Microsoft Excel Tips for CRE Professionals - Adventures in Real Estate https://www.adventuresincre.com/re-modeling/excel-tips/ Real Estate: AI, Financial Modeling, Careers, Education Wed, 13 Aug 2025 22:29:31 +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 Microsoft Excel Tips for CRE Professionals - Adventures in Real Estate https://www.adventuresincre.com/re-modeling/excel-tips/ 32 32 Excel’s Stale Value Formatting: What It Means and Why It Matters (Updated Aug 2025) https://www.adventuresincre.com/stale-value-formatting-excel/ Fri, 01 Aug 2025 12:00:59 +0000 https://www.adventuresincre.com/?p=1006943 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 […]

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]]> The Conditional Weighted Average – SUMPRODUCT with SUMIF (Updated July 2025) https://www.adventuresincre.com/conditional-weighted-average-sumproduct-sumif/ Mon, 28 Jul 2025 14:00:26 +0000 http://www.adventuresincre.com/?p=2457 Consider this scenario: you have a 50 tenant rent roll, consisting of various tenant types (i.e. small inline, large inline, junior anchor, anchor, etc.), and you want to calculate the weighted average rent for each tenant type. If I asked you, what is the fastest and cleanest way to do this in Excel, what would […]

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]]> Supercharge Excel with the ‘Excel 4 CRE’ Add-In – Now with AI (Updated July 2025) https://www.adventuresincre.com/custom-excel-addin-for-real-estate/ Fri, 25 Jul 2025 17:01:36 +0000 https://www.adventuresincre.com/?p=678049 Today, we’re thrilled to share with the A.CRE community a new timesaving (and free) Excel tool: the ‘Excel 4 CRE’ Add-in! Over the past few years, we at A.CRE (together with our new favorite companion, ChatGPT!) have been developing and sharing this Excel add-in. The goal? To make real estate financial modeling faster and more […]

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]]> 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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]]> Excel Shortcuts For Real Estate Financial Modeling (Updated May 2025) https://www.adventuresincre.com/excel-shortcuts-real-estate-financial-modeling/ Tue, 13 May 2025 14:00:36 +0000 https://www.adventuresincre.com/?p=1097025 One of the lesser talked about—yet most impactful—skills in real estate financial modeling is keyboard efficiency. If you’ve ever watched one of our tutorials or Accelerator sessions, you’ve probably seen the models flying by, with formulas updating and data moving around the screen, almost magically. What’s often behind that speed? Excel shortcuts. And yet, it’s […]

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]]> Microsoft has blocked the macros in my A.CRE model – What now? https://www.adventuresincre.com/microsoft-blocked-macros/ Thu, 17 Apr 2025 17:47:41 +0000 https://www.adventuresincre.com/?p=515533 When downloading and opening an Excel model from A.CRE, some users may get the ominous message: “Microsoft has blocked macros from running because the source of this file is untrusted.” If you’ve received this message, you’re probably asking, “Why did this message appear, and can I use the file without macros?” In this tutorial, I’ll […]

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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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]]> Using COUNTIFS, SUMIFS, and AVERAGEIFS Excel Functions in Real Estate Underwriting (Updated Dec 2024) https://www.adventuresincre.com/countifs-sumifs-averageifs-real-estate/ Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:00:29 +0000 https://www.adventuresincre.com/?p=6886 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. […]

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]]> Best Practices in Real Estate Financial Modeling (Updated Nov 2024) https://www.adventuresincre.com/re-modeling-best-practices/ Fri, 22 Nov 2024 10:21:01 +0000 https://www.adventuresincre.com/?p=18522 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 […]

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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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]]> A.CRE 101: How To Use The Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) Method To Value Income Producing Property (Updated Aug 2024) https://www.adventuresincre.com/discounted-cash-flow-method-dcf/ Fri, 23 Aug 2024 13:00:22 +0000 https://www.adventuresincre.com/?p=7957 The Discounted Cash Flow Method is a method to value a project by taking all future projected cash flows of the project and discounting them back to time zero (date of purchase) using a predetermined discount rate (the discount rate when used in a DCF to look at an investment can be looked at as […]

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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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]]> Using SUMPRODUCT to Calculate Weighted Average in Real Estate (Updated Aug 2024) https://www.adventuresincre.com/sumproduct-weighted-average-real-estate/ Sun, 04 Aug 2024 14:00:42 +0000 https://www.adventuresincre.com/?p=120915 In my experience, using the SUMPRODUCT function in Excel to calculate weighted average is one of the most oft-used Excel techniques in real estate financial modeling. I learned this technique on day one of my first real estate internship and I continue to use it at least once a week to this day. So in […]

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]]> An Overview Of IPMT and PPMT Excel Functions – Uses And Drawbacks (Model + Case Study) https://www.adventuresincre.com/ipmt-ppmt-excel-functions/ Tue, 16 Jul 2024 15:00:22 +0000 https://www.adventuresincre.com/development-spread-copy/ We recently received an intriguing question in the Q&A section of the A.CRE Real Estate Financial Modeling Accelerator regarding the uses of the IPMT and PPMT Excel functions. As such, I’d like to take the opportunity to discuss it. First of all, I must tell you that the Q&A is a fascinating and great learning […]

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