How can I add value with a stats/math background?

[David Vitt]

Dear All,

My name is David, I'm a 30 year old living in Queens NY. Late this spring I read Rich Dad Poor Dad, which eventually led to me discovering this incredible website full of brilliant people. Since then, I've done a lot of listening to BP podcast, reading BP publications, and LOTS of scheming. Oh lord, the scheming. 

Due to the nature of my career (I'm an economist with a tenure track job), I have fairly idle summers. Usually full of a lot of day/swing trading and a lot of reading. I'm trying to figure out how I can use next summer optimally.

 My first thought was that I should approach property management companies to simply volunteer my time to do whatever tasks they may need done, and that via osmosis I will learn a lot. I'm in good shape, can lift heavy objects, grew up as handyman for a single parent family, etc. I'm not above any task, although obviously there are things I would prefer not to do. 

My second thought was in regards to how I could add value to a firm that would be gracious enough to have me around, as this comes up regularly in the podcast. My third thought was how this conversation would go.

I'd like to think that the skills I have would be useful in real estate, but at the same time, getting a Ph.D. made me vividly aware of how little I know about the world. Many of the statistical/econometric tools I know like the back of my hand are (claimed to be) used regularly in aspects of decision making in real estate. 

Take hedonic regression as an example, with data on prices and property features, hedonic regression allows you to treat property as just a collection of characteristics, and estimate the price of those characteristics individually. I'd like to think this could be useful in numerous ways.  For example if you know the price of the characteristics, you can calculate expected sales prices for different possible renovations among a menu of different ways to renovate, and then try to make a return maximizing decision. It could be useful to help inform pricing decisions for properties to be listed/bid on, as it would give a simple way to estimate the average price of a house with the characteristics you plug into the equation. The technique as a whole I would describe as "neato". 

If you were in my shoes, how would you use my summer?

Thanks for your time :) 

[Alexander Felice]

I have a finance background and love analysis (I do financial analysis for a living) and I've had similar thoughts as you. Trouble is, real estate doesn't take that much math and almost zero complex math. It takes a LOT of due diligence, but I've had the same thoughts as you and have had zero success. Certainly my experience is anecdotal, but that's why I went into commercial lending, simply to learn more LOL

The other problem you have is liability. You want to help companies make financial decisions based on risk, well they are going to want you to have a lot of skin in the game to do that. Uninterested third party opinions (in my experience) do more harm than good.

Last problem you have is that margins are really good on real estate. So for smaller guys, you really don't need to be exact to make really good profit, and for bigger companies they have a ton of experience and analysis infrastructure they don't want to trade the liability for the charity.

I don't mean to be negative, just helping explain the field as I've experienced it from a similar position.

The only recommendation I can make is to find the people you want to help, and make friends with them. Show them your value, and donate it, if they find usefulness in it you'll be on your way. I don't know really where to point you, for the reasons mentioned above, but finding the right person is your key. These people are on the internet somewhere so reach out and try to make a ton of friends until you find success! good luck!