Problem: You are modeling the acquisition or development of a property that benefits from a real estate tax abatement, and want to make sure that you are reflecting the eventual phase-in properly.
REFM 60-Second Skills Solution: Set up a simple table with the tax abatement percentage for each year, and then run a VLOOKUP to reference the [...]

Modeling development transactions can be tricky if you want to avoid allowing circular references in your spreadsheets. Circular references can distort your calculations dangerously in that they mislead your expectations for your cash equity requirements.
The primary driver of development pro-forma circular references is the fact that construction loans (a Source of Funds) accrue interest, which [...]

We’ve collected these over the years, and wanted to share them as a list. Please add to the list in the comment section below if you’d like!

Garbage in, garbage out - We’ve all heard it many times before, but most expressions become hackneyed, because they have lasting value. The question to ask yourself is, “Do [...]

Problem - You want to merge together two separate text strings, or you want a label in your spreadsheet to be a more customized description of the numeric variables associated with that label
REFM 60-Second Skills Solution - Use the CONCATENATE and TEXT functions
Basic Example - Merge together two separate text “strings” into a single result using CONCATENATE.

Merge together [...]

While our courses and Self Study products will accelerate your learning process, I want to be perfectly clear t hat modeling well takes a ton of hard work and dedication and many, many hours logged. There is no getting around this. So, here are some ways to really learn how to model well, in addition [...]

We have old saying like this because they are timeless in their validity. Here are REFM’s recommendations for writing and testing formulas in Excel before deploying them in your models.

Does the formula possess all of the relevant elements that it should? (See our post here for the exhaustive generic version of all projection formulas.)
Does the [...]

I have a lot of friends and colleagues ask me what I have on my iPad. They all know that I am a “technology nerd” and am always looking out for the next best app to help me be more productive or have one of those “that’s cool” moments. So, here are my top 5 apps [...]

One of the downsides of working in Excel is that it is 100% faithful in carrying out your instructions perfectly. So this means that when there is a mistake in your model, it is always “operator error.” Unfortunately, while we can make light of errors, they can have serious consequences.
We’ve spent more than our fair [...]

Usually it’s hard to excited about things in Excel, but there are a few exceptions. This is one of them.
Previously I wrote about the Watch Window as a good way to keep an eye on values on a tab other than the currently active tab, but I have always been a little annoyed by having [...]

What are the three characteristics of an excellent real estate analyst?

A strong facility with Excel - While this goes without saying, one of the fundamental problems when employers try to evaluate candidate Excel skills is that when they ask candidates in an interview how their Excel skills are, all of the candidates naturally say, “They’re great!” And can [...]