Coding for Real Estate

Dont waste the time. Industry is too fragmented, data too variable, transactions too inconsistent. Without consistent and reliable data theres no real deeper analysis you can do that would require coding ability

why would you code in real estate? learn about actual real estate and save that for the coders. different careers.

learn about construction, zoning, markets, finance and people skills.

I haven't heard of it being necessary. I think that has more use for investment banking purposes. I would focus more on learning excel modeling and Argus, if you have access.

Maybe if you want to work on some fintech stuff for real estate, coding would be more applicable, but it sounds like you're just asking about real estate in general.

I think it is a little short sighted to say coding will be worthless in real estate. The amount of data available today is an order of magnitude better than it was 10 years ago. I am sure datasets will become bigger and richer going forward.

I think being able to code would be very helpful, but I don’t think it would help you get most jobs today, but it could help you do well once you have a job if you can use it to be more efficient.

I use coding on a day-to-day for large return datasets and fund/portfolio projections with lots of variables. Though I learned C++ in school, it is overkill and everything you need to get done is not timing sensitive so Python gets the job done.

Coding isn't a required skill for most real estate jobs right now, but it can be a valuable skill to have in the future. It can definitely set you apart from other candidates at more institutional companies.

A couple of my colleagues are proficient in VBA and R, and they are able to analyze data in ways we haven't been able to in the past. They are also way more efficient workers because of these skills.

I have learned some VBA and SQL while on the job, and I'm trying to further develop my coding proficiency so I can become more efficient at my job.

Summary: No

for those of you that use coding in real estate (not just excel formulas or Argus), how does it help you?

let me just say that coding is a skill like anything. it can help in many ways. you don't need to build a new business to get value from coding. so the answer here is that you have a use case where learning to code is valuable then do it. it is like asking to learn spanish. if you plan on working in regions that speak spanish it makes sense. if you don't, it don't. also, learn spanish.

I don't really see it helping at all in traditional RE finance roles, although having VBA skills could help automate some modelling.

It could potentially be useful if you wanted to work at a hybrid RE/fintech company? As mentioned above those wouldn't really be "RE" roles as you'd just be in a specialized coder role and not really overlapping with the RE people.

Coding could be valuable in RE research for a company such as CoStar or REIS, but this would be similar to any other coding role in any industry. Potentially coding could be coveted in companies scanning for specific macro/micros in acquisitions, but at the end of the day deals are not going to get done based off of data alone.

I think for anyone who at all deals with any repetitive tasks (which is most of us) coding can be useful. I think there’s just a general misunderstanding of what “coding” is, as if it is some secret theoretical skill only for big data people. For example an asset manager could spend a few hours standardizing retail tenant names in excel while a simple VBA macro or python script standardizes and categorizes names using text analysis. Is it “Chuck-E-Cheese” or “ChuckyCheese”? Acquisitions people...most of the data vendors now have APIs that can cut the time it takes to put a memo together in half. In addition to speeding up repetitive tasks, it can also open your eyes to information you may not have bothered to consider in the past. Relationships will always be king in real estate, but I think as our industry becomes more transparent which is happening every day, alpha generation will increasingly be determined by who is best at using information and being more efficient.

As it stands, more advanced coding in CRE is a niche skillset really only used in the RE tech scene. These are companies such as Cadre, Skyline AI, LEX Markets, and possibly investment syndication platforms like Equity Mutliple or Fundrise. However, most of these companies have software engineering teams that are separate from the acquisitions/asset management teams, and generally recruit from different funnels for each.

In other words, this dynamic makes it more valuable for a software engineer to learn about RE, and less valuable for an RE professional to learn about software engineering. There are few RE professionals who can produce code at the level of a software engineer; thus, it makes more sense to have a dedicated software engineer who communicated with the RE professional to create a product.

I don't see this changing anytime soon. To be successful in either profession, one would need years of specific practical work experience--which is unachievable given the lack of jobs which require both (chicken and the egg).

What do you want to do in real estate? Very few roles will benefit in a significant way from coding knowledge. If you want to do brokerage, acquisitions, development, or property management I would focus your efforts on other skillsets more germane to the day to day work of those groups. I could see asset management benefiting from coding knowledge with a large portfolio, but coding skills won't get your foot in the door - real estate skills/deal seasoning will. It's kind of like when people on this forum ask if getting CPA/JD/etc will help them in a RE career - yes, but only after completing the prerequisites for the industry.

Its always good to have some basic coding knowledge, debugging VBA codes and some SQL is helpful to scrub and analyse large amounts of data. In this industry data is not consistent and most times not properly documented and maintained although CREFC is doing a great job trying to standardize but still ways to go before everyone adapts to standardization. For your own sanity, it would be an added skill to have a clean data file to perform in depth analysis.

If you're really good at coding, launch a startup that touches the industry and go raise $100m checks from Softbank

... and then get acquired by CoStar for buckets of cash money