Substitutes for the finance degree you don't have

My educational background is not in finance, but I am determined to push in through the side door to real estate finance jobs. The vast majority of analyst level positions seem to merely require some level of familiarity with excel and the financial concepts which go into RE finance. In the RE field, it seems that most large employers use Argus DCF or sometimes Yardi as specialty software within their firm (I'm not suggesting argus / yardi accomplish the same thing, I'm observing that one or the other or both come up in addition to Excel on requirements lists).

 

So, in addition to getting decent internship exposure a bit ago to real estate development generally, I have been aggressively reading Finance and RE Finance textbooks, and supplementing my knowledge of Excel.

I also chipped in the full price to the ARGUS DCF certification and would like to share my thoughts on that course here. This might be useful to those of us who haven't spent the last 4 years putting together finance models and generally have not been totally immersed in excel / re / finance.

 
Best Response

For a non-student, the $1k price for the DCF certification is steep. The courseware does not appear to have been meaningfully updated in several years, and the web-portal which is a glorified slide show, is a pretty painful, and was buggy in my use.

How fast can you get the course finished? I finished the entire web-course in about 8 hours. The first 7 of 10 modules are painfully easy, but the last three become very complex because Argus' UI is antiquated and not intuitive. Specifically, there are many nested options where you start with one variable, click into a custom choice, click into another custom choice, set the parameter, and then exit out three levels. I was reminded of inception except this is the much more frustrating submenu within a submenu within a detail field within a form entry. Nevertheless, once you play with the program for a few hours, it becomes easier to navigate. . Each of the modules has an exam at the end of it. I scored 100% on 3 or 4 and mostly stayed above 90% for the rest. at the end of the whole course, there is a prep-exam. I scored and 88% on the prep exam.

 

Awesome, I thought, if I'm well above the 70% pass threshold for the certification, I should go, have some snacks and take the test, and I'll get certified within 24hrs of purchasing the course.

There are two parts to the cert 1 a straight multiple choice exam based on graphics / true-false etc. - this was tougher than any of the prep components and included material not covered in the web-courses - specifically partnership contributions etc. 2 a multiple choice exam based on your model of a case study - the case study will take some time to model, it took me around 45 minutes, and I was rushed for time at the end - The language of the case study was not completely clear to me, and I struggled to build out the model

Result was my model was inaccurate, and I failed part two only of the exam by three points.

 

This is an annoying result, but I do take some of the blame for moving very quickly through the preparation material. My next steps are going to be going back through the "calculation manual" and the "step by step" manual so I can address the areas I did not model correctly (which I can't be sure but I suspect was the expense reimbursement section).

That being said, the DCF cert would be much more helpful if it had a few case studies and then the exam. It seemed unproductive to spend as much time as was spent on the very basic elements of the program (call it 6 hours) and then rush through the most complex part of the program (call it 2 hours).

 

I also found some decent ARGUS instructions on youtube which I may sit through to supplement the manuals. Does anyone here have the Advanced Guide? I'd be happy to subsidize a portion of your purchase cost for a copy (assume its a pdf)

 

dude, give people some time to reply! you are having a convo with yourself here lol. Seems like you are taking the proper steps to transition into a real estate role. Getting a certification (like ARGUS) and demonstrating an interest in real estate is step 1. After that it's network your ass off.

What is your educational background? I mean, is it ECON, some form of informatics? or is it history or something? If it is the latter you really might need to think about enrolling in some type of masters degree relevant to real estate. Some jumps are just not possible IMO.

 

I TLDR forum posts more than two paragraphs so I split mine up so you can skip content if you don't care ha ugrad is international studies with economics concentration (which means precisely crap, and that was a while ago now) masters level I have a JD

 

With your undergrad alone you can spin that into a real estate role. Focus on your strengths and see what shops are aligned with them. Maybe go after a international real estate owner / investor, make sure you have a story about the transition and in time someone will give you a shot.

Given that you have a JD, you very well may need to take a pay cut in order to break into real estate (by taking a more entry level position). Check out this similar thread where a lawyer is attempting to transition into a PM role in real estate -

http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/associate-project-manager-salaries

With your background and your eagerness to learn something new, it shouldn't be too hard if you have a good story on the transition and can sell yourself. Like I said, someone will eventually give you a shot. and if not, go for a masters with a concentration in real estate.

 

I did have a look at that post, and that seems like a very nice move, though it seems that he's got a bit more experience than I do if they want to make him a project manager. I am not as concerned with the pay scale differences, my sentiment on the new law associate position is that most big firms (where the pay is the best) are mostly concerned with getting their $'s worth out of a commodity (new JD's) more than cultivating / developing broadly useful skill sets in their new hires.

Have many friends who went that direction and they fairly uniformly report that they are not getting the kind of work experience which they can use to build out their own business.

Again, as I mentioned in my other reply to Silver, at a certain point I will diversify my search to law positions, but for the moment those jobs just don't seem that exciting to me.

 

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