USD's MSRE Team Wins 2016 ARGUS University Challenge

A team of Master of Science in Real Estate students from the University of San Diego School of Business and the Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate has once again defended its title in the 2016 ARGUS University Challenge.

This victory makes a “three-peat” win for USD. In the seven years the competition has been held, the School of Business team has taken first place on five occasions and second place on two occasions.

The 2016 team, comprised of (pictured above, left to right) Austin Dias ’16, Ian Gartrell ’16, Mark Ambrose ’16, Abhishek Mukherjee ’16 and Joe Bird ’16, was led by faculty advisor Charles Tu, the Daniel F. Mulvihill Professor of Commercial Real Estate.

In this year’s competition, teams analyzed a suburban office park owned by a real estate investment trust (REIT). The REIT was considering whether it should sell, keep the property as-is, or redevelop it into a mixed-use project. In addition to utilizing the information provided in the case, the USD team conducted extensive research on the real estate space market, asset market as well as capital market to help them formulate strategies to maximize the investment’s potential. ARGUS Enterprise was used to model, plan and optimize the investment scenarios to support the team’s recommendations.

“This case provided students with a unique opportunity to integrate the knowledge and skills they have acquired in various courses in the MSRE program,” says Tu. "The team not only showcased their proficiency in ARGUS modeling, but also demonstrated their exceptional strategic thinking and problem-solving abilities."

This year, the team competed against 39 top universities from four countries for cash prizes totaling $14,000. Schools included Columbia University, Cornell University, Emory University, Johns Hopkins University, MIT, UCLA, USC, University of Michigan, National University of Singapore, University of Pennsylvania and Yale University, among other prestigious schools.

"The team worked through incredible adversity to meet the challenge presented by this year's ARGUS University Challenge,” says Dias ’16. “We knew we had to produce a near perfect analysis. This year's case was quite possibly the most complicated case ever presented by the organizers. The team thanks the Burnham-Moores Center faculty and staff for all of their hard work in preparing us for the challenge.”

The USD team’s 2016 ARGUS trophy will be showcased at the Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate. The team also received $8,000 for their work.

“The success of previous USD ARGUS teams was one of the major factors that drew me to the School of Business MSRE program,” says Bird ’16. “It was a personal goal to be on this ARGUS team. It was a lot of very hard work but I'm proud to continue the strong legacy of winning this competition, given such excellent schools taking part in the competition."

— Kimberly Malasky