argus valuation dcf – the certification exam

Twenty hours of Argus training and I still want more?  What’s wrong with me?

Last week, I was isolated in a classroom learning about Argus Valuation DCF.  A commercial real estate industry standard product that helps analyze commercial real estate projects and transactions.  The software is fairly complex and with the complexity, comes a great deal of power.  In addition to learning the software and how to use it, the course also prepared us for the Argus Certification Exam.

I’m a numbers guy, so the class and software appeal to me.  With the certification exam in less than a week, I need to prepare.  The test sounds fairly straight forward, two sections each 75 minutes.  The first section is 75 multiple choice questions based on Argus.  No book or software allowed.  The second section consists of a case study and 15 questions based on reports generated after inputting the case information.  The exam is administered online.

To prepare for the exam, Argus gave us an exam review checklist of items to review and I compiled a study guide based on the 300+ page manual we received in class.  The review guide covers a number of things: Expense Calculations, Fixed vs. Variable Calculations, Market Leasing Assumption Calculations, Rent Roll details, Retail Sales info, Relative vs. Fixed Start Dates, Step Rent, etc.  The study guide I created touches on the different topics the instructor highlighted during class.  It’s not the cleanest document, but if you can understand the abbreviations, it may be useful to review once or twice before the certification exam.

All of the topics covered by the Argus exam are important real estate concepts and deserve further elaboration.  I think I will cover these things in greater detail in the near future.  Follow along.