How to Create Real Estate Financial Models - Adventures in CRE https://www.adventuresincre.com/re-modeling/excel-models/tutorial/ Real Estate: AI, Financial Modeling, Careers, Education Wed, 13 Aug 2025 22:18:48 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.2 https://www.adventuresincre.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/green-background-36x36.png How to Create Real Estate Financial Models - Adventures in CRE https://www.adventuresincre.com/re-modeling/excel-models/tutorial/ 32 32 Watch Me Build a Residential Land Development Model (Updated June 2025) https://www.adventuresincre.com/watch-me-build-residential-land-development-model/ Sun, 08 Jun 2025 18:30:54 +0000 https://www.adventuresincre.com/?p=85657 Over the years, we’ve created a sizable library of Watch Me Build videos covering Excel models for various real estate investment and property types. However, we’ve yet to create a Watch Me Build involving for-sale product. So this weekend, I thought I’d sit down and record myself building a residential land development model. The exercise […]

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]]> Tutorial on How to Model Irregular Growth Rates in Real Estate https://www.adventuresincre.com/model-irregular-growth-rates/ Mon, 17 Mar 2025 15:26:54 +0000 https://www.adventuresincre.com/hide-and-unhide-tabs-using-drop-down-menus-in-excel-copy/ When building a real estate financial model, managing income and expense growth is rarely as simple as applying a fixed growth rate year over year. In real estate investment analysis, growth assumptions need to be flexible, dynamic, and reflective of real-world realities. One common challenge is modeling irregular growth rates, where: Growth occurs annually but […]

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]]> Watch Me Build a Dynamic Mortgage Amortization Table in Excel (Updated September 2024) https://www.adventuresincre.com/excel-mortgage-amortization-table-model/ Wed, 25 Sep 2024 18:30:42 +0000 http://www.spencerburton.org/blog/?p=218 There are a few basic, yet fundamental, real estate modeling skills you must master before anyone will take you seriously as a real estate professional. Building a mortgage amortization schedule is one of them. Virtually every model you create will require this skill – or some variation of what you do when you build an amortization table. […]

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]]> Watch Me Build a 3-Tier Real Estate Equity Waterfall Model (Updated Aug 2024) https://www.adventuresincre.com/watch-build-equity-waterfall/ Tue, 27 Aug 2024 18:00:03 +0000 https://www.adventuresincre.com/?p=8489 As I’ve mentioned in other Watch Me Build posts, one way to become a better real estate financial modeling professional, is to watch other professionals model. Thus, the more exposure you can get to other’s methods, the more adept a real estate professional you will become. This is especially the case with modeling real estate […]

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]]> How to Run Monte Carlo Simulations in Excel (Updated Aug 2024) https://www.adventuresincre.com/run-monte-carlo-simulations-in-excel-without-an-add-in/ Sun, 18 Aug 2024 18:30:54 +0000 http://www.adventuresincre.com/?p=1790 So you want to run Monte Carlo simulations in Excel, but your project isn’t large enough or you don’t do this type of probabilistic analysis enough to warrant buying an expensive add-in. Well, you’ve come to the right place. Excel’s built-in functionality allows for stochastic modeling, including running as many simulations as your computer’s processing power […]

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]]> Watch Me Solve a REPE Technical Interview Modeling Test (Updated July 2024) https://www.adventuresincre.com/watch-model-real-estate-technical-interview-test/ Wed, 17 Jul 2024 12:00:01 +0000 https://www.adventuresincre.com/?p=8386 What better way to spend some free time over the Thanksgiving holiday, than to record myself completing a real estate private equity technical interview exercise! While I’ve offered help with the real estate technical interview in the past, I’ve never just grabbed an actual technical interview case study and walked our readers through how I […]

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]]> Hold-Sell Analysis in Real Estate (Updated June 2024) https://www.adventuresincre.com/hold-sell-analysis-real-estate/ Fri, 28 Jun 2024 16:30:54 +0000 https://www.adventuresincre.com/?p=29421 In course 3 of our A.CRE Accelerator, we use a case study that revolves around a hold-sell (i.e. hold vs sell) analysis scenario to teach the anatomy of the real estate DCF. In that scenario, the student is an asset manager working for an open-end core fund. The fund is trying to determine whether it […]

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]]> A.CRE Geocoding Excel Add-in to Auto-Populate Latitude and Longitude in Excel (Updated Jun 2024) https://www.adventuresincre.com/geocoding-excel-add-in/ Tue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:20 +0000 https://www.adventuresincre.com/?p=235381 The A.CRE Geocoding Excel Add-in uses the Google Geocoding API to automatically convert a given address to latitude and longitude coordinates, or to convert a given latitude and longitude coordinate to an address. The add-in makes auto-populating latitude and longitude (or address) in Excel easy. It includes various features to help add or change the […]

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]]> Why Your IRR and XIRR are Different (Updated June 2024) https://www.adventuresincre.com/why-your-irr-and-xirr-are-different/ Wed, 05 Jun 2024 16:00:55 +0000 https://www.adventuresincre.com/?p=171775 This post was inspired by a question on our real estate financial modeling Accelerator forum. Additionally, Spencer and I frequently get emails asking about this very issue, which is ‘why the IRR (internal rate of return) and XIRR (extended internal rate of return) functions provide different results on the same cash flow’. Both functions aim […]

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]]> A.CRE 101: How to Use the Income Capitalization Approach to Value Income-Producing Property (Updated May 2024) https://www.adventuresincre.com/acre-101-income-approach-value-income-producing-property/ Fri, 31 May 2024 16:00:46 +0000 https://www.adventuresincre.com/?p=7854 In commercial real estate, there are a few generally accepted methods for appraising (or valuing) real property. The three most common are the Cost Approach, the Sales Comparison Method, and the Income Approach. The Income Approach includes two methods, the simpler of the two is the Direct Capitalization method, which this post will cover. The […]

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]]> Watch Me Build – Modeling a Rent Schedule in Both Excel and Using AI (Updated May 2024) https://www.adventuresincre.com/watch-me-build-custom-rent-schedule-module/ Sun, 05 May 2024 14:00:11 +0000 https://www.adventuresincre.com/irr-partitioning-in-excel-copy/ In this Watch Me Build video I show you how to build a custom rent schedule module for long-term leases. The foundation of the module is a simple INDEX/MATCH combination that takes a rent schedule and models the rent cash flows across the entire hold period. I also include an optional file that you can […]

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]]> Hide and Unhide Tabs using Drop-down Menus in Excel (Updated Apr 2024) https://www.adventuresincre.com/hide-and-unhide-tabs-using-drop-down-menus-in-excel/ Sun, 28 Apr 2024 13:00:28 +0000 http://www.adventuresincre.com/?p=1871 I’d like to share a handy little trick I learned this week for hiding and unhiding tabs in Excel using drop-down menus. Now this method requires you to use some basic VBA code and to save the Workbook as a Macro-Enabled file but don’t be intimidated – no previous coding experience is required to make this work. […]

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]]> Watch Me Build – American-Style Real Estate Equity Waterfall (Updated Apr 2024) https://www.adventuresincre.com/watch-me-build-american-style-real-estate-equity-waterfall/ Sun, 28 Apr 2024 12:55:23 +0000 https://www.adventuresincre.com/watch-me-build-pro-forma-multiple-home-building-projects-copy/ A few years ago, I recorded my screen as I built a 3-tier real estate equity waterfall model. What I didn’t mention in that Watch Me Build video, is that the kind of waterfall I built is colloquially called a European-style equity waterfall. And while that type of waterfall is extremely common, both in the […]

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]]> Modeling a Property Tax Abatement in Real Estate (Updated Jan 2024) https://www.adventuresincre.com/modeling-property-tax-abatement-real-estate/ Tue, 23 Jan 2024 15:00:36 +0000 https://www.adventuresincre.com/?p=42202 We often field questions about how to model property tax abatements. It’s a concept we cover in our the ‘Advanced Modeling – Property and Portfolio’ endorsement in our Accelerator real estate financial modeling training program and something that has come up several times in our Accelerator Q&A. So, I thought it worthwhile to write a […]

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]]> Using an IRR Matrix to Determine Hold Period (Updated Dec 2023) https://www.adventuresincre.com/using-an-irr-matrix-to-analyze-hold-period/ Tue, 26 Dec 2023 14:02:47 +0000 https://www.adventuresincre.com/?p=2719 When building a real estate financial pro forma, it’s important to model for and include a summary of various return and risk metrics. Among the different return metrics, the internal rate of return (IRR) – both on an unlevered and levered basis – is one of the more important metrics to include in your analysis. One issue common to […]

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