Virtually every real estate firm in the world uses Microsoft Excel to analyze real estate. It’s the industry standard and if you work in real estate you better know how to model real estate in Excel. So regardless of whether you love Excel or hate it, the hard truth is that this fact isn’t going […]
There are few Excel experiences more frustrating than getting that “this workbook contains links to one or more external sources” alert and not being able to find/break the external links causing it. In this tutorial, I teach you five steps to fix the problem. In the video that follows the written instructions, I fix the […]
The feedback has been positive on the ‘Watch Me Build a Multifamily Model’ video I recorded earlier this year. So I thought I’d follow that up with another. This time I build a Real Estate Tenant Rollover Analysis Model and talk through the methodology, keyboard shortcuts, and formulas I use as I build the model. […]
This walkthrough, our second in the series, will detail how to use the office/retail/industrial rent roll (see ORI-RR Tab). The rent roll tab is arguably the most important, and most complex, tab in the All-in-One model. Below we post a video of the walkthrough together with a brief description of the key components of this tab. Video […]
One way to become a better real estate financial modeling professional, is to watch other professionals model. I know in my career being able to physically see how others tackle different modeling problems has shaped my methods and made me better at what I do. I remember sitting with a friend, watching him zip back […]
A few years ago, I created a tutorial on building smart drop-down menus in Excel using dynamic named ranges and data validation lists. This offered a great way to have drop-down menus in your model that could be easily changed by the user to fit their specific needs. But what about when you want a […]
Over the next few minutes, I will show you two techniques for automatically hiding and showing rows in Excel using VBA code. These techniques I use regularly in my real estate financial models to make for a more intuitive user experience. In the past, I’ve created similar tutorials for hiding worksheets or creating dynamic buttons […]
I recently had a discussion in the All-in-One support forum about how to model a mortgage loan assumption using my All-in-One Model for Underwriting Acquisitions and Development. Prior to version 0.77, this required manually overriding various calculation cells (i.e. black font cells). So I updated the model to make handling assumable debt more intuitive. In […]
Creating intuitive, user-friendly, visually appealing models is one aspect of mastering real estate financial modeling. One way to make your models easy for people to use and more attractive in general is to use dynamic, theme-appropriate, in-cell buttons (ie. a button that changes text, font, background based on certain logic) and toggles (i.e. buttons to […]
I’m regularly asked to expand my single family home construction pro forma to analyze the construction of more than one home. I’ve contemplated adding that functionality to the model, but it is such a custom task that no template could really cover even a majority of multi-home scenarios. So instead, I thought I’d show you […]
In an effort to provide greater instruction on how to use our All-in-One Underwriting Tool for Real Estate Development and Acquisition, we’ve developed a series of walkthrough videos and posts on the methodology behind the various components of the model. This walkthrough, our first in the series, will detail how the Permanent Debt Module is […]
Your real estate financial models are only as good as their ability to be used by others. Or in other words, if others can’t figure out how to use your model, it isn’t worth much! So when building real estate financial model templates, besides using Modeling Best Practices, I personally employ a variety of techniques […]
A concept common to real estate partnership structures, preferred return refers to the preference given to a certain class of equity partners when distributing available cash flow. The preferred return is generally calculated as either a percentage return on contributed capital or a given multiple on contributed capital, and must first be paid before common […]
Over the next few minutes, I’ll share a great modeling tip for efficiently visualizing the more salient metrics in your real estate models. Now I should mention, this is a tip I shared a few years ago. But given the complexity of many of the models in our Library of Real Estate Excel models, I […]
In this ‘Day in the Life of a Commercial Real Estate Professional’ post, we hear from an EVP/Asset Manager working at a Family Office in California where this person has been located for the last 2 years. This professional has been kind enough to share what he/she does on a daily basis as well as […]