About the Course

Top Shelf® Academy’s Real Estate Finance Certification Course is composed of over 100 real estate finance and financial modeling lessons carefully crafted to teach you about acquisitions, debt, waterfall modeling, and many other fundamental topics that will help you kickstart your financial career. 

TSA’s real estate finance courses are created by industry experts to teach you all about private equity real estate and underwriting. By completing this certification course, you will gain the knowledge required in the real estate industry as well as add value to your resume when applying for jobs.

Requirements and Benefits

  • Requirements

    Purchase the course and go through each module to review all of the provided lessons. You will be prompted to complete short quizzes for each module before going on to the next one. Once you have gone through the entire course, take the certification exam. Good Luck!

  • Benefits

    Enhance your industry knowledge, boost your resume, and show off your new certification on your LinkedIn profile. You will even have the opportunity to upload your resume to our resume book that we send to top private equity companies!

  • Key Notes

    Instead of giving you a private equity real estate financial model, we will thoroughly explain the fundamentals of private equity real estate. While we explain each part, you'll be building your own model! The course will also explain how to apply those fundamentals to underwriting.

Student Reviews

Helped Boost My Resume!

Sarah M.

This certification really helped boost my resume! Once I added it to my resume & LinkedIn profile, more companies started reaching out to me. It has also given me an easy way to demonstrate my knowledge in interviews.

Convenient

Josh R.

I like the combination of videos and graphics with text. I found the videos engaging and not extremely time consuming which is important to me as a student. The text makes it easier to take notes for the quizzes!

Highly Recommend

Grace S.

I highly recommend this course! It provided me with a strong foundation in the basics of financial real estate. It covered many topics without assuming I should already know everything about certain topics.

Worth the Investment!

Zach W.

Top Shelf Academy gives you the most bang for your buck. I’ve found other courses 5-10x more expensive than Top Shelf Academy’s, and they offer essentially the same thing.

Flexible Learning Style

Jake K.

The quizzes are really beneficial to test your knowledge. I like that there is a quiz at the end of each section so you can recap everything you’ve learned.

Course Curriculum

  • 1

    Introduction to the Course

  • 2

    Revenues

    • Revenues - Overview

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    • Rent Roll

    • Unit Mix

    • Case Study 1

    • Case Study 1 Questions

    • Market Rent

    • Current Rent

    • Step Rent

    • Lease Expirations

    • Renewal Probability

    • Scheduled Base Rental Income

    • Concessions

    • Expense Recoveries

    • Non-Revenue Units

    • Other Income

    • Bad Debt

    • General Vacancy and Credit Loss

    • Structural Vacancy

    • Occupancy

    • Cash Flow after Vacancy and Reserves

    • Effective Gross Income

    • Case Study 2

    • Case Study 2 Questions

    • Revenues - Quiz
  • 3

    Operating Expenses

    • Operating Expenses - Overview

    • Operating Expenses

    • Operating Expense Ratio

    • Gross Profit Margin

    • Management Fees

    • Real Estate Taxes

    • Case Study 3

    • Case Study 3 Questions

    • Assessed Value

    • Millage Rate

    • Utilities

    • Wages

    • Repairs and Maintenance

    • Administrative Expenses

    • Advertising and Promotions

    • CAM Charges

    • Franchise Tax

    • Operating Expenses - Quiz
  • 4

    Capital Expenditures

    • Capital Expenditures - Overview

    • Capital Expenditures

    • Tenant Improvements

    • Leasing Commissions

    • Project Management Fees

    • Non-Operating Expenses

    • Capital Expenditures - Quiz
  • 5

    Acquisitions

    • Acquisitions - Overview

    • Net Operating Income

    • Cap Rates

    • Going In Cap Rate

    • Cap Rate Compression

    • Acquisition Basis

    • All-in Basis

    • Closing Costs

    • Equity Placement Fee

    • Stabilized Returns

    • Sources and Uses - Acquisition

    • NOI Offset

    • Equity Market

    • Peak Capital

    • Core Investments

    • Value-Add Investments

    • Opportunistic Investments

    • Back of the Envelope Analysis

    • Discounted Cash Flow

    • IRR

    • Case Study 4

    • Case Study 4 Questions

    • Equity Multiple

    • Net Profit

    • Cash on Cash Returns

    • Depreciation

    • Gross vs. Net Square Feet

    • Acquisitions - Quiz
  • 6

    Development

    • Development - Overview

    • Land Costs

    • Hard Costs

    • Soft Costs

    • Hard/Soft Cost Contingency

    • Case Study 5

    • Case Study 5 Questions

    • Hard Cost Curves

    • Types of Hard Costs

    • Pre-Leasing

    • Sources and Uses - Development

    • Operating Deficit

    • Development Spread and Yield on Cost

    • How to Secure Capital for Development Projects

    • Development - Quiz
  • 7

    Exit

    • Exit Calculation - Overview

    • Gross Sales Proceeds

    • Disposition Costs

    • Net Exit Proceeds

    • Sensitivity Table for Cap Rate vs. Hold Period

    • How to Determine Exit Date

    • Case Study 6

    • Case Study 6 Questions

    • Verifying your Exit Assumptions Makes Sense

    • What to Look for in Your Exit Month

    • Forward 12 vs. Trailing 3 NOI

    • Master Leases

    • Exit - Quiz
  • 8

    Debt

    • Debt - Overview

    • Senior Debt

    • Construction Debt

    • Mezzanine Debt

    • Refi Debt

    • Bridge Loans

    • Mini-Perm Loans

    • Land Loan

    • HUD Loans

    • Debt Proceeds

    • Levered Cash Flow

    • Unlevered Cash Flow

    • Drawdowns

    • Cash Sweeps

    • Loan Origination Fees

    • Amortization

    • Interest Expense

    • Exit Fees

    • Defeasance

    • Prepayment Penalty

    • Working Capital Release

    • Interest Reserves

    • TI/LC/Capex Holdbacks

    • TIF

    • Tax Abatements

    • How to Calculate Interest Expense

    • Fixed vs. Floating

    • LIBOR Rate

    • Debt Service Coverage Ratio (DSCR)

    • Debt Yield

    • LTV and LTC

    • Case Study 7

    • Case Study 7 Questions

    • Check Your Model

    • Types of Lenders

    • Debt - Quiz
  • 9

    Waterfall Modeling

    • Waterfall Modeling - Overview

    • Distribution Waterfalls

    • Preferred Returns

    • Waterfall Promote Splits

    • General Partner Clawback

    • Common Errors in Waterfalls

    • How Private Equity Gets Paid

    • Waterfall Modeling - Quiz

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