15.427/11.432  Real Estate Capital Markets

Dear class,

Please hand-in your assignment before tomorrow, March 6, at 2h30pm. Deliverables are as follows:

1) Electronic copies of the memo containing all required exhibits and the Powerpoint presentation should be submitted on Stellar following same instructions as given in previous announcement for case 1.

2) Hard copy of memo containing all required exhibits handed in at the beginning of lecture at 2h30pm. There is no need to submit Powerpoint slides in hard copy.

See you in class!

I have now posted to the Stellar Materials page ("Class Resources" section) Jim Clayton's slides from his talk in recitation on Feb 28, about CMBS, CDOs, CMBX, etc.

Reminder: Don Belanger (Managing Director & Head of Real Estate Finance for UBS in London) will be in class Tuesday (March 4). I'm sorry I'll have to miss it (take good notes for me).

You may check your grades all along the semester using the Gradebook on your Stellar account. Grades for the Portfolio Exercise are now posted.

The Case 2 (CMBS) Assignment is now posted on the class Stellar site. It is due March 6 (in class), and you should work in groups of three (no restrictions on group composition).

We will have a guest speaker from industry this Thursday Feb 28 in Recitation (5:30-7:00). Jim Clayton, who is Director of Research for the Pension Real Estate Association (PREA) will speak, primarily about CMBS. Clayton is a former academic (prof at Cincinnati), author of our textbook Chapters 20 & 23 (on CMBS & REITs). Knows much more than I do about those topics. Relevant for your Case 2 fun. Hopefully Jim will stay around for a "Liquidity Seminar" after recitation (I think we may have a better chance for it than we did with Cate last week - Jim is a Canadian with a taste for good beer.)

Please bring your laptops to R.E.Finance class this Thursday Feb 21. Try to spend a little time before class reviewing the Derivatives Trading Game Intro slides and the Trading Game Workbook (files available on the Materials page). We will attempt to play this game in class. This will involved dividing the class into groups who will decide on your trading strategies and then come together and attempt to negotiate a deal with a counter-party group. To accomplish this in class it will help if you are a bit prepared when you come in. In the latter part of the class I will lecture about derivatives pricing principles.

In the recitation on Thursday we will have guest speakers from Pyramis (subsidiary of Fidelity Investments): Cate Polleys (head of research) and John Barrie (portfolio manager). They will tell us about an innovative new real estate investment product they are developing for defined-contribution pension plans (e.g., 401k). It should be interesting, and after recitation we can try to do a "Liquidity Seminar".