Interactive Learning Resources at Cal State Fullerton
Created by Desen Lin
Developed for instructional use at California State University, Fullerton (CSUF). These materials are educational and do not constitute financial advice.
This collection provides browser-based interactive tools and supporting pages developed for FIN 355: Real Estate Investment Analysis at California State University, Fullerton. The goal is to help students move from formulas and definitions to a more visual, hands-on understanding of real estate concepts.
The collection is designed to grow over time. New interactive tools and course pages will be added to the catalog below as they become available.
| Resource | What It Demonstrates | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Site Feasibility Sandbox | Connects editable parcel and building geometry with site area, setbacks, lot coverage, gross floor area, FAR, development capacity, and binding-constraint analysis. | Launch the tool |
| Retail-to-Residential Redevelopment Case Study |
Connects a real redevelopment’s public planning and acquisition history with a site schematic, nearby apartment comparisons, commercial lease NPV, and separate build-to-rent construction and operating pro formas with hypothetical assumptions. | Explore the case study |
| 3-D Retail Plaza & Leasing CRE studio |
Explore Ame Quarter’s interactive 3-D plaza, step inside six shops, and connect hypothetical leases with rent rolls and landlord leasing decisions. Maintained as an independent project. | Open the CRE studio |
| Market Research Explorer | Introduces supply, demand, property-and-lease, and local-context factors, then shows why investments with the same projected return can carry different levels of uncertainty. | Launch the tool |
| Historical Cap Rate Explorer | Compares historical apartment and office cap rates with quarterly 10-year Treasury yields, explores spreads across time and locations, and connects cap-rate and NOI changes to property values. Market history spans 2005 Q1–2024 Q3; submarket comparisons use a 2024 Q3 snapshot. | Launch the tool |
| How Amortization Changes a Loan Payment | Shows how a fixed monthly payment is divided between principal and interest, why the principal share rises over time, and how the annual amortization schedule changes with the loan amount, interest rate, and term. | Launch the tool |
| Commercial Mortgage Loan Sizing | Compares the maximum loan supported by LTV, DSCR, and debt-yield underwriting tests, identifies the binding constraint, and shows how property, loan-term, and lender-threshold assumptions change each ceiling. | Launch the tool |
| Internal Rate of Return as a Zero-NPV Solution | Visualizes IRR as an x-intercept of the NPV profile, lets students edit annual cash flows, and demonstrates why nonconventional cash flows can produce multiple IRRs or no real IRR. | Launch the tool |
| CMBS Tranching and the First-Loss Waterfall | Builds a six-tranche CMBS capital stack, connects investor yields to pool pricing, and allocates collateral losses from the first-loss bond upward through attachment and detachment points. | Launch the tool |
| Net Effective Rent and Lease NPV | Shows how free rent, tenant improvements, and leasing commissions reduce annual net effective rent, then compares a constant-growth lease with a delayed rent bump using multi-year landlord NPV. | Launch the tool |
| Property-Level Pro Forma Explorer | Builds the Kathy Center pro forma from rental income to after-tax cash flow, reveals step-by-step calculations, and compares editable assumptions across five years. | Launch the tool |
| Financial Model Explorer | Traces Leslie Court’s cash flows, tests replacement reserves, separates sale taxes, and shows how exit cap rates change investment returns. | Launch the tool |
| Development Feasibility: Replacement Rent and Land Value | Uses one development model to solve either for the minimum replacement rent or the maximum supportable land cost, with a live feasibility boundary linking rent, land, NOI, and yield on cost. | Launch the tool |
| Construction Pro Forma: Draws, Interest Reserve, and Loan Balance | Compares a fixed course-case S-curve with editable spending assumptions, then links project costs to an inclusive construction-loan facility to show how timing, accrued interest, cost overruns, and sale delays affect loan capacity, developer equity, and project profit. | Launch the tool |
| Three Real Estate Company Valuation Approaches | Compares discounted cash flow, direct capitalization, and net asset value, showing how operating forecasts, required returns, cap rates, debt, and other balance-sheet assumptions change the implied equity value. | Launch the tool |
| Four Models for Ground-Lease Valuation | Compares two residual land-value approaches with two direct building-NOI approaches, showing how ground-rent steps, NOI growth, discount rates, and cap rates determine whether the four building-value estimates converge. | Launch the tool |
| Real Estate Exit Strategies: Sale, Refinancing, and Like-Kind Exchange | Compares immediate cash, retained real estate equity, debt, transaction costs, and current taxes across a sale, cash-out refinancing, and Section 1031 exchange, including the taxable-boot boundary for partial versus full deferral. | Launch the tool |
Additional FIN 355 tools and pages will be listed here as they are developed.
All calculations run within the browser. The tools do not collect or transmit student inputs.
The explorer compares cap rates with the 10-year constant-maturity Treasury yield. The public benchmark is Federal Reserve H.15 series DGS10, retrieved through FRED. Each of the 79 calendar-quarter values from 2005 Q1 through 2024 Q3 is the arithmetic mean of available daily observations, excluding missing days without interpolation. Yields remain annualized; they are not divided by four. The September 27, 2024 submarket snapshot is compared with the full 2024 Q3 average, so observation timing differs.
The default chart includes the Treasury yield; Spread over Treasury displays cap rate minus Treasury yield in basis points. The change table separates each cap-rate change into the Treasury change and the spread change. This identity does not identify causation or isolate a pure property risk premium: growth, liquidity, income conventions, capital needs, and adjustment lags also matter. Treasury yields are omitted from the constant-NOI value index because a reciprocal Treasury yield is not a bond-return index.
Quarterly values, observation counts, and source metadata are stored in _data/treasury-10y-quarterly.json and embedded in the page for offline use. To rebuild the fixed historical window, run python3 _tools/build_treasury_data.py; use --csv path/to/DGS10.csv to rebuild from a saved FRED export. This does not extend the historical tool to current dates.
Start new pages from _templates/interactive-tool.html. The template uses a full-width navy header background, matching responsive 1180px containers for header text and main content, and a centered footer. Header titles and descriptions wrap naturally across the full content width.
assets/tool-layout.css is the shared source for these widths. After copying the template to a root-level HTML file or changing the shared layout, run:
python3 _tools/sync_tool_layout.py
python3 _tools/sync_tool_layout.py --check
The script embeds the shared CSS into each participating page so standalone/offline copies retain the layout. The Shared tool layout workflow checks that those copies stay synchronized. Historical Cap Rate Explorer uses this frame; existing tools can adopt it when updated. Avoid copying narrower title/description rules from older pages or nesting .shell containers. Check the header, main content, and footer together on desktop and mobile before publication.
The examples simplify some real-world details so that students can focus on the underlying concepts. Individual tools identify their specific assumptions and exclusions. Results should be interpreted as instructional illustrations rather than estimates for an actual transaction or financial decision.
To cite this collection:
Lin, D. (2026). FIN 355: Real Estate Investment Analysis Interactive Learning Resources [Interactive learning resources]. https://desenlin.com/FIN355/
Created by Desen Lin for instructional purposes in FIN 355 at California State University, Fullerton.
These materials are provided for educational use and should not be interpreted as financial advice.