Microsoft Excel | Necessities
Looking to get a handle on the excel knowledge/skills necessary for work as an analyst for a development firm. 

What are the core formulas, models used? Basically, what can I / should I do now to beef up my excel acumen. 
I don't know what I don't know. Looking for guidance from any past/present experiences y'all have and feel like sharing. Thanks.    


Background: 
26M; 4yr degree followed by 3 year stint in Bay Area Software Sales and now a 2 years of commercial brokerage under my belt. Can bring everything needed in the people skills, real estate terms/processes/general knowledge departments.  

Familiar with excel/pro formas/ investment modeling at a high level. Primarily NPV, IRR, and Loan Amortizations.  

Also, Ill note that work with an awesome firm that has brought me in to a wide variety of deal types - sale/lease, single tenant, multi tenant, big box, shopping center, hospitality, ground up, redev, office/retail/industrial. Really interested in multi family as well but haven't been able to crack into any good projects, only time wasters as of yet. 



[{"id": "e9l9sck", "text": "Excel to me is like a blank canvas to an artist. What is the canvas missing? Every artist will tell you something different.\n\nBe your own excel artist and start making your own sheets for your own purposes. For example, I have a spreadsheet I built to evaluate rental properties. Variables for residential, condoes, HOAs, differing down payments, expenses, property managers etc. Then I compare the Cash on Cash and CAP rates to alternate investments. Then I added accelerated payoff variables and so much more... I bet I have spent 100 hours developing it over time. It is my masterpiece.\n\nWhen you 'dont know what you dont know', you have to build it to find out what you're missing. Just start building. Create some cashflow projections, adjust assumptions, and incorporate the important IRR/RIO projections you already understand.", "replies": [{"id": "e9p4lul", "text": "&gt; Then I compare the Cash on Cash and CAP rates to alternate investments.\n\nI probably could have saved you at least 50 hours.  Cap rates are not a metric for residential condos.  You also would never calculate a cap rate.  How could you without the V?  Since a cap rate also is not a return metric how could you possibly compare to alternate investments?\n\n&amp;#x200B;", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "e9l9vxr", "text": "If you've got a good understanding of pro formas and similar cash flow forecasting, you've got a good foundation. If you want to learn development modeling, you're going to need to understand joint venture models and waterfalls since virtually all development deals are joint ventures so as to spread out risk. \n\nI would first make sure you're familiar with common elements of a JV agreement (promote, hurdles, lookback clauses, land buyouts, nominal vs. effective IRR, etc.), and how they're described in legal documents. This is where I fucked up my own understanding for a while - **make sure you understand how JVs are designed to work conceptually!!!** If you do that, the actual calculations will make much more sense. Then, I would take an Excel template, play around with it, and try to break it. When I was first learning equity modeling, I pulled up a blank spreadsheet next to a completed model, and tried to replicate it in the blank sheet to see if I could understand what was going on. [This one](https://www.adventuresincre.com/real-estate-equity-waterfall-model-cash-on-cash-return-hurdle/) looks decent. In my experience, Adventures in CRE makes good models, but they're often a little too focused on pretty formatting and flexibility while forgoing \n\nYou're also going to need to understand how to model an S-curve for construction financing. Unfortunately, this is where I start to get out of my depth, so I don't have any good specific advice here. I would recommend Googling around and seeing what you can turn up.\n\nHope this helps! Feel free to PM me if you want to talk more.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}]