This is the transcript for the video Real Estate Investment.
Lois Towart (00:00):
This is the online presentation for the postgraduate masters of real estate investment. It is one of a suite of qualifications or masters postgraduate qualifications we have here at the School of Built Environment.
Catherine Killen (00:15):
Hi, I’m Catherine Killen. I’m the head of school, of the UTS School of Built Environment. Welcome to UCS. [inaudible 00:00:23] from the UTS school of built environment will enable you to have a rewarding career and make a positive impact on society. Our courses prepare you for careers in planning, property development, property investment, project management and construction. Our courses are internationally accredited. They’re taught by experts with experience and industry connections. We’re here to answer your questions about studying at UTS, and we hope to see you here.
Lois Towart (00:55):
And acknowledgement of country, I would like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation upon whose ancestral lands our city campus now stands. I would also like to pay respects to the elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for this land.
Lois Towart (01:19):
Now, what we’re discussing today or going through is our Master of Real Estate Investment, it’s, as I said before, it’s one of our qualifications in the School of Built Environment of our master’s qualifications, and it deals specifically with real estate investment in contrast to a few other masters qualifications that we have. It’s a master’s, it’s not a certificate or a diploma, it’s a full masters.
Lois Towart (01:46):
Now it comprises a number of components and for starters the typical course participants doing the master of real estate investment already are working in the property industry. They tend to come from a number of fairly specialized backgrounds. You have valuers who are looking at extending their knowledge of the real estate investment side of property. Valuers are already very good at going out and understanding what makes property work. You have analysts, and that could be research analysts, people doing property research, doing research for publications, but they can also be equity analysts or people doing other forms of analyst type roles around the property industry. You’ve also then got asset managers, they’re people that are looking after portfolios of properties, making strategic decisions. And you’ve also got property managers who are looking after the actual management of property.
Lois Towart (02:50):
And finally, you’ve got developers because when you look at it developers are making product or making things that are investments that can then be held in investment vehicles. So from their point of view understanding how real estate investment works from a developer’s point of view, if it ties in with what they know as developers. So they’re our typical course participants, they’re already within the property industry and they’re looking at extending their knowledge of this specialized property for specialized component of the industry.
Lois Towart (03:24):
Now, the course structure, it’s a 72 credit course and it’s made up of 60 credit points of core subjects, which is actually 10 subjects. Now, part of these are through the School of Business and these are these two five ones here, capital markets and financial management. Now, something else to remember too with these, these are available throughout a number of different times of the year. So you’re not limited when you can start the qualification. So these are core subjects within the School of Business, so they’re readily available and you don’t have to worry about timetabling classes because there’s often multiple delivery points of these subjects. You’ve also got a number of subjects which are part of our masters of real estate development, which include our development feasibility, property transactions, strategic asset management, investment property valuation.
Lois Towart (04:25):
Now we’ve also got our specialized investment property with real estate investment subjects, which [inaudible 00:04:31] investment asset allocation, economics, real estate equities, and our investment property analysis. So we’ve actually got a number of different components within there. What it does actually do is because it’s tied in with the master of property development, it then allows you to start at either the spring session or the autumn session. So you don’t have to wait once a year to enter into the course, you can actually start halfway through the year. That’s [inaudible 00:04:59] advantage, because the masters or property development subjects, they’re also available twice a year. So it could start [inaudible 00:05:07] it actually allows you to get your core subjects well underway without having to worry about, “I’ve got to do that, then I’ve got to wait another six months to start the next one.” So it does give you plenty of points to start doing your study, so you can progress through at a speed that you would like to progress through.
Lois Towart (05:25):
And then on top of that, we have elective subjects that comprises of two. Now, unlike a more general qualification, we actually require… there’s a short list of our elective subjects. Now a number of these are again from the School of Business, they are the alternative investments, financial modeling and analysis and investment management. The remaining ones of these are available through our school of built environment here at UTS. So there’s a number of different subjects within there that you can take as electives. Students have a variety of reasons for wanting to do this, and they tend to make up the electives that they think are best in their interests to consider. So sort of said, there’s no one way of doing it, students tend to focus on their strengths or focus on the directions they want to go to.
Lois Towart (06:16):
Now that then brings you up… Normally the degree would be, if you were doing it full time, it would be over about 18 months. However, if you want to do it part time and you could do it over a couple of years. The majority of the core subjects within the master of property development and within the masters of real estate investment are generally available in the spring and autumn sessions. So you can’t make them up in the sort of non or the additional sessions like doing them in summer school. A couple of these are in summer school, so you can make up more subjects that way in order to speed up your way of getting through the qualification. So you can start looking at the different subjects when they are available. Your core subjects tend to be available mostly in your autumn and winter sessions. It’s your other subjects, which tend to be available out of them, which you can then start doing them and that is in between sessions, which then allows you to speed up moving through your qualification.
Lois Towart (07:15):
So when we look at it, how do you get into it, or what do you need to have in order to get into the qualification? Firstly, you got to have one of the following, it is being a masters, it follows on from my previous qualification. As I said, there’s an assumed level of knowledge prior to this. So again, you can’t sort of have a qualification say in science or arts or something like that, there is an assumed level of knowledge and understanding of property markets. So they have requirements are there that we need to have recognized degree in these disciplines. So firstly, it’s got to be a recognized bachelor’s degree and that is from a recognized university. Now I know there’s all sorts of institutes, beauticians colleges and other places that produce degrees. No, there has to be a recognized bachelor’s degree from a recognized university. And a credit level, so it’s got to be a credit level of study credit average or above, and it’s got to be one of the following disciplines, property or land economics, construction economics, engineering, business, finance and its related fields, management and commerce, et cetera.
Lois Towart (08:32):
And again, at least credit average or a UTS recognized master’s degree or equivalent and again, in one of the following disciplines, property or real estate, business, finance, commerce, or economics. So again, it’s that assumed level of knowledge. It’s not something where you can say, “Well, I know a bit about a few things I should be able to get in and wing my way through it.” There is a generally assumed knowledge that you’d know what quite a few things are already, and it builds upon that knowledge, which is why we have these requirements to have these qualifications or your prior learning has got to be in a number of different specialized disciplines. So that’s where we look at that. That’s what you need to have in order to get into the qualification.
Lois Towart (09:17):
Now, a bit more information available online, I’m just going to click on these. Ta-da. All right, this is our Built Environment, see a postgraduate… This has got all our detail on all our master’s qualifications, graduate diploma, et cetera, and our masters of real estate investment here. So this is the link that’s going to have detail on all our postgraduate qualifications. So you can see that there’s a number of qualifications in there and our master of real estate investment. Now I’m just clicking back… Whoa, no, need to go back there.
Lois Towart (09:59):
And our applications, how you go about applying. This is good information for you to use on your online application. And because things are a little bit remote, there are a few slightly different changes to this. So I’m certain the appropriate people will be able to fill you in on all those details. I’m not a [inaudible 00:10:21] on what the current process is at the moment because it’s been fairly fluid and changing a lot. So this then links you to an online application, which then allows you to start to put in your application if you want to start studying now or start studying as soon as possible.
Lois Towart (10:36):
Now I’m just going to scroll back a little bit. There is also what you might see some students do, a dual degree of real estate investment and masters of property development. Now, I think if you’d watched Paul van der Kallen’s webinar last week, you’d have noted that he would have mentioned that. So you’ve got a dual degree, you can do that where you’ll do the master of real estate investment. And where it’s differs slightly is that there’s an additional four core subjects, which are within the masters of property development. So that would then give you a dual degree, which you could then say, “Well, if that’s what you’d particularly like…”
Lois Towart (11:14):
And again is one better than the other? It depends upon what you want and what direction your career is going in, whether you wish to do a lot of study now, or whether you wish to do study over a longer period of time. There’s a variety of reasons behind or benefits for and detriments behind both of those, doing a large qualification gets it out of the way, but also doing lots of regular study keeps you updated with things. So that’s a decision that you need to make yourself. What the dual degree does, it adds another four subjects within our core subjects and they are core subjects within the masters of property development. So you get those added in there. What that then does is takes you to a two year full time degree. There are benefits if you’re going for an Australian visa for doing that level of study. So you can see you can do a dual degree, I haven’t given too much detail here because Paul did provide information on that earlier.
Lois Towart (12:13):
So that really just gives you an overview of what the qualification is, the sort of people that do it, what its structure is, how you apply and your requirements for it. Are there any questions? Right, okay, wonderful, someone’s come up with a question. Is there a timeframe on part time completion? I would need to refer to that, the current framework, you do need to keep passing over five years. I would want to check that one to see whether or not you can do it over that length of time. There are limits, you have to complete a certain amount each semester or successfully complete a certain amount each semester. We do give students who may take a break, and they can apply for a leave of absence, et cetera. If you say, for example, a student fell pregnant or something and they wanted to take maybe a year off or something. So again, I can’t answer that off the top of my head, but there is a time limit for getting through and also getting through successfully.
Lois Towart (13:23):
Okay, is it possible to complete subjects individually? Yes, a number of subjects are available. What we call non award, which means you can do them on their own. You don’t actually have to enroll, all you have to be is eligible to enroll. So again, it goes back to the eligibility criteria. If you’re eligible to enroll in those subjects, depending which degree you’re going through you, it is possible to enroll in a number of subjects individually, if you’re particularly interested in those ones. So the question was [inaudible 00:13:59] complete subjects individually. Okay. Any more questions?
Lois Towart (14:09):
Okay, how challenging is the course for a student with a finance and economics experience, but no property background? There are similarities, what you would find is that there are conventions within property as to… One of them is actually how you set up a discounted cash flow. Finance people do it one way, we do it another way but it’s concepts are very similar, like your understanding of your income, your value being a multiple of your income. That’s a fairly basic finance knowledge point, it’s also pretty much in property. The assumption that you understand how the finance side or the investment side of property works. So if you have got finance and economics experience, you’re already familiar with how financial markets work and how economies work. Again, it’s just a case of bringing you up to speed with how property markets, they are an idiosyncratic type of investment market.
Lois Towart (15:15):
And that’s what I’ve found as I’ve gone through all my studies, et cetera. Back in the ’80s, when we started studying them, they had basically all your mainstream finance subjects and they had two weird ones sitting off on their own, and that was mining analysis and property, so they put us in there with the miners. It would depend. I mean, there’s a bit of property knowledge that you would need to come up with, but I wouldn’t expect it to be too challenging for someone who’s already doing finance and economics.
Lois Towart (15:46):
All right, another question, can they be completed online externally? Ideally we would prefer to have study done on campus because there are significant benefits in coming onto campus. Unfortunately with the current situation with the virus, et cetera, we’ve had to go online for a number of reasons, some are a bit difficult to go into at this point in time. So at the moment we are delivering subjects online, mainly because it’s very difficult to deliver them on campus and have a student social distancing given our current facilities at the moment.
Lois Towart (16:25):
So at the moment they’re online, the subjects are not designed to be online, they’re designed to be in class participation, et cetera. Mainly because there’s an awful lot of benefit in coming there and interacting with other students and interacting with the lecturer. I’ve found very much as we’ve been going through this wonderful experience of online learning, that there are some aspects of study that students, you just do automatically when you’re in a room with those students that it’s just not possible when they’re all off out there somewhere across the electronic web, et cetera. And that you actually find that there’s distinct benefits in how you discuss things, how you go through information and also how students pick up information. They definitely, I would say find it a lot easier to be coming on campus in terms of their understanding of the subject matter. So yeah, I can’t actually say can they be completed online, at the moment everything’s being done online, however, in the future, things may change. There may be some subjects available online, but again, it’s very much dependent upon how things are moving forward.
Lois Towart (17:34):
Tricky, how the key differences with UTS’s approach to teaching masters in comparison to other universities. Interesting, because my experience dates a while back. Also, you tend to hear anecdotal experience. We try and do very much hands on, but we also try and make our masters qualifications to be very industry focused. That is a lot of sessional lecturers or people who are delivering it aren’t actually academics, they are people in industry who have industry experience. Also a number of our lecturers, including myself have had significant number of years of industry experience, and so we’ve had quite a bit of knowledge behind that. So it isn’t really a textbook subject, it’s much more a practical in terms of, this is how things are done in industry rather than this is the theory that you need to know. There’s also a tendency towards, or a strong focus on case studies, what’s happening in the real world in terms of understanding how these different markets work.
Lois Towart (18:49):
Okay, I think we’ve gone through a number of questions, as [inaudible 00:18:52], if you have got further questions there’s a link to where you can send the email through to. If you want to discuss further aspects of study, et cetera, by all means, get the questions through to us. Okay, well we don’t seem to have any more questions at the moment. So I will then call it the end of the session. As I sort of said, if you have got further questions by all means, send them through.
Luke Chess (19:21):
Okay, it’s Luke here, marketing manager for the faculty. Thank you for your time Lois presenting and thank you for your time attending everybody. It would seem if there are no further questions that we will call the webinar at an end. Should there be any further questions you can access the faculty and the School of Built Environment through the UTS website, or you can email us on dab.communication@uts.edu.au. Okay, thank you again, Lois. And to everyone who’s attended, we hope to see you studying at UTS.