When Yildiray Yildirim taught his first real estate course at Syracuse University in fall 2005, he didn’t expect a lot of students. Nearly 50 enrolled though, twice the number Yildirim estimated.

Since then, he said more students have expressed a desire to learn about real estate at SU.

This budding interest led Yildirim to create an official real estate major and minor in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, effective fall 2009. The proposal is in its final stage and is awaiting final approval from New York State, Yildirim said. He dismissed any fears of studying real estate during a decline in the housing economy.

‘I think this the right time for students to learn about real estate,’ Yildirim said. ‘The market is going to go back up again. We have already seen the bottom, and we will catch the upward trend. It might be the right time, right now, for students to prepare themselves with the right set of tools for the future.’

Jason Ross, a junior entrepreneurship and emerging enterprise major, said he is interested in pursuing the real estate minor. Ross said he doesn’t think the poor housing market will stop students from choosing to study real estate.

‘We will be coming out with fresh knowledge, and we will be able to provide a new insight to what’s going on and how to help the company,’ Ross said of the potential program graduates.

The students will study four aspects of real estate: basic principles, finance, investment and capital market development, Yildirim said.

According to Yildirim, studying real estate at SU will mean more than buying and selling houses though. Former students have gone to work in firms and banks that manage mortgages, and others have become property investors as well, he said.

Yildirim said he will continue giving students firsthand experience with the industry and bringing guest speakers into the classroom.

He also hopes to continue offering his ‘one-week crash course,’ where he takes a group of students to New York City. There, he spends half the day lecturing and the other portion visiting businesses and seeing the way they operate.

‘Students really loved it, because everything I taught in the morning, they saw in the afternoon,’ Yildirim said. ‘The idea is to integrate academia and the industry.’

Jeff Grasso, president of the real estate club at SU, went with Yildirim to New York City and remembers spending time at the Chase Manhattan Plaza.

‘We had a bunch of alumni come in to speak. We had a great opportunity to see the professional side of what we’re learning and had the opportunity to network,’ Grasso said. ‘It was nice to be in an office building and learning, instead of in a classroom.’

The real estate club has about 50 members and meets on a weekly basis to discuss what is going on in the real estate world, Grasso said.

The club also learns aspects of real estate that previously couldn’t be covered in a classroom, like the ARGUS computer program, which is used to evaluate property, he said.

Ross said what he learned in the club has given him a leg up over applicants when he applied for internships.

‘I feel in the field of real estate you need to know what’s going on with the everyday market,’ he said. ‘This made me come into my internship with a base of knowledge, so I could talk to these senior partners, not sound like an idiot, and know what I was talking about.’

Yildirim and one other professor, Milena Petrova, teach all the real estates courses at SU, along with adjuncts. If the program takes off, Yildirim said he might need one more professor to teach the courses.

Grasso said he could see the program growing even more.

‘Once the major comes through,’ Grasso said, ‘I definitely see more students getting involved and graduating SU as a real estate major.’

adbrow03@syr.edu

Published on February 11, 2009 at 12:00 pm