Altus Group Analyst Test

Hi all, I have an interview this Friday with Altus for an Analyst role with their RVA group and was wondering if anyone has done one of these before and what your experience was like.

The director said there will be three parts to the test: i) a proofreading exercise, ii) a financial question to be answered in excel, and iii) a short writing exercise.

I'm very interested to find out what they asked on the Excel test or what they'd ask on a test like that.

 

I'm wondering if you have any suggestions about topics of conversation at the end of the interview (it's with their RVA group).

Many thanks in advance.

 
Best Response

I don't have any info about altus but don't freak about the modeling.

Don't mention this in the interview but after you get some experience you'll be able to get close to your value in about 2 minutes assuming you know the market and anything after that (DCF, modeling, cost, comps) is just confirmation. Also, Altus uses argus so that will be easy enough. And fwiw you won't just have a blank excel sheet looking at you on your first day. Chill.

 

Here are some to get started.

1). Do you see the trend with foreign capital continuing? What about increased pension portfolio allocation? Are these enough to continue to prop up values if we start seeing softening in the broader market?

2). How do you guys value debt? Is it all spread / YTM based? Do you look at estimated foreclosure costs and arrive at the value that way? Both?

3). On large portfolios the market seems to be pricing in quite a large portfolio premium 10-15% what is your take on this? Do you still just value each property separately doing a DCF and then roll them up?

 

Yeah mine was rushed response to do excel as well - most of it was straightforward but there were some questions that were multiple choice that involved knowing the amount of inches in a yard? Random questions really those multiple choice ones, but otherwise fine. One asked how you would invest (what property type) and where, what properties you would rank in order of being least to most relevant for an appraisal, etc. 

 

The RVA Group is an appraisal shop. Knew a few guys who worked there. You'll be reconciling values in Argus and creating lengthy valuation reports and then delivering them to the client. Many analysts go there for 1-2 years and jump ship to work for the client. 

 

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