Real Estate Investment & Asset Management
Capital Markets, Debt & REITs
How real estate is actually financed and how capital reaches it: the capital stack and what each layer buys, senior debt and what the documents really control, equity structures and waterfalls, REITs and the debt capital markets, structured capital between senior and equity, portfolio construction and allocation, and raising capital across a cycle.
The promise
Structure real estate capital across debt, structured layers, equity and public markets — and know what the documents, the currency and the portfolio decisions actually do.
By the end you can
- Assemble a capital stack and price each layer for the position it occupies
- Read a facility beyond the term sheet — consents, events of default, cash control and definitions
- Structure mezzanine, preferred equity, development and bridge capital, and negotiate the intercreditor
- Use REITs and the debt capital markets, and read a premium or discount to NAV
- Construct a portfolio on correlation, pace deployment across a cycle, and decompose a manager's return
Where this course takes you
This course is part of 2 role tracks, each ending in a professional deliverable.
You'll produce: An investment committee memo — underwriting, a valuation cross-check, due-diligence findings, financing, and a clear recommendation.
You'll produce: A business plan for an asset — value-creation levers, leasing strategy, capex, ESG, and a hold / sell view.
Curriculum
How Real Estate Is Financed
Debt versus equity, the capital stack, sources of capital, and the cost of capital that sets required returns.
Real Estate Debt
Loan types and key terms, sizing metrics (LTV, DSCR, ICR) and covenants, and how refinancing and default work.
Equity & Structures
Joint ventures and co-investment, funds and private equity, and how promote and the distribution waterfall split returns.
REITs & Listed Real Estate
REIT structure and rules, what drives REIT pricing, and the Saudi and UAE listed real estate market.
Capital Raising & the Cycle
Raising capital and investor relations, market cycles and liquidity, and the realities of raising capital in emerging markets.
Beyond Senior Debt: Structured Capital
The layers between senior debt and common equity: mezzanine, preferred equity, development and bridge finance, how they are priced and secured, what an intercreditor agreement decides, and how Shari'ah-compliant structures fit.
Portfolio Construction and Capital Allocation
Deciding where capital goes rather than how one asset performs: diversification and its limits, leverage at portfolio rather than asset level, pacing capital across a cycle, and measuring whether a manager actually added anything.
Course assessment
Sign in to open lessons and track your progress.
The capstone project
This course ends in a real professional deliverable. Use the brief and the five criteria below to check your own work against the standard a competent professional would be held to.
Your final deliverable
Capital Structuring Capstone
Check your work against five criteria
- Method & rigour: The right framework, applied correctly, with the working shown — not just an answer.
- Data honesty: Every figure is sourced, triangulated, or explicitly flagged “requires local market data”. Nothing is invented.
- Analysis & judgment: Assumptions are explicit, at least one alternative is weighed, and the key risks are quantified.
- Recommendation: A clear, decision-useful conclusion a professional could act on — with the conditions that qualify it.
- Communication: Structured, concise, and client-ready — the argument lands.
When it's ready
Your deliverable is ready when it meets the bar on all five criteria — work a competent professional could put in front of a client or committee.
Revising your work
The capstone is self-directed: you check your own work against the rubric. Where a criterion isn't met yet, revise that part and check it again — as many times as you need.
More in this academy
Investment Analysis Essentials
Analyse a real estate investment the way an investment committee will read it: the two engines of return, cash flows and cap rates, NPV, IRR and the equity multiple, debt and leverage, defensible underwriting and scenario analysis in emerging markets, and the exit and hold decisions that drive most of the answer. Ends with a recommendation you can defend — including the decision to decline — and an applied toolkit of memo, model, calculator and scenario templates.
Asset Management & Value Creation
Run an income-producing asset the way an owner needs it run: an evidenced business plan, the income and cost levers that actually move NOI, leasing and repositioning decisions tested against the alternative of doing nothing, the loan that constrains what the plan may attempt, performance reporting an owner can act on, and how to manage when conditions turn against you.
Real Estate Due Diligence
How to investigate a real estate acquisition before you commit. This course teaches the due diligence framework and red-flag thinking, how to scope and sequence an investigation under a real timetable, and the workstreams that decide the answer — legal and title, financial and commercial including the covenant behind the income, technical and physical including statutory and fire safety compliance, and the entity, counterparty and tax questions that arise when you buy a company rather than a building. It ends with how findings become conditions, price chips, indemnities or a walk-away, how advisers are instructed and relied on, and what happens after the report. Built for emerging-market realism, where title and registration risk is acute and thin data makes physical and commercial verification decisive.