Please note: Due to a holiday on 10/9, make up class will be on Friday 10/11 at 1pm.  The class will be recorded, but you should make every effort to attend and please note participation/attendance will be marked for every class.

The focus of this course is the $27 trillion US housing market, the largest real estate market in the world, a topic of ongoing interest but with particular resonance this year as the President and Presidential candidates debate how to privatize the GSEs and address the acute current lack of housing affordability that has resulted in decreased home ownership, greater renting, record homelessness, and a massive backlog in manufactured housing as first time home buyers are shut out of the traditional stick built market.

The course’s objective is to teach the student how to develop, value, finance, and invest in residential real estate and residential real estate debt securities and derivatives as well as to understand how the US residential financing system works. Given its’ broad and deep sweep, students will learn about a wide range of topics ranging from the importance of fits and finishes in selling homes in a new subdivision, to how to entitle land, to how blockchain is being used to disrupt the mortgage origination process, to how to create an Agency residential CMO companion bond. A range of housing types will be covered including: single family subdivisions, market rate urban condominiums, low and moderate income housing, workfore and student housing, manufactured housing, and senior residential living communities, and rental apartments. At the end of the course we will also focus on one selected overseas market. For Fall 2019 the focus will be China where housing accounts for two thirds of Chinese household assets and as such is one of the critical keystones supporting China’s economy, government, and political stability. The three focuses of the course, the Dirt, Debt and Derivatives will each make up about one third of the course.

Brian Lancaster

Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of Finance and Economics in the Faculty of Business

Brian P. Lancaster is a Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of Finance at the Columbia University Business School.  Professor Lancaster teaches the following courses: Real Estate Finance, Real Estate Debt Markets, Residential Real Estate Finance, Capital Markets, Real Estate Entrepreneurship, and  Debt Markets in the MBA and EMBA programs. He is also a faculty sponsor of Chazen Global Study Tours, most recently...

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