COURSE NUMBER: MBA283.1
This course is dual-listed
with the EWMBA Program.
COURSE TITLE: Real Estate Finance and Securitization
UNITS OF CREDIT: 3
INSTRUCTOR: Christopher Palmer
E-MAIL ADDRESS: cjpalmer at berkeley dot edu
CLASS WEB PAGE
LOCATION: bCourses
PREREQUISITE(S): MBA203 Intro to Finance
CAREER FIELD: This course is useful to anyone going into finance or real estate
or whose responsibilities may include making decisions about debt financing. It
is also relevant to anyone wanting to learn the economics and finance
behind The Big Short.
ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S
CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:
This applied finance and economics course focuses on understanding and
navigating mortgage and asset-backed securities markets—both how debt is used
to finance real estate and the economics behind The Big Short.
It has historically had
success at placing students at finance and real-estate firms, but more broadly
draws students from diverse career paths who anticipate facing decisions about
debt financing and/or hedging risk using financial instruments.
Much of our material will
be directly applicable to understanding the Great Recession and the causes and
consequences of Federal Reserve monetary policy—important concepts for any
industry. After overviewing the fundamentals of bond math and mortgage
contracts, we analyze ways mortgages are used in residential and commercial
real estate to manage risk. Through a set of case studies, we learn how these
concepts have been pivotal in real-world situations, including a proposal to
use securitization to cure cancer. We will also review recent advances in
finance to price mortgages and contracts with embedded real options such as
prepayment, default, extension, and cancellation. A final project gives
students an impressive way to showcase their skills when they describe their
coursework in job interviews.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:
Christopher Palmer is an Assistant Professor of Real Estate at the University
of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, where he teaches courses
on real estate finance and is a Barbara and Gerson Bakar Faculty Fellow.
Professor Palmer is also a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San
Francisco, a Faculty Associate at the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban
Economics, and a small business mentor for the best tailor shop in LA. His
current research focuses on how real estate and debt markets respond to periods
of significant upheaval, such as dramatic price fluctuations, regulatory changes,
gentrification, and tax policy changes. He is also an accomplished
econometrician, advancing empirical techniques to deal with statistical
inference and the estimation of causal relationships. He frequently speaks to
the media, government agencies, and industry groups about emerging trends in
real estate. Professor Palmer earned a PhD in Economics from MIT, where he was
a Visiting Fellow at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, a National Science
Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, a Humane Studies Fellow, and a C. Lowell Harriss Fellow at the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy.
Prior to his time at MIT, he consulted with Compass-Lexecon,
an economics consulting firm. He received a BA in Economics and Mathematics
from Brigham Young University.