SAN DIEGO—A new $1 billion real estate competition, sponsored by three real estate organizations begins today.
The Altus Group, the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (NAREIT), and National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF) are sponsoring an annual commercial real estate portfolio challenge titled The Real Confidence University Portfolio Challenge.
The 2015 competition is a hands-on, first-of-its-kind learning experience which includes 15 university teams and over 90 individual participants, all attempting to make a run at the leaderboard. Each year competing universities will elect one team of students to theoretically allocate $1 billion in capital to a variety of real estate investment choices directly linked to well-known industry indexes. The best performing portfolio over a four quarter period will be declared the grand prize winner and receive a $50,000 university scholarship.
The University of San Diego's team is comprised of all recent MSRE alums: 2015 Woodruff Scholarship winner, Victor Alfonso '15 (MSRE), Omar El-Mofty '15 (MSRE), Jon Mesa '15 (MSRE) and Brad Williams '15 (MSRE). For their $1 billion portfolio, the USD team chose to allocate all $1B to equity ($0 to debt), $800M to the public sector (REITs) and $200M to the private sector (NCRIEF). For the public sector, the USD team allocated $500M to office and $300M to residential. For the private sector, the team allocated the entire $200M to hotels in the west region.
Besides the University of San Diego, the 14 other teams include: Florida International University, Georgetown University, Georgia State University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Lehigh University, Middle Tennessee State University, Pennsylvania State University, Texas A&M University, Texas Christian University, The College of Charleston, University of Chicago, University of Denver and the University of Wisconsin.
The UPC Index, is an aggregate benchmark that represents all participating teams' combined allocation of $15 billion in capital. Each selection's weight is calculated by taking the total sum of capital for that investment divided by that choices subsector or sector. Returns will be completed on a quarterly basis and weighted according to the values found within the chart index.
A digital leaderboard will be available at on the Real Confidence University Challenge website. The page will offer performance updates, blog posts and the final winner announcement on July 30, 2016.
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David Phillips
David Phillips is a Chicago-based freelance writer and consultant with more than 20 years experience in business and community news. He also has extensive reporting experience in the food manufacturing industry for national trade publications.
