Cornell's Center for Real Estate Finance, established just about one year ago, made its New York City debut Nov. 12 by holding its first annual case competition for undergraduate students in commercial real estate at the TIAA-CREF headquarters. Teams from seven universities competed for the $4,000 first-place prize.

Each team, acting as imaginary advisory firms (so that the judges, all senior real estate professionals, would not know from which school each team came), had four days to analyze and prepare investment recommendations for a case developed by Peng-Wei Tan '07, a private equity analyst for AREA Property Partners. Their assignment was to give a 20-minute presentation on their strategy to salvage a cash-strapped portfolio of debt-ridden investments and answer questions from the seven judges.

Cornell's team -- Josh Barvin '10, Andrew Gindy '11, Taylor Quan '10, Zied Sanhaji '10, Amy Shyr '10 and Li Zhang '10, with Christopher Marshall '11 as an alternate, all in Cornell's new minor in real estate -- won the competition after narrowly beating New York University in group judging and besting Indiana University in the final round. Other teams competing in the event were American University, Penn State, the University of Connecticut and the University of Texas at Austin.

"Despite all of the real estate talent in New York City, there doesn't exist a similar real estate case competition," said Daniel Quan, the Singapore Tourism Board Professor of Real Estate Finance at Cornell's School of Hotel Administration, who organized the event. "This was a great opportunity for the students to meet with some of the top people in New York real estate, which is probably the center of the world in terms of real estate. For teams like Texas and Indiana to be able to come to New York City to meet with these senior executives was a unique opportunity, and it was certainly enriching for all the students."

He noted that all of this year's teams will be invited to return next year, when he expects to attract even more teams from the United States and Europe.

"I think that this competition is great," said Gindy while awaiting the judges' decision between rounds, "because it utilizes all of the skills that we've learned in the classroom and outside of the classroom. Finance, accounting, real estate, managerial communication, marketing -- it encompasses everything. But the biggest thing is teamwork."

In addition to Quan, the team was coached by Judi Brownell, professor of organizational communication, who worked to hone their presentation skills. Daniel Lebret, visiting assistant professor of real estate finance, and Crocker Liu, the Robert A. Beck Professor of Hospitality Financial Management, also advised the team.

Judges for the competition included Todd Giannoble '95, president, Archon Hospitality, and David Lynn, MRP '88, managing director, ING Clarion Partners.

David and Jill Korr, parents of Jonathan Korr '09, were principal sponsors of the event. Other sponsors were Archon/Goldman Sachs, AREA Property Partners, BlackRock, ING Clarion, National Realty & Development Corp., Prudential and TIAA-CREF.