Day Four – March 20th Boston

We left our hotel lobby and quickly discovered that Boston is much colder than New York. Our first stop of the day was around the corner at the Boston offices of ForestCity. Gayle Farris, President of the Boston office gave us an overview of the University Park redevelopment adjacent to the MIT campus. The discussion focused on the flexible development scope and the difficulty of anticipating demand over a 20 year development period.

Our second stop of the day was MIT’s Center for Real Estate for a presentation from Bill Wheaton, a renowned real estate economist and CRE faculty. The discussion focused on the U.S. Housing market and the ramifications absent a recovery. It was a fascinating presentation and enlightening perspective on the relationship between home ownership and the economy.

Next we sat in on a case study presentation with MIT’s current MSRED class. Professors Tod McGrath and David Geltner led the class through a Socratic process of determining the highest offer on a commercial building as a REIT’s Director of Acquisitions. It was a great for us to watch the case study unfold and experience a different teaching teaching process.

We had a quick opportunity after class to see the Eero Saarinen Catholic Church on the MIT Campus. Our fellow classmate Steve Jakub gave a quick architectural history lecture on Eero Saarinen and his work – check out the link.

We headed back to the MIT CRE for a derivatives lecture by Professor David Geltner. It was a fascinating introduction from one of the few pioneers in this emerging area of real estate. The idea of a synthetic market for trading real estate risk is attractive especially under consideration of the current market conditions.

After the long day at MIT we headed for a mixer at Flatop Jonny’s to play some pool and get to know the MIT MSRED students better. It was a great chance to make conncections with fellow students of real estate and build a foundation for growing relationships.