Almost home!

Arrived safely back in London, just had breakfast before our flight back to Aberdeen shortly! We all slept most of the flight back- several late nights seem to have caught up with us all! - Hannah

The University of Aberdeen comes 4th!!

With great pleasure, I can announce MaitlandGroup came 4th overall in the 6th Cornell University Real Estate Case Competition. We are all delighted and I think we are still in shock! This is a great achievement not only for our team, but also the University of Aberdeen - we are the first school outside of North America to reach the final! 

We managed to put together a great presentation but we have to admit our slides weren't as slick as some other Universities. That's some feedback we can give to next years team. 

After we found out the rankings - four judges approached us and stated we did a great job. They also mentioned that in the deliberation beforehand, some said we should have ranked higher as many aspects of our investment decision was in line with the actual transaction. This was extremely  encouraging. One of the judges was involved in the transaction and he delivered a small presentation so we could compare our decision with reality - thankfully we both invested! 

This experience has been a great opportunity and we can only thank the Univeristy for allowing us to compete - thank you! On behalf of the team, we also would like to give special thanks to Professor Hutchison for chaperoning us and for the encouragement on the day. 

It has been a great trip and a worthwhile academic experience. By participating in this prestigious event, we have hopefully exposed ourselves to more opportunities when we graduate. In my opinion, one of the best things to come out of this is highlighting my weaknesses - definitely need to brush up on some of my excel cash flow skills! 

To celebrate, we went out for a few drinks with some of the other universities. It was a pretty late night so we will definitely sleep on the plane home. We leave the city at 5.00pm so our last day will be spent going to see tourist attractions and a bit of shopping. 

I am also pleased to announce that we are the recipients of a cash prize of $1,500. We had no financial motivation so as a team we have decided to give a proportion of our winnings to charity. - Amy

Competition: Initial Result

So, we made it to the final -can't still believe we actually made it to the final! It's the world's biggest competition in Real Estate (and Finance) according to Mr. Dan Quan, which is absolutely incredible! - Maria

Sat round the lunch table and Dan Quan stands up to announce the finalists. We had all just said that we were quite happy not to present again. Round 1 we'd been up against China and Cambridge and while we were confident with our performance we weren't convinced we were better than them although we hadn't seen their presentations. The initial round had been in 5 different rooms and therefore 5 teams, one from each group, would be in the final. Working through the rooms finalists were announced...our room, 'Exchange Hub South' was called and then...'MaitlandGroup'!! 

We were stunned! Alina screamed and we all looked at each other as if it was some kind of joke. Fabiano, one of the judges, was sat at our table with us and she said: "well done guys, you deserve it and I didn't even give it away" 

Order drawn- we were 4th. Just over an hour to reassemble, take on the feedback and be ready to present to the whole panel of 18 judges and all the other teams who had stayed to watch. - Hannah

Competition: The Morning

Arrived back at the Convene for an 8am breakfast and meet the judges. We were all a bit tired after the night before finalising everything but we were ready and confident we wouldn't massively embarrass ourselves but also just thinking we would present once and enjoy the rest of our experience. 

We headed out for a walk after breakfast as we were last in our group to go and needed to keep cool heads away from the pressure of the Convene and all the other teams who were anxiously waiting- so we stopped and took a team photo by the Brooklyn Bridge- on Facebook it's been said we look like something out of the Apprentice.

Back at The Convene, time to present to a panel of 4 judges- big thanks again to all the judges for taking time out of their incredibly busy work schedules to come and judge the competition. The judges are all senior real estate individuals from all different areas of real estate from research to development plus everything in between. So in we walked to our room, shook hands with the judges and introduced ourselves and then we began what we've been building up to for the last 5 days.

We were all slightly nervous presenting but 15 minutes isn't long and we slightly misjudged timing resulting in missing the conclusion out- luckily due to the nature of the remit- we had stated our conclusion- to invest & develop- at the beginning and justified it throughout the presentation from all our financial and market analysis. 

Presentation over, it was time for Q and A's....always feels a little gruelling but the questions were things we had prepared but been unable to cover plus a couple seeking clarity over financials. The judges final words to us were 'Great Job'- we weren't sure if they were just saying that to everyone! 

Brief wait for our judges feedback- incredibly helpful constructive criticism which we took on board and made mental notes of for next years team paired nicely with lots of praise for our presentation and approach to the case study. Fabiana, the only female judge, was obviously loving that we were 4 women and 1 man all the other teams were male dominated.

Lunch and official photos followed this before the announcement of the finalists. - Hannah

The final hurdles are overcome!

We met at 7.30 this morning to finalise our presentation slides. Was a bit of a rush right down to the deadline but we're thankful it's all submitted.

This evening we attended the welcome reception at The Convene, in the financial district. We mingled with the other teams and had our rooms and positions drawn out a fishbowl ready for presenting tomorrow. 

We're up against 2 other teams in round 1- Cambridge and China- Battle of Britain....looks like it! 

Off to bed before an early start back at the convene for breakfast at 8am! Wish us luck ;) - Hannah

It's gonna be a late one...

The past two days have been extremely busy with the case study. 

Thankfully, we noticed a small error in our rental value calculation early on in the day. We are committed to our numbers (for now at least...) and we have a few more sections of our remit to address. I think it is going to be a late one as we would like to be slightly further ahead. Our presentation has to be submitted tomorrow evening! 

Hannah and I took a break in the evening and watched the New York 'Knicks' - the local basketball team - play North Carolina's 'Charlotte Hornets'. Safe to say we were part-time Knicks fans. It was a great match and we backed the right team.

Better get back to work! - Amy

Heads down....

Numbers being crunched....cash flows, rents, sales values, yields...the list goes on but possibly just had a breakthrough boosting moral and confidence! - Hannah