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Searching around on boston.com this afternoon for something else entirely, I came across this gem from the Boston Globe business section in August of 2005.
Business students flock to real estate
Business students flock to real estate
Many of the nation's elite business schools say courses in commercial real estate -- a field that has generated little passion in the past -- are oversubscribed.
Students are flocking to take real estate development, management, and investment classes.
Business school real estate clubs, where students gather to study and swap job-hunting tips, are popping up and drawing crowds in the Boston area and beyond. As the technology sector matures and financial markets fetch smaller returns, real estate has become an appealing career path.
''It's a big industry, and it's an exciting industry," said Tim Walsh, 31, a student at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business. ''People throughout the school know that it's a hot industry."
Even business schools that have ignored real estate are hearing the siren song. Earlier this month, Mark P. Rice, dean of Babson College in Wellesley, a school that historically has stressed entrepreneurship, got an e-mail from the head of his development office urging him to consider a strategic initiative in real estate.
''It's on our agenda," Rice said. ''There's a lot of pressure from our alumni and our students to respond to the marketplace."
Most of the real estate curriculums at business schools are focused not on local residential markets, where many fear homes may be overvalued, but on the rapidly globalizing -- and suddenly more lucrative -- commercial real estate market.
Especially attractive are jobs in the private equity firms that invest in business parks, condominium complexes, and multiuse developments around the world. Also in demand are the financial firms where such properties are parceled into financial instruments -- such as mortgage-backed securities and real estate investment trusts -- and sold off in pieces like shares of stock to deep-pocket investors. Salaries at those firms have been rising as fast as office towers, leading some newly minted MBAs to peg real estate as the dot-com industry of the current decade.
''In 2000, everybody was flooding into the technology field," said Ani Vartanian, who earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 2002 and is now an acquisition and asset manager for Rockwood Capital, a San Francisco private equity firm specializing in real estate investments. ''Now you're seeing the rush of talent into real estate."
Courses cover forbidding-sounding subjects such as real property asset management. Others focus on real estate strategy, investment, and pricing.
The rush has inspired some self-deprecating humor by business student graduates awash in warnings that the housing bubble might burst and fearing that their interest in real estate may be a sure sign that it has peaked.
''When you see Harvard students going into a field, it's a good contrarian indicator," Vartanian said in jest.
Real estate professors aren't surprised by the new popularity of their courses. Private equity outlays now total about $500 billion in mortgage-backed securities and about $200 billion in real estate investment trusts, said Arthur Segel, a Harvard business professor who has taught a commercial real estate course since 1996. ''That's changed the standards of the industry," he said.
Tony Ciochetti, chairman of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Real Estate, said the industry has become more complex and professional, offering a range of jobs beyond housing broker and mortgage lender.
''The students are looking around and saying, 'Wow, real estate's pretty cool,' " Ciochetti said. ''You've got securitized debt, you've got swaps, you've got futures, you've got hedges -- all the sophisticated financial tools are used in the real estate field now."
To land jobs as developers, acquisition analysts, dealmakers, or corporate real estate executives, students need an understanding of environmental issues and international markets -- subjects where business school coursework is still catching up with the changing demands of the marketplace.
''Increasingly, I'm telling my students they should go to places like Singapore," said Segel. ''The most interesting opportunities are in Asia and India. Real estate developers are swarming over those areas."
David Pyke, associate dean for the MBA program at Dartmouth's Tuck School, said the number of second-year students enrolling in a popular real estate course taught by professor John Vogel has grown from 75 in 1997 to more than 200 in 2004 out of a total of 240 students in the class. Interest was so high that Tuck last year added more sections. Vogel's classes also attract unenrolled walk-in students, some lured by the new romance of real estate or a desire to pick up some tips on flipping property.
''He packs them in," Pyke said. ''There are some students who want to go into real estate investing or real estate development, and there are others who just have a general interest because they might want to buy a house sometime. Some are doing it already. They come to Tuck and buy a house in Hanover [N.H.]. There's no way they're going to live somewhere for two years without making money on it."
The real estate club has mushroomed to about 85 members at Tuck. ''It's definitely the fastest-growing club over the past two years," said Walsh, who did a summer internship helping to manage commercial property for UBS Realty in Hartford.
At the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, enrollment in a real estate course has tripled in five years, and there was a waiting list of 10 students last year.
''MBAs go where the jobs are, and real estate is the place to be," said Thomas Lys, a professor of real estate management at Kellogg. ''The salaries in real estate have risen considerably. Students who in the past would have considered anything less than Wall Street unacceptable may now be going into real estate."
Lys says students shouldn't ignore the risks, however.
''A cooling real estate industry would have a sobering effect," he said.
Students are flocking to take real estate development, management, and investment classes.
Business school real estate clubs, where students gather to study and swap job-hunting tips, are popping up and drawing crowds in the Boston area and beyond. As the technology sector matures and financial markets fetch smaller returns, real estate has become an appealing career path.
''It's a big industry, and it's an exciting industry," said Tim Walsh, 31, a student at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business. ''People throughout the school know that it's a hot industry."
Even business schools that have ignored real estate are hearing the siren song. Earlier this month, Mark P. Rice, dean of Babson College in Wellesley, a school that historically has stressed entrepreneurship, got an e-mail from the head of his development office urging him to consider a strategic initiative in real estate.
''It's on our agenda," Rice said. ''There's a lot of pressure from our alumni and our students to respond to the marketplace."
Most of the real estate curriculums at business schools are focused not on local residential markets, where many fear homes may be overvalued, but on the rapidly globalizing -- and suddenly more lucrative -- commercial real estate market.
Especially attractive are jobs in the private equity firms that invest in business parks, condominium complexes, and multiuse developments around the world. Also in demand are the financial firms where such properties are parceled into financial instruments -- such as mortgage-backed securities and real estate investment trusts -- and sold off in pieces like shares of stock to deep-pocket investors. Salaries at those firms have been rising as fast as office towers, leading some newly minted MBAs to peg real estate as the dot-com industry of the current decade.
''In 2000, everybody was flooding into the technology field," said Ani Vartanian, who earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 2002 and is now an acquisition and asset manager for Rockwood Capital, a San Francisco private equity firm specializing in real estate investments. ''Now you're seeing the rush of talent into real estate."
Courses cover forbidding-sounding subjects such as real property asset management. Others focus on real estate strategy, investment, and pricing.
The rush has inspired some self-deprecating humor by business student graduates awash in warnings that the housing bubble might burst and fearing that their interest in real estate may be a sure sign that it has peaked.
''When you see Harvard students going into a field, it's a good contrarian indicator," Vartanian said in jest.
Real estate professors aren't surprised by the new popularity of their courses. Private equity outlays now total about $500 billion in mortgage-backed securities and about $200 billion in real estate investment trusts, said Arthur Segel, a Harvard business professor who has taught a commercial real estate course since 1996. ''That's changed the standards of the industry," he said.
Tony Ciochetti, chairman of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Real Estate, said the industry has become more complex and professional, offering a range of jobs beyond housing broker and mortgage lender.
''The students are looking around and saying, 'Wow, real estate's pretty cool,' " Ciochetti said. ''You've got securitized debt, you've got swaps, you've got futures, you've got hedges -- all the sophisticated financial tools are used in the real estate field now."
To land jobs as developers, acquisition analysts, dealmakers, or corporate real estate executives, students need an understanding of environmental issues and international markets -- subjects where business school coursework is still catching up with the changing demands of the marketplace.
''Increasingly, I'm telling my students they should go to places like Singapore," said Segel. ''The most interesting opportunities are in Asia and India. Real estate developers are swarming over those areas."
David Pyke, associate dean for the MBA program at Dartmouth's Tuck School, said the number of second-year students enrolling in a popular real estate course taught by professor John Vogel has grown from 75 in 1997 to more than 200 in 2004 out of a total of 240 students in the class. Interest was so high that Tuck last year added more sections. Vogel's classes also attract unenrolled walk-in students, some lured by the new romance of real estate or a desire to pick up some tips on flipping property.
''He packs them in," Pyke said. ''There are some students who want to go into real estate investing or real estate development, and there are others who just have a general interest because they might want to buy a house sometime. Some are doing it already. They come to Tuck and buy a house in Hanover [N.H.]. There's no way they're going to live somewhere for two years without making money on it."
The real estate club has mushroomed to about 85 members at Tuck. ''It's definitely the fastest-growing club over the past two years," said Walsh, who did a summer internship helping to manage commercial property for UBS Realty in Hartford.
At the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, enrollment in a real estate course has tripled in five years, and there was a waiting list of 10 students last year.
''MBAs go where the jobs are, and real estate is the place to be," said Thomas Lys, a professor of real estate management at Kellogg. ''The salaries in real estate have risen considerably. Students who in the past would have considered anything less than Wall Street unacceptable may now be going into real estate."
Lys says students shouldn't ignore the risks, however.
''A cooling real estate industry would have a sobering effect," he said.
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