Teaching Real Estate Capstone Project Comprehensively -- Sharing decade long experience from Auburn University Graduate Real Estate Development Program

The three-prong approach includes Project Visioning, Market Analysis and Financial Analysis as the three core pillars. Students are challenged to start with the big idea for the project site based on site characteristics and location, later this vision is corrected by feeding market information and a rough financial analysis is conducted. The paper highlights the role of initial big idea based on site analysis without the market intelligence that gives rise to creativity, testing the market information and iterating the plan and the initial vison brings project to ground reality without losing creativity, and a development of a rough cut proforma helps in developing a sense of project costs, revenues and thus ideal densities and FAR usage for the site. Reiterating the big idea design and adjusting the financials to align with the market information (costs, rents, and absorption), and thus the design, students develop a big idea project with focus on branding the newly created real estate to attract potential users and investors. The Capstone Course Faculty also benefits in the process as it starts seeing the project more holistically from design, market, and financial point of view. Furthermore, involvement of the investor panel at the time of review connects students and the academic faculty with the industry stalwarts and students pitch their final ideas in the form of IOM to the investor panel. The paper offers lessons that other graduate programs can use to improve student learning outcomes for their final capstone project including building capacity for their faculty.