been working to add more specialty real estate models to our library. While our All-in-One model certainly has its place, oftentimes really digging into the underwriting of a deal takes a hyper-focused tool. This model has spawned sister Office […]