The Real Estate Game

The Real Estate Game is a comprehensive guide to successful real estate investment from one of the masters in the field. Drawing upon four decades of experience developing, owning, and managing properties and on almost thirty years of teaching at the Harvard Business School, William J. Poorvu offers an insider's perspective on how to make smart decisions about real estate.

The real estate "game" is played by people, and it's the stories of real people that make Poorvu's introduction to the industry colorful and interesting. The reader meets players ranging from real estate moguls to small-scale developers to individual investors in exotic investment instruments. Their stories evolve throughout the book and illustrate how these people — with all their complicated needs, talents, and motives — fit into the larger process and context.

In clear and nontechnical language, Poorvu explains how variables — players, properties, capital markets, and the external environment — come together to influence the shape and outcome of a real estate deal. He explains the time frame for different kinds of real estate investments and walks the reader through the key "periods of play" in the real estate game: concept, commitment, development, operation, reward, and reinvestment.

The Real Estate Game introduces a simple but powerful "back-of-the-envelope" technique for analyzing the financial implications of a potential deal. Using this tool and others, Poorvu shows readers how to use direct investments, syndicates, and REITs to get into the real estate game across a broad range of property types: residential, office, hotel, industrial, and retail.

Offering unique insight into the ways that developers and investors can create value, The Real Estate Game is both a perfect introduction for the novice and an invaluable overview for the experienced professional.

From a Harvard Business School professor comes a concise, accessible, state-of-the-art guide to developing and investing in real estate.

William J. Poorvu is a successful real estate investor and developer and heads the real estate program at the Harvard Business School.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1 The game

Chapter 2 Using numbers in real estate

Chapter 3 From concept to commitment

Chapter 4 From commitment to closing

Chapter 5 Syndications and REITs

Chapter 6 Development

Chapter 7 Operations

Chapter 8 The harvest

Chapter 9 Back to the game

Appendix A Note on property types

Appendix B Commercial real estate due-diligence checklist

A Back-of-the-Envelope Glossary

Index