Transcript for the video: Postgraduate Property Development
Janet Ge (00:09):
Good afternoon everyone, and how are you? This is UTS Master of Property Development Webinar. I will just present as slide shows. So, if there is any questions, would you please just type it in the chats or you can ask the questions after my presentations. So, my presentation about 15 to 20 minutes. I can start now.
First of it all, I would like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation upon those essential lands our city campus now stands. I would also like to pay respect to the elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of our knowledge for this land.
This presentation will be recorded. The purpose of the recording is for people who are not able to attend it, and also share the questions and response. And there will be recorded and you can access later for the further informations.
So first of all, I would like to talk about what is the property development course about. As you can see from the slides, I have list a couple of the main topics. Is that what you can learn from the subjects if you’ve got special knowledge in the property development process, development visibility, and modeling. And then law, property environmental law, and planning law, property valuations and property make risk analysis and property development finance. The list of the topic, they are the core subjects and will be included in this subject in the course.
As you know that property development is a start from the site acquisition. Then it will go to the planner to make the assessment based on the planning of the site, whether you can build commercial, residential, or industrial properties. And then you’re going to design the site, and as a developer, they need to assess whether there’s a visible development or not, because the profits is the main purpose for developer. After construction and the property development, products, which is the buildings, will be sell or managed by the management teams.
So therefore, during the process, apart from the construction process, and all other process, all other steps are include in the property development course. So therefore you will receive the broad knowledge about the property development, the cycles, and then the property development feasibilities, and knowledges, and to make the decision whether the property development should be go ahead or not, whether it’s feasible for property developers, and whether it’s good for the clients in the market.
The benefit of learning this course, I have identified three. And there may be more. Firstly you will learn the specialized knowledge in property development. Start with identify the sites, what part of the sites you’re going to purchase, and risks involved with the sites. And you will also study the feasibilities. We will go into learn the modeling and DCF modeling skills that allow you to make feasibility decisions. And there are so many risk involve in the property development process. So we have one subject called property market risk analysis. You need to understand the markets, understand the projects, as well as make original decisions.
Of course you will also need to know the planning. This is very important. Different sites have a different purpose. You need to have best use of the site. Some sites you are able to build the high rise building, and others only have a low density buildings. So therefore, different sites, and different purpose, and there are different feasibilities. So therefore you need to know the planing in order to know what kind of the property you’re going to produce. Of course the other issue is [inaudible 00:06:17] and so on and so forth.
And second benefit you will receive from this course is that most of the subjects, they are deliver by the industry professionals, and they are part-time lecturers. Like property transactions will… Like the property development process, we’ve got [inaudible 00:06:44], the lecturers there. And we’ve got the planning environmental law, we’ve got the part time lecturers who practice in this course in the planning environmental law for so many years for that case. And we also have the part-time lecturers for the subject of property market risk analysis.
So therefore, you will very close to the industry professional who deliver so many cases that relate to the industry, like property development finance. And we use the Boral’s project. One is industrial, another one is the residential. So based on the different cases and you go into develop finance strategies of the real product, real projects based on the principle and concepts you learned from the class.
And the third benefit of course is building up the networks. As you know that, we have so many students come from different background. They are come from the valuations, developments, constructions, engineering, town planners, architects. So therefore, you are able to building working as a team and building up the networks together. And you know that property development is not the projects by a one parties. There are multi parties involved: valuations, construction, engineering, as I indicate in the slides. So therefore building that kind of networks will assist you in the future of currently the practice of property developments. Building the have a good connections and then get a knowledge sharing for the projects.
So while you might, what can I do in the future after this course? The course has been designed to provide a wider knowledge so you are able to work in so many industries, including property developer, all this industry you can go in. And if you are the architects, the knowledge will enhance you to understand the property development side of the knowledge and informations. So some architect, they have designed perfect, beautiful buildings. However, they do not know about the costs involved with property development. And so therefore, to achieve the win-win situation as an architect, if you know property development side of the knowledge and feasibility study, then we will helping you to have a better design that will be suitable for the professional developers as well as achieve the better outcomes. Similarly, as a construction industry, if you understand the property development as a whole process, and if you’re working in the construction industry so you understand the cost of the construction, you will also understand other part of the knowledge, like finance, and risk, and property markets, and so on.
Similarly, as a planner, and so many planner working in the governments and make the decision whether the property development should be approved or not. And sometimes the planner do no understand some of the variations of the property development projects. One project I get across that the property that the developer designed, and they using the different windows, and different colors. And then the planner based on the tick, the box that leads to… In the government they tick the box say, “Well, this is maybe not suitable. And the [inaudible 00:11:41] ratio may not be suitable,” and then they just cross, so no approve. But actually if you understand the property development and then the some kind of variations you need to consider, that will help you to make a better decision and help property developers to make better products. After this course, and if you are not in the property development industry, you are in the other side of the business, like business and finance, you can also shift to working in property development across other industries.
So now we coming to the course specifically. So we’ve got the three progress in the property development. So firstly it’s the property development. We say graduate certificate in property development. This is a title for the students who have not had the bachelor qualification but they do have some working experience in the property related industry, so therefore they are able to change their career and then come into the property development industry. So therefore they can start with the graduate certificate.
And once you receive the graduate certificate, and then you are able to transfer to graduate diploma in property development. There are another four subjects involved for that I will talk about later. And then so once you get the graduate diploma, you are able to progress to the master of property development. So therefore this is three degrees or the three programs that are interrelated. So if you are doing the graduate certificate which involve four subject, four core subjects that you must complete. So therefore when you shift from the graduate certificate to graduate diploma, you can get the exemption for the first four subjects which you have learned from the graduate certificate, and carry through the four core subjects to the graduate diploma course. Similarly, if you progress to master of property development course, and all the prior learning subjects can be carried to the master of property development course. Condition is that all the subjects need to be not pass need to be get credits. Credit is 65 out of 100. So therefore you can automatically and true application of course to the internal course transfer. So this is about the course structure of the property development programs.
We have four core subjects for graduate certificates. And then we move to the graduate diploma. You’ve got two core subjects, and you have another two electives you can get from any of the disciplines, like project management, planning. Depends which course you want to, more interested and you want to move ahead in the future your career. And then in the master course you got another two electives and then two core subjects. So therefore, we have a total eight core subjects in the master of property development course, and four electives. So this is what the core structure is.
During your studies you can also considering to extend your knowledge to the double degrees. The double degree is combine property development and planning, property development and investment, property development and project management. So there are so many, we say six or eight course subjects, which is recognize each other from the planning, investment, project managements. So, details. You will go to the UTS website for the detail subjects and to finding out how the subjects are cross each other.
But one thing I would like to notice is that master of property development, we’ve got a valuation major. What do you mean by variation major is that, remember we say we’ve got the elective for our four elective subjects? However, if you want to have a valuation major, so all the elective you need to select which is the required valuation electives. So once you have the valuation major complete as a master of property development course, you will get the API, Australia Property Institute, the recognitions, credits. You will be able to get the licensing as a valuer.
We are now talking about the qualifications and memberships you can receive after this course. Firstly is RICS, Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. The Royal Intuition of Chartered Surveyors is international accreditation bodies. So the benefit of have that membership is that you are able to working in Hong Kong, UK, and because all our course are recognized by RICS, so therefore you can carry out the degree and working in UK and Hong Kong. And particularly in Hong Kong, without RICS recognized the course, you have difficult find a job. So if you have our degree, you can carry our degree and then present in Hong Kong in construction, engineering, property development. The companies, they recognize and valid.
The second qualification, which we our course been recognized is Australian Property Institute, API. This is a local property institute. As mentioned before, you should be able to get the valuation, the major. And you can get the license as a valuer once you finish or complete our master of property development valuation major. So this is the second qualification or membership you can attain. And then the third one is the Property Council of Australia. This is the third qualifications. So, recognize our property programs.
So in these slides I show you some of the details that recognize by the Australia Property Institute. As you can see, the right hand side corner, once you have finished complete the master of property development, you will got the CDP, CPV, which is certify a practicing valuer. That allow you to have a license as valuer. Of course you need to meet the some industry experience from the API. And CPP is is a certified property practitioner. And then the RPV, so Residential Property Valuer. So there are the qualifications you can receive. Once you complete the graduate diploma in property development, and you do not receive the CPV or RPV, but you could get the CDP, which is the Certified Developers Practitioners and CPP. So if you want to get the CPV, Certified Practitioner Valuer, you must complete these four valuation subjects, in which two of them list on the top of the core subjects you will learn in the first graduate certificate degree. And then another two subjects will be the electives. You must select these two.
So how this programs run for master of property development? If you are selected to full-time, there are eight core subjects as mentioned, and four elective subjects. You can do four subjects each semester, and you complete the whole course within three semester if you’re doing full-time. And of course you can also do in the part-time mode and it takes about three years. Or you can select six or five subjects in each year. It depends on you are available time during the years, because the subjects timetable allow student to complete the four subjects in spring. And then we also have a schedule some subjects in May July that allow you to take some of your electives. We also schedule some subjects in the October, summer, or December. So this will allow you to speed up your study, you might finish your course by one year or sometimes.
About the elective subjects. As you can see, there are so many subjects you can select from. They are from the planning, from the property development, and some of them from the project management, some of them from the investments. Like all this. So therefore, you can also select some other elective from the engineering or any other faculties, have to depends on the prerequisite. The prerequisite means that you must complete certain subjects in order to do the second subjects. It really depends on the situations at the time of enrollment.
How the subjects are deliver. We usually have two components. One is the lecture and tutorials. And sometimes we’ve got the computer labs, like probably feasibility and modeling. And you are students sitting in the computer lab to learn how to develop the modeling skills and conduct the decision of feasibilities. And property development finance, you are also sitting in the computer labs to learn the finance using the learn knowledge from the Excel feasibility modeling and further develop the finance decision using the modeling skill, DCF skills. Most of the time, the subjects using the problem-based learning and they so many real projects from the industry are using as assignments and class discussions, and for you to solve the problems, apply the concepts and principles on knowledge you learn from the class.
Most of the subjects in property development we run block mode. What that mean block mode is that we have say one subject and we’ve got two blocks or sometimes have three blocks. So one blocks consists of two days, say Friday and Saturday, which is one block. And then the other Friday and Saturday after one month, there’s a second block. This conduct by face-to-face or sometimes will be online. And for some subjects, like planning environmental law, they increase for the two and a half day block. Say Thursday evening, 6:00 to 9:00, Friday full day, Saturday whole day as one block. In between there’s one Thursday evening for the consultation or some group discussions. And so therefore, two and a half days as a block and could be three blocks. And some of the subjects, and they’re running weekly, and planning development process in autumn the student prefer to do the weekly, and student suit them better. But that can integrate with face-to-face and online mode.
So every subject have a different delivery mode. And then also we encourage student come to face-to-face, but the last year where we shift to a lot to online because the COVID issues. So we are still having some students overseas who could not come to the class, so we sometimes we have face-to-face and online running together to deliver the subjects.
Well, you say well, “If we’re going to come into this class and this course, any admission requirements?” So firstly, if you want to go directly to the master course and you need to have UTS recognize the bachelor degrees that related to business, engineering, or planning recognized degrees. So if you do not have the bachelor degree which also at the credit levels, we will going to assess based on what experience. And you are required to provide your CV, you need to justify why you need to come into the property development course. And you also need to list some of the experience that relate to the property developments, as well as you need to have a reference letter from the employer who support you to do this course. They will be based on the individual situations.
Finally, and I will just have some suggestions for you considering the property development course. And you really need to know what is your objectives. This is very important. Are you going to get the license for valuer, or are you going to focus on property development? Are you just want to get a degree? So the reasons for that is that you can select the subjects, the course you’re really interested and you want to learn. And you will not going to say, “Oh, this is not interesting. I want to go into shift into other course.” And so therefore sometimes you will waste some of your time and waste your money as well. And then so because some of the subjects they maybe no recognized by other course. So you need to better make up your mind to select the better subject, the better course, and then save your time and achieve want you want to achieve at the end of the course.
And secondly, for property development course if you want to progress from graduate certificate to graduate diploma or the master course, and the subjects need to be credit or above. So therefore, once you make the decision, the course you want to learn, you need to focus and get the credit above that you progress the further degree. And the second recommendation is that once you made a decisions, say you are going to do the property development course, I will recommend you do the core subject first, because that’s… Some subjects and most of the subjects we have prerequisites. That means, say, you need to complete your graduate certificate subjects in order to move on to the graduate diploma subjects. Otherwise, you cannot complete the second level subjects in [inaudible 00:31:40]. So therefore, you should follow in the timetable in sequence and that will help you to progress the course in time, complete course in time.
And thirdly is the plan the timetable. The timetable is just considering the prerequisite and subjects. So therefore, if you following the timetable to do the core subjects, they will avoid clashes. And the purpose is to help you to progress your course smoothly as well as on time, in time finish your course. You also need to select the elective very carefully if you want to do the CPV and got the license. If you select the wrong electives, therefore you are not able to get the license you want. You have to an extra subjects to meet the requiremetn for CPV. This is some suggestions when you’re coming to the, you know the course.
Delivery subjects and because the COVID management at campus. So students in local students, you are encouraged, required to do the face-to-face lectures and tutorials or computer labs. So you are required to wear mask, the QR code into the buildings based on COVID-19 management at the campus. So just some conduct information for you to know.
So this is what I would like to present. So for the further information you can contact me or contact our marketing office to organize one-to-one inquiries or the listen this video records again. So I will welcome you all to the program again. And thank you very much for you attending this information session. I would like to answer your questions if you have any relate to my presentations. Thank you.
Jess Shelley (34:25):
Thank you, Janet. That was a great presentation. We have a couple of questions coming in here. We might start with the first one from Christian in chat, is “How many face-to-face hours are there?”
Janet Ge (34:37):
Well, face-to-face hours really depends on the subject delivery. Each course maybe subject can be different. We have two blocks, as I mentioned. So if we got the two blocks, one block is say two days, which is two eight-hours, Friday and Saturday. So therefore, 16 hours for the one block. Another 16 hours for the second block, which is the one subject. So therefore, a total of 32 face-to-face ours you need to complete for the one subject. And if the subject is two and a half days which is Thursday evening, Friday whole day, and Saturday whole day, and therefore so one block you are looking for, so about 20 face-to-face in total about 40 hour face-to-face ours.
But sometimes, some subjects, and they design the [inaudible 00:35:44]. Thursday evening online, Friday face-to-face, Saturday face-to-face. And sometimes Saturday morning online and afternoon presentation face-to-face. So it really depends on the subjects.
Jess Shelley (36:02):
Great. We’ve got another here. How strict are they on entry requirements with GPA? My undergraduate GPA was 4.97, five years of credit, with five years full-time experience with property development.
Janet Ge (36:18):
Based on your qualifications I think you can be considered for the property development course. But the really is based on your applications individual assessments, the course directors, as well as the responsible staff in the student center. They will assess your qualifications. So if you are really interested to the course, you’re just going to apply, and then we will assess if you will require further information. So we will send you a letter and you will be considered if… Sometimes you might not going directly to the master course. You might be recommended to go to the graduate diploma, or graduate certificate, because once you complete the graduate certificate or the diploma you can also go into the masters anyway.
Another information you can be for your information. If you graduate from UTS bachelor of property development, or bachelor of property economics, or the bachelor of construction project management course, and you will have four subjects advance or exemptions. So this is another benefit for the students from our UTS course.
Jess Shelley (37:55):
We’ve got one more large question here in the Q&A, Janet. It’s a multi part question so I might just ask one by one for you.
Janet Ge (38:04):
Yes.
Jess Shelley (38:05):
It’s from [Spring 00:38:06]. “I’ve just applied and received the offer to the master of property development.” Congratulations, that’s great Spring. From the presentation it is understood that our course will be delivered through a mix of online and face-to-face mode. How likely is that to change in the future?
Janet Ge (38:22):
Really depends on the New South Wales government as well as the UTS COVID-19 managements. And at the current situations, we will have some face-to-face as well as some of the online teaching. In the long run we are investigate how the online teaching will helping students. But from the survey we have half of the, 50% of students, they will really like to come into the campus, because the campus is the really learning place for your experience, make the connection with your classmates, and then the shared experience with the lecturers, and then the part-time lecturers. So students are really encouraged to come into face-to-face.
Jess Shelley (39:24):
The second part is, “I have enrolled in the part-time master program. So what is the expected part-time commitment to the course? How many subjects are recommended for semesters for part-time mode?”
Janet Ge (39:37):
If you’re doing part-time, I will recommend you to do two subjects in each semester. And there will be, you come into the lecture is about four times, four blocks. So two blocks for each subject. So that four blocks means four weekends, meeting half-year. And that could be manageable by you. And from the previous students’ experience, the two subjects quite manageable for the students while they’re working and doing part-time. Of course you can also doing some subjects in July, like electives. Or October, like, or the summer subjects electives if you wish to do it.
Jess Shelley (40:39):
Spring is also interested in enrolling in the master property development valuation major. Is there any action required from now, or is that just an elective selection process?
Janet Ge (40:54):
If you have already been accepted by the course and then you can start to enroll subjects now. And then depends what course you’re doing, but the usual start to enroll the graduate certificate core subjects online. So how do you going to enroll if you have some problems with enrollments? And you can ask the student center. If you have already been our student you should have a student ID, and using your student email address, you should be able to access the property development course learning page. That learning page will provide you so many course-related information, and then all the other information. For example, enrollments, and the application for any questions, requests, and clash, and timetable, all the information’s provided.
Jess Shelley (42:18):
I assume Janet that goes for the same in terms of payments for the course. That’s the best place for them to find that information out?
Janet Ge (42:26):
I’m sorry that I do not understand the payment system, but the student center will helping you to answer you the payment questions. How do you pay, how much do you pay, and when do you pay? So you could ask the student center. The staff there will very helpful with helping you. As a academic I know of the quality of the course side, of the programs. So yeah, you’re just going to ask the student center. They will helping you.
Jess Shelley (43:07):
Just posted the webpage for that Spring in the chat so you can go there for further information on that. Also the final question from Spring is that, “Will we distribute the slides after the webinar?” The webinar recording will definitely be available. Janet, are you happy to share the slides as well?
Janet Ge (43:23):
Yes.
Jess Shelley (43:23):
Wonderful. We will send them around in the coming days.
Janet Ge (43:27):
Yes.
Jess Shelley (43:27):
So is there any further questions from our attendees?
Janet Ge (43:45):
No more questions?
Jess Shelley (43:48):
Here’s one question just coming through. When is the cutoff for applications to study?
Janet Ge (43:52):
You mean the applications to be accept to the course, or the enrollment? These applications. Jess, you can answer this question, right?
Jess Shelley (44:08):
Yeah. So for the next intake, I believe it’s the 27th of June is the cutoff. But any further questions specific to applications and admissions, please do just send them to either Janet or myself in email and we can find further details for you.