Free online courseBeginner Real Estate Financial Case Study: Build a Pro Forma and Analyze IRR

Course Description

Make smarter real estate investment decisions by learning how to build a clear, professional pro forma from the ground up. This free online course guides you through a beginner-friendly financial case study designed to help you understand how a deal really performs, not just how it looks in a headline. You will work through the logic behind return targets, how assumptions shape results, and how to turn messy inputs into an organized model you can trust.

Instead of staying theoretical, the course walks you step by step through building cash-flow schedules, moving from asset-level performance to unlevered cash flows, then progressing into levered cash flows that reflect the impact of financing. Along the way, you will develop an investor mindset: what numbers matter, how timing affects returns, and how to evaluate whether a purchase price makes sense relative to the target IRR. You will also learn why XIRR is typically used in real estate modeling, helping you calculate returns more accurately when cash flows occur on specific dates rather than perfectly spaced periods.

By the end, you will be able to connect assumptions to outputs, interpret IRR results with confidence, and communicate insights that support a go or no-go decision. Whether you are exploring a career in investments, improving your business and marketing skill set, or preparing for interviews and entry-level analyst tasks, this course gives you a practical foundation you can immediately apply to real deals and case studies.