Hey There! Newbie From NYC

[Jake Pierce]

Hey BP community,

I stumbled upon this awesome forum a couple of weeks ago and am inspired to see so many quality contributors & community members inputs on Real Estate & also just life in general. I started listening to the BP podcast last night (245) and feel totally hooked as if it were speaking to me directly. 

I had some questions and general concerns about learning Real Estate. It's more so how to best position myself financially so that I can hopefully one day start investing in Real Estate on my own or with a network of people that would like to work with me. 

A little bit about me: I graduated Magna Cum Laude in Economics in 2014. Not knowing what I wanted to do after school, I re-branded a company out of college as the Director of Business Development (the company is still profitable and operational - although I don't work with the company anymore because I didn't have the money to buyout the debt we owed our angel investor). Since then, I took couple of jobs in computer programming working for various start-up companies and had pretty scarring experiences overall. But, as the podcast suggests (I can't stress enough how awesome I thought this conversation was), these were all opportunities to learn and continue to move forward as now I have found a passion for Real Estate.

Fast forward to this year - I recently moved to NYC as of a month ago in a rent-controlled apartment and accepted a position within a valuation/appraisal division of a large firm. I currently don't do the appraisal work per-say, but act more as client support. Here are my questions:

Between an MAI and an MBA, if I had the funds, which would be better to get for Real Estate and why?

What are the best materials to get my hands dirty with modeling/get experience forming RE assumptions for my models?

Thank you all in advance for your time,

JP