CRE Investing (MGT 885) Final Exam Guidelines

Hi all,
The CRE Investing exam is a take-home assignment. It will be posted to Canvas at 9am on
Friday, May 3rd and due through the Canvas assignment tab by noon on Thursday, May 9th
(by noon on Wednesday, May 8th for Yale College students). There are no late submissions, as
student course grades are due shortly after the deadline, and deadlines are set by the Registrar not
the instructor. You are welcome to submit your responses in advance of the deadline, but you are
not allowed to make revisions once you submit.
Please carefully read the following information.
Exam format

• The exam consists of direct and straightforward questions from the material covered in the
lecture notes and the Final Practice Problem Set. Following the Final Practice Problem Set,
there are two question formats: numerical exercises which ask you to calculate something,
and short answer questions which are more conceptual in nature.
• The exam is cumulative and can potentially cover any of the topics from Spring-2 lectures
listed in the table below.
• Some questions on the exam are slightly more challenging. They will be marked with *** so
that you can plan your time accordingly. Point totals for each question are indicated in
brackets (e.g., “[10 points]”).
• The exam is take-home, open book, and open notes. However, no collaboration with
others is permitted – regardless of whether they are participating members of this
course.
• You should use Excel for calculations on the exam, but you are expected to explain your
work. Please refer to the instructions for each question to ensure you are doing
everything asked of you.
Completing the exam

• The exam will be posted as a PDF document on Canvas under the Assignments tab under
“Final Exam.” The exam will become available for download on May 3rd at 9am ET.
• You must type your responses to questions. Some questions will require pro forma-style
computations in Excel. You should submit both your write-up to the questions and any
Excel outputs (just as you were asked to do for the homework assignments in this course).
We reserve the right to take off points if you attempt to answer all questions within poorly
formatted Excel tabs.
• If you find a question to be open-ended, state the assumptions that you feel are necessary to
answer the question and then provide your answer. You can ask for clarifications by
emailing me and CC’ing the TAs, but our responses will be terse. We will not be
offering hints on how to answer the questions.
Submitting the exam

• Submit your completed responses to the exam questions as a PDF with the naming
convention: “lastname_firstname.pdf.”
• Please also upload a spreadsheet with the same naming convention:
“lastname_firstname.xlsx.” Questions in the Excel file should be clearly delineated by
separate sheet tabs.
• The deadline for submission to Canvas is noon ET on May 9th. Failure to submit the
exam by that deadline could result in an incomplete for the course given when course grades
are due to individual schools at Yale.
Troubleshooting

• If you are having difficulty accessing Canvas, you can submit your exam by emailing it as an
attachment to myself (cameron.lapoint@yale.edu) with the TAs CC’ed
(tom.mcfarland@yale.edu) and (marc.mazzucco@yale.edu).
• If you need to submit your exam through email, you still must adhere to the deadline.

Coverage of topics
All the following topics are fair game for the exam. Note that you are also responsible for reviewing
the material related to these topics which may have appeared in the cases and homework
assignments (plus solution keys).

Topic Lecture slide # Lecture date(s)

Lease structures L1 March 26, 2024
March 28, 2024
Basic pro forma analysis L2 April 2, 2024
April 4, 2024
Cap rates and exit L3 April 9, 2024
April 11, 2024
Pro forma and taxes L4 April 11, 2024
Taxes and firm filing status April 16, 2024
Mezzanine financing L5 April 23, 2024 (guest lecture)
(junior vs. senior debt) April 25, 2024
REITs and PERE funds L6 April 23, 2024 (guest lecture)
April 30, 2024
May 2, 2024
CRE development L7 April 18, 2024 (guest lecture)
Zoning and land use May 2, 2024 (guest lecture)
May 7, 2024