Real Estate Investing

Real Estate Investing: Commercial Properties

Analyze, finance, acquire, and manage income-producing commercial real estate with investor-level discipline.

Real Estate Investing: Commercial Properties logo
Quick Course Facts
20
Self-paced, Online, Lessons
20
Videos and/or Narrated Presentations
7.0
Approximate Hours of Course Media
About the Real Estate Investing: Commercial Properties Course

Real Estate Investing: Commercial Properties is a practical online course for students who want to understand how commercial property deals are evaluated, financed, purchased, and operated. Through structured lessons on markets, underwriting, leases, financing, acquisitions, and asset management, you will learn how to approach Real Estate opportunities with clearer judgment and investor-level discipline.

Analyze And Acquire Commercial Real Estate With Confidence

  • Learn how major commercial property types generate income and respond to market cycles.
  • Build the skills to Analyze offering memorandums, rent rolls, leases, expenses, cap rates, and investor returns.
  • Understand how to finance acquisitions, evaluate lender underwriting, structure partnerships, and manage transaction risk.
  • Develop a disciplined framework to acquire and manage income-producing commercial real estate with long-term portfolio growth in mind.

Real Estate Investing: Commercial Properties teaches you how to Analyze, finance, acquire, and manage income-producing commercial real estate with investor-level discipline.

This course begins with the foundations of commercial Real Estate as an investment class, including how office, retail, industrial, multifamily, and other property types make money. You will study market cycles, location drivers, and deal screening methods so you can form a practical investment thesis before committing time or capital.

From there, the course moves into financial fundamentals, including net operating income, expense analysis, cap rates, valuation, debt service, cash flow, and investor returns. You will also learn how to read offering memorandums critically, evaluate tenant credit risk, compare lease structures, and understand how rent rolls and leases affect both value and risk.

Later lessons cover commercial financing, capital stacks, partnerships, syndications, acquisition underwriting, letters of intent, due diligence, closing risks, asset management, leasing strategy, capital improvements, reserves, insurance, refinancing, exits, and portfolio growth. By the end of Real Estate Investing: Commercial Properties, you will be able to evaluate commercial Real Estate opportunities with greater discipline, ask better questions, and approach income-producing properties like a serious investor.

Course Lessons

Full lesson breakdown

Lessons are organized by topic area and each includes descriptive copy for search visibility and student clarity.

Foundations of Commercial Property Investing

2 lessons

This lesson frames commercial real estate as an investment class, not just a collection of buildings. Students learn how income-producing properties create value through leases, operating performance,…

Lesson 2: Major Property Types and How They Make Money

20 min
This lesson introduces the major commercial real estate property types and the basic economic engine behind each one. Students learn how apartments, office, retail, industrial, hospitality, self-stora…

Market Analysis and Deal Screening

3 lessons

Lesson 3: Commercial Real Estate Cycles, Markets, and Location Drivers

21 min
Commercial real estate markets move through cycles shaped by supply, demand, capital availability, tenant behavior, and local economic conditions. This lesson teaches investors how to read cycle signa…

Lesson 4: Building an Investor Deal Thesis

18 min
An investor deal thesis is the disciplined explanation of why a specific commercial real estate opportunity should exist in your portfolio , what must be true for it to work, and what evidence would m…

Lesson 5: Reading Offering Memorandums Without Being Sold

19 min
Offering memorandums are marketing documents, not underwriting conclusions. This lesson teaches investors how to read an OM with discipline: separate facts from broker positioning, identify assumption…

Financial Fundamentals

3 lessons

Lesson 6: Income, Expenses, and Net Operating Income

22 min
This lesson teaches the operating math that sits underneath every commercial real estate acquisition: income, expenses, and net operating income. Students learn how to move from rent roll and operatin…

Lesson 7: Cap Rates, Valuation, and Comparable Sales

21 min
This lesson explains how commercial real estate investors use cap rates, valuation math, and comparable sales to estimate what an income-producing property is worth. Students learn the relationship be…

Lesson 8: Cash Flow, Debt Service, and Investor Returns

23 min
This lesson explains how commercial real estate investors translate property income into usable cash flow and investor-level return metrics. Students learn the difference between gross income, NOI, de…

Lease and Tenant Analysis

2 lessons

Lesson 9: Rent Rolls, Leases, and Tenant Credit Risk

22 min
This lesson teaches investors how to read a commercial rent roll, connect it to lease documents, and identify tenant credit risks that can materially change asset value. Students learn to distinguish …

Lesson 10: Lease Structures: Gross, Net, Triple Net, and Percentage Rent

20 min
This lesson explains the major commercial lease structures investors encounter: gross, modified gross, net, triple net, and percentage rent. Students learn how each structure allocates operating expen…

Capital Stack and Financing

2 lessons

Lesson 11: Commercial Financing and Lender Underwriting

23 min
This lesson explains how commercial lenders underwrite income-producing real estate and how investors should prepare a financing request before acquisition. You will learn how senior debt fits into th…

Lesson 12: Equity, Partnerships, Syndications, and Investor Alignment

21 min
This lesson explains how equity capital is organized in commercial real estate deals, from simple partnerships to professionally managed syndications. Students learn how sponsors, investors, preferred…

Acquisition Process

4 lessons

Lesson 13: Constructing a Practical Acquisition Underwriting Model

24 min
This lesson builds a practical acquisition underwriting model for commercial real estate, focused on the inputs, calculations, and decision outputs an investor needs before submitting an offer. Studen…

Lesson 14: Making Offers, Negotiating Terms, and Letters of Intent

19 min
This lesson explains how commercial real estate investors move from underwriting to a credible offer. Students learn how to set an offer price from investment criteria, choose the right offer structur…

Lesson 15: Due Diligence: Documents, Inspections, Title, and Environmental Review

24 min
This lesson turns due diligence from a vague checklist into a disciplined investigation of whether a commercial property can actually perform as underwritten. Students learn how to organize the review…

Lesson 16: Closing the Deal and Avoiding Common Transaction Risks

18 min
This lesson walks through the commercial real estate closing process from final diligence through funding, recording, and post-closing transition. The focus is not merely getting documents signed, but…

Operations and Value Creation

2 lessons

Lesson 17: Asset Management After Acquisition

22 min
This lesson explains how commercial real estate investors move from acquisition to disciplined asset management. After closing, the investor’s job shifts from underwriting a plan to executing it: stab…

Lesson 18: Leasing Strategy, Capital Improvements, and Value-Add Execution

23 min
This lesson shows how commercial real estate investors turn an operating plan into measurable value through leasing strategy, targeted capital improvements, and disciplined execution. Students learn h…

Portfolio Protection

1 lesson

Lesson 19: Risk Management, Reserves, Insurance, and Downside Planning

21 min
This lesson shows how disciplined commercial real estate investors protect portfolio value before problems appear. Students learn how to identify major downside risks, size reserves, evaluate insuranc…

Exit and Scaling Strategy

1 lesson

Lesson 20: Exit Strategies, Refinancing, and Portfolio Growth

20 min
This lesson shows how commercial real estate investors plan exits before acquisition, choose between selling and refinancing, and use realized equity to grow a portfolio without drifting into unmanage…
About Your Instructor
Professor Amanda Davis

Professor Amanda Davis

Professor Amanda Davis guides this AI-built Virversity course with a clear, practical teaching style.