Real Estate Investment (MSc)

Who is it for?

A Cass master's degree is your gateway to a real estate career.

Four key features make us market leaders in Real Estate master's programmes:

• Track record: Established 20 years ago, and accredited by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), our degrees are widely recognised and highly valued by major employers; you will find Cass Real Estate graduates at all levels in leading real estate firms around the world.
• Capability: you will be taught by highly qualified real estate staff, all with at least 10 years’ experience in teaching in senior roles in the industry – a lot of them with both. And we draw on London’s unmatched pool of industry professionals to act as visiting lecturers and guest speakers.
• Focus: Cass only offers Real Estate courses on a postgraduate level – so you have the exclusive attention of our staff - and has specialised in courses which blend the professional, financial and practical skills in high demand across the real estate industry.
• Location: we are the only business school to offer real estate programmes in London, with the opportunity to network in a global real estate hub, neighbouring both the City’s financial core and the new tech belt centred on Silicon Roundabout.

Cass Real Estate courses:

• Equip you with the core skills required by the industry embracing valuation, financial modelling, development appraisal, market analysis and cash flow modelling.
• Are set in a framework of robust quantitative methods, financial and economic theory.
• Have an emphasis on up to date industry techniques and practical tools taught hands-on in computer labs.

Structure

Overall the MSc Real Estate Investment could be labelled as a degree in finance which is focussed on real estate. Since the topics and methods you study are of interest to all real estate businesses, including the mainstream employers like chartered surveyors, the MSc Real Estate Investment may give you a wider choice of the role you play but it does not pre-determine what sort of firm you work for.

Term 1 gives you a grounding in the core skills of the real estate professional. You cover basic appraisal methods applied to valuation, development and financing of investments, plus a quantitative methods module incorporates econometric modelling. Those techniques are put in a wider context through a module on real estate economics and an investment markets module which ranges across all asset classes and financial instruments

Term 2 is more about applications of those core skills and principles. In Capital Markets you cover the different forms of indirect real estate – REITS, core and opportunistic funds, and derivatives. In Debt Markets you take in mortgage lending, mezzanine finance, mortgage-backed securities.  In Term 2 you also look in more detail at the financial instruments based on real estate – REITs, Mortgage Backed Securities, derivatives. Portfolio risk management deals with the role of real estate in investment portfolios and the mix of assets within real estate portfolios.

Assessment methods

All core modules in Term 1 and Term 2 are assessed by sight-unseen examinations (in January and April) plus coursework set and delivered in Term time. Elective modules are assessed by coursework only.

Your coursework will take a range of forms - essays, modelling projects, presentations, class tests. Some are done individually, others in self-selected or allocated groups of up to four coursework. The mix of assignments is designed to develop the general and soft skills employers expect – time management, team working, report production and presentations.

Overall your final master's mark will be assessed on 50% exams and 50% coursework.

Career pathways

Graduates from the MSc Real Estate Investment go into a wide spread of firms and roles – some into the graduate entry schemes of the chartered surveyors in the UK or abroad. Most are best suited to analyst, strategy or research positions major fund management houses and investment banks, or smaller private-equity type real estate funds, rating agencies and specialist research firms. Many will go on to professional qualifications outside real estate, such as Chartered Financial Analyst Institute.

Connecting with employers

• From week one, we host recruitment visits from all the largest real estate employers – like CBRE, JLL, Cushman Wakefield, Savills – plus other firms in real estate fund management, development, finance.
• Our real estate specialists in the Cass Careers Service hold contacts with businesses across the industry, and will notify you of job opportunities as they come in through the year.
• You will have un-matched opportunities to network with professionals and employers across London’s vibrant real estate industry at seminars and an annual conference run by our students’ Real Estate Club, and through our mentoring scheme which matches you up with a Cass graduate, and through industry events outside Cass,

Visit the Real Estate Investment (MSc) page on the Cass Business School website for more details!