Harvard BS Case Study for an Interview - Help/Advice

Hi all,

Been asked to complete a case study for a REPE fund. They're doing multifamily and planning to expand to industrial. Not a single word from the firm regarding expectations apart from excel + power point.

HBS pdf: "The textile Corporation building" - 11 pages describing the analysis of the potential bid + acquisition + financing + revenues + capital expenses of the properties owned and 50% occupied by the textile corporation with room for refurbishment and/or more surface building... 

It's so weird to work on this very old document with pages and pages of texts, whole section telling the biography of the investor... Rather than an "investor friendly" broker's brochure or a classic modeling test... 

You're given clear exhibits of income and expense (y0 & y4) but on the other hand it takes 15 minutes to understand that it is office space with 1 major tenant + free space... Funny to see how disturbing it is not to have pictures too but paragraphs and paragraphs of mind f****** description...

Have you ever worked on something similar? Haven't studied in america, not familiar at all with the case study approach and literally shocked to see this in lieu of a modeling test (+ppt)... 

Any advice more than welcome on the approach you would take... It's not even an asset-class that the fund is covering... I think I'll do the following:

• Note all the information I have, surfaces, dates, CAPEX, rent levels, financing, OPEX... 

• Build a CF model that will somehow translate that mess into excel

• Build renovation modeling rows assuming we take the redev/refurbish route (with an on/off switch for this)

• Provide recommendations based on outcome...

They're not mentioning any exit so maybe I should think about different scenarios and play with sensitivity? 

Calculate an initial yield, check impact of holding period (in year) + yield compression on IRR/EMx?
Sorry for the moan, I reckon this is an interesting exercise but frustrating when you were expecting a classic 1h to 6h test and smashing it...