Rising rents, numerous planned new construction projects or the demand for the socialization of private housing companies are moving the real estate industry further into the focus of public interest. And that’s not all. “Due to digitization, innovative living concepts and the pursuit of sustainability, there is currently a lot of movement in the market,” says Robert Windischmann.
The civil engineer is one of those who has been with the industry for a long time. He has been in the real estate industry for more than 20 years, initially as a construction manager and later in changing positions as a project engineer. His profession is the marketing and procurement of corporate real estate, “that is, the real estate of companies whose main business is not buildings and who therefore do not earn any money with them”. The 50-year-old creates financing plans, determines the market value of properties and takes care of the technical maintenance of properties. “The industry lives from exchange,” he says.
Robert Windischmann enrolled at the International Real Estate Business School of the University of Regensburg (IREBS) in order to meet like-minded people, to refresh what is used every day and to add the aspect of sustainable management. However, not for a weekend seminar or a multi-day advanced training course in real estate economics, but for the part-time MBA course in real estate.
Architects or bank employees also choose to study
“The MBA offers the opportunity to deal fully with innovations in the real estate sector and to bring my knowledge up to date,” he says. Windischmann has been employed by the building materials dealer Stark Germany for eight years now. The engineer has his hands full with the administration of more than 200 branches in this country. He’s hardly ever in the office in Offenbach am Main. “At my desk I can look at the aerial photo and see the construction plans,” he says. “But only on site do I get a comprehensive insight, can walk through the building and talk to the client.”
Windischmann shares this professional experience with his fellow students in the MBA course – and at the same time benefits from the experience of those who approach the real estate industry from a different direction. Those skilled workers who are employed by banks, insurance companies or management consultancies or who work as architects and lawyers.
Like the University of Regensburg, where Windischmann studies, the Biberach University of Applied Sciences also relies on a generalist MBA, “which brings the various target groups together and does justice to those who specialize in real estate,” says Miriam Rehm, MBA managing director at the university Biberach. The internationally oriented Master of Business Administration for the real estate industry offered there is the first of its kind in Germany. It was launched 20 years ago when there was only isolated mention of demographic developments or the energy transition in the real estate sector. Topics that are now the focus of numerous real estate MBAs and are an integral part of the curricula.
“In the meantime, a number of master’s courses in real estate have been added,” says Rehm. “However, there are still only a few MBAs with this focus.” It is important that the modules are accompanied by lecturers from the field who approach the topics of building planning law, financing and investment or resource management pragmatically. In interdisciplinary project work, the students devote themselves to the life cycle of a property or put together a portfolio for an international investor under real conditions. How can target markets be identified? What does it take to build up assets in the medium term and to manage the new real estate portfolio over the long term? In order to be able to answer such questions, both the University of Biberach and the University of Regensburg have included modules on German building and tax law as well as current focus areas such as digital business models and marketing concepts in their curriculum.
Another important aspect for teaching are the ESG requirements (Environmental Social Governance), which are intended to integrate the areas of environment, social affairs and corporate management into the real estate industry and define the political framework for a project. “In future, ecologically sustainable investments and expenditures must be disclosed,” says Windischmann. In his master’s thesis, which he will complete by the end of the year, the MBA student will therefore devote himself to the implementation of sustainable strategies. He measures the energy consumption in the Stark Group’s stores, compares, looks for sources of error and practicable solutions. In addition to the aspect of personal further education, Windischmann sees another great advantage in the MBA degree: It can open one or the other door and provide new career prospects.
During stays abroad, MBA students learn how other markets work
“The MBA title is coveted on the market,” emphasizes Miriam Rehm. According to a survey by the Biberach University of Applied Sciences, two thirds of the MBA graduates rose within the company two years after graduation. “Particularly in the case of civil engineers, value is placed on an additional degree in real estate management,” reports Windischmann. Like around half of his fellow students, he received 100 percent of the 20,000 euro advanced training from his employer. The only exceptions are travel expenses abroad, although the planned excursions have been postponed to the coming year anyway due to the Corona crisis.
Most of the one to two-year MBA programs with a focus on real estate allow participants to stay in Singapore, Zurich or Boston so that they can get to know foreign real estate markets and other approaches to the subject. “I could read umpteen books about it, but how a project developer in the USA deals with challenges or a real estate manager in Asia I only find out on site,” explains the prospective Master of Business Administration. The study trips are usually enriched by visits to real estate companies, from which case studies often develop.
As in most executive boards, women continue to be underrepresented in management positions in the real estate industry. A look at the composition of the student body of the MBAs specializing in real estate also makes this clear. Although the picture is increasingly changing, according to Rehm, two-thirds of the MBA courses in the real estate sector still consist of men who are trained by specialists to become managers. Due to the Bologna reform, many students also have their qualifications in their pockets earlier and are correspondingly younger when they apply for a postgraduate MBA course. “The majority of my fellow students are in their twenties and have already gained two to three years of work experience,” says Robert Windischmann. At 50, he is the oldest in what is currently the virtual classroom. However, this does not prevent the engineer from looking for further training courses. He has a lot of ideas. “But first it should be about applying the content of the MBA in concrete terms in order to make the real estate industry more sustainable.”