Real Estate Research
Interested in real estate investment research? Let’s learn hands-on skills from institutional real estate investors!
Why the Real Estate Research track?
Singapore is the hub for real estate investment
Abundance of job opportunities from physical real estate investors/asset managers, listed developer/REIT investors, and property consulting companies
Reason 3
Reason 4
Lead Mentor for Real Estate Research track
James, CFA, Senior Real Estate Portfolio Manager
- James brings with him more than 10 years of experience in evaluating, implementing and investing in operating companies and real estate. Currently, he is a portfolio manager at The Straits Trading Company (STC) where he oversees a portfolio of investments. He is responsible for monitoring and strategizing to create value for the investments. His recent transactions including acquisition of a distressed asset as well as the privatization of ARA.
- Prior to joining STC, he was the Senior Manager at Ascendas Funds Management, the Manager of Ascendas Real Estate Investment Trust (“AREIT”), where he was responsible for developing management and transaction management of a mixed development.
- He penetrated the Finance and Investment field through Titan Capital Asia, where he joined as an Associate in 2007, just before the Global Financial Crisis. Under the tutelage of Mr. Tan Bien Kiat, Managing Director of Titan Capital, and previously the founding partner of TPG Newbridge Capital, he led in the analysis, structuring and the closing and exit of several transactions.
- James obtained a scholarship from the DSTA. He graduated from the National University of Singapore with B.Eng with First Class Honours and is a CFA Charter holder.
Our Approach
Get a property developer or REIT to cover from your mentor
Watch pre-recorded video sessions that cover curriculum (details follow)
Spend hours researching your property developer/REIT stock
Meet your mentor online, to feedbacks on your research ideas and how to improve
Continue your research effort, until you are ready to deliver you investment pitch
Pitch your investment thesis in front of investment professionals
CURRICULUM
- Study public information, including Annual Reports, Investor Presentations
- Start with a basic model
- Add details of property models to the main model as more details are obtained
- Analyse and assess various factors how would that affect property valuation: location, type of property, use of space, single/multi-tenants, occupancy, lease expiry, WALE, cap rates, land tenure
- Debt analysis: gearing, interest rate, debt maturity profile
- Download ACRA filings to get more colour, especially for associates and JVs (Optional)
- How to use URA Realis to retrieve development transaction data
- How to use IPC (Independent property consultants) market reports (CBRE, DTZ, JLL) to assist your modelling
- URA Masterplan and URA website to figure out the potential value of properties and how they affect property valuation: Plot Ratio, Land Area, Development Charge, Differential Premium
- Awareness of regulatory changes’ impact to developers. Learn how to calculate pro-forma impact: QC, ABSD
- Use financial instruments like government bond yield, SOR and spreads to assess cost of capital (for REITS)
- Capital investment and risk regime for various phases of development
- Understand residual land values and forecast developer’s profit
- Revenue and profit recognition for development projects
- Estimate of value creation
- Other considerations for valuation: Reputation, geopolitics, interest alignment of major shareholder.
- Assess the pulse of market
- Four Quadrant Model
- Analyse demand & supply, inventory and pipeline:
- Find insights from independent market studies of the various REITs
- Make good use of URA website
- Assess the technology disruption
- Building RNAV model
- Discount to RNAV analysis
- Standardized core model
- Case study of complex stock if time permitted
How we deliver it?
∞
Unlimited instant messaging and email support from mentors
Our Confidence
You will learn from practice, not just theory
You will experience the toughest technical questions you could get from your interview
You learn first-hand experience of how investment analysts approach a stock idea
You accumulate real experience of stock research
You accumulate real experience from potential internship with our partner network
Our Success Stories
Lihiang, lead ASEAN bank analyst at Maybank Kim Eng
Shane, consumer analyst at Daiwa Capital Market
Sophie, transport analyst at UOB Kay Hian
AKY, offshore & marine analyst at Religare Capital Market
Rei, quant analyst at Acadian
Li Feng, fixed income portfolio manager at UOB Assset Management
Willie, fixed income analyst at DBS
Our nine years of experience tells us that once you master the skills in our Research Like a Pro, your chance of landing an investment analyst job is very high, as past champions in our research competition have all landed a job in three months!
Additional Benefit
Free entry to Springboard events for one year
Join Springboard event at partner rate for life.
Access to Springboard partners for career advice.
Opportunity to intern for our partners network to accumulate experience and build your credibility
Join exclusive Springboard alumni network
Job referral as and when there are opportunities
Enrollment and Costs
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Beginning of every month
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Limited Intake
FAQs
We have early bird discounts for our students. Please use contact us form to find out details from us.
At the end of our Model Like a Pro mentorship program, you are expected to build a professional-looking financial model with all the essential components, including integrated income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement, DCF valuation, and company valuation metrics. You should have no problem answering financial modelling-related questions during your interviews.
At the end of our Research Like a Pro mentorship program, you are expected to conduct an in-depth research on a listed company, with all the essential analytical framework used by professionals on a daily basis. You will deliver a stock pitch to a panel of professional investment analysts.
If you are doing well in your stock pitch, you should have no problem conquering stock pitch challenges in every investment analyst interviews, based on our experience.
Prepare yourself for the powerful “Tell me about yourself.” question. Often, it can make or break your interview and your chances of a great front office career.
Make yourself appropriately comfortable. The grill is intended to assess how suitable you are for the vacant role, not who you are or aren’t. So, don’t take it too personally and get too upset. At the end of the day, it won’t kill you and will only make you stronger. Believe in yourself and just do your best. If you can (and only if you can), help drive the process to get the interviewers to know more about you and how you fit in. More importantly, find out appropriately that the job is indeed what you understand it to be.
Don’t spoil it. Arrive punctually, dress appropriately and ask questions appropriate for each stage of the interview.
Concise, Up to the point, Show your relevance.
To the busy hiring manager in the finance industry, the CV should be limited to one-page, concise and to the point. If the reader can’t figure out your point after the first 5 words, don’t count on it that they will grind their brain juices to go further.
Give your CV a story, and know the story. A story is more powerful than fragmented details that point to everything, or worse, nothing at all.
Don’t give your CV any spoilers. No mistakes please, no careless omissions and definitely no misrepresentations of your experience and skills. As Confucius would have it, “Wise are those who say they know when they know and who say they don’t know when they don’t.”
We are a premium mentorship platform with many intangible benefits for our students.
We don’t compete with other typical training programs by pricing because we believe that the value you are getting from our mentors and events are worth more. Hence, we do not disclose our fees publicly.
If you are interested, please fill up the contact us form and we will get in touch with you to assess your suitability for our program.
Since 2009, we have been investing our resources into building good and strong relationships with institutions, teams and established professionals in the industry. We only recommend our best apprentices/interns to them.
Our experience tells us that only time on the Foundation Program will tell us how good an apprentice is. Hiring managers often lament to us about how HR interviews and CV screening tools fall short of delivering the quality candidates they want. Our program is a different engagement tool structured to be more meaningful for hiring managers who are serious about looking for the right candidates. If we don’t maintain our tough demand on quality, we would lose their trust and support.
There are people who may feel shortchanged going into the Program, believing how “over-qualified” they are for the Program. Most of them eventually agree that they could have been trying to bite far more than they can chew.
If you are GOOD, we will share our invaluable network of front office mentors, alums and institutions with you and make this difference to your career success. Would you rather go into a career path by yourself, or with the SpringBoard network behind you?
Would you rather go into a career path by yourself, or with the SpringBoard network behind you?
There isn’t any bona fide training institution on earth that can guarantee you a job once you complete the program. Springboard’s program is aimed at improving your chances of getting a job, rather than guaranteeing you a job. Nonetheless, you can rest assured that we will work hard to help you jumpstart your front office career, and we have a wealth of experience and success at it. 1 in 3 of our apprentices became success stories within 3-6 months of completing the advanced program (Research Like a Pro).
We (and the industry) generally consider an age above 30 years to be a barrier of entry to the industry: as people reach their 30s, they have a certain level of income, and require a certain level of work-life balance.
Switching into the competitive finance industry likely means getting entry-level pay and working >12 hours a day. This is a huge sacrifice to one’s lifestyle. With some years of working experience in an irrelevant role, people could have already shaped their own way of working and become resistant to changes as required by the industry.
Based on our observations, the few people who usually land research roles after 30 years-old are doctors (to cover biotech) or specialists in certain industries. If you are above 30 years old and still wish to change your career, please feel free to contact Springboard for a non-obligatory assessment of your chance of making the switch.
SpringBoard TM is a career mentoring platform and is a very different platform from most other programs in the market.
Firstly, we emphasize on practical experience and do not focus on an end to academic training and discussion.
We are proud that we are likely the ONLY institution to help you earn relevant experience and secure relevant job referees. In this industry where relevant experience is of utmost importance, we provide you with an experience closest to that.
If your quality of work convinces us that you belong to our group, we will stand behind you and push you towards career success. We help you gain access to exclusive hiring opportunities through our network.
Second, through years of experience, we know what employers in the investment industry are looking for and how a student can be best prepared for the scarce opportunity. There are hardly any providers as specialized as us.
We don’t make it hard criteria for entrance into our mentorship program. However, it is preferable that one has at least passed CFA level 1 exam or have studied a finance/accounting degree so that value of our program can be fully utilized.
More importantly, you must possess the passion and hunger for a front office career. Many can claim that they have what it takes to make it in this career, but our program is structured to pick out the deserving for entry into the high-octane front office roles, where we take pains to convince hiring partners to offer you those rare opportunities.
Our focus is on bringing up one’s potential to maximize the chance of a successful career switch and smoothen the transition process.
