First-year real estate team earns Feasibility Award in Chicago competition

In its first year of competition, Liberty University’s Real Estate Club Analyst Program (RECAP) team recorded a strong finish at the Harold E. Eisenberg Foundation’s Real Estate Challenge on April 11, snagging the Financial Feasibility Award for their division of the undergraduate level of competition.

The competition is held annually in Chicago, and Liberty was one of 21 undergraduate programs represented. Teams were required to submit development plans for 6 acres of land in Chicago, backed with extensive research and financial planning information.

Liberty’s RECAP team developed a $330 million development composed of five buildings, including apartments, a hotel, office space, retail, and an open lawn for food truck and vendors. They included a well-documented exit strategy with loan release prices, organized a thorough breakdown of expected costs, and properly scaled the development to best meet the needs of the area, all documented in a 24-tab Excel worksheet.

The squad bested teams from Purdue, Michigan State, Wisconsin, North Carolina Central, St. Thomas (Minn.), and Case Western Reserve (Ohio) to earn the Financial Feasibility Award. Marquette University was the overall champion at the undergraduate level; Roosevelt took the graduate crown.

“I was so proud of the team because they put in hundreds of hours over these last few months,” said Liberty School of Business Assistant Professor Alison Pettit, the team’s faculty sponsor. “This was very extensive work. To be among the top in this competition, it was a huge honor to be able to win the division award.”

Liberty’s Real Estate Club, which started in 2022, houses the RECAP competition team. The student club meets twice a month to educate students on the field and provide them opportunities to hear from Christian industry professionals. While the club is open to all Liberty students, RECAP is much more selective due to its high time commitment.

Pettit said the competition also provided students the chance to network with other attendees and judges. One of the judges is a developer for the future Chicago Fire FC Stadium.

Finance senior Lucas Sobczak, RECAP team founder and managing director, said he launched the team with Pettit last fall as a springboard for other students pursuing a future career in real estate.

“Because (real estate) knowledge and experience is so niche, supplemental programs like this are almost needed to really complete the education,” he said. “The classroom teaches you a lot of the base-level knowledge you need, and this helps you get that real-world experience while still being in college. It helps put us above other students in the job market and helps you figure out if you want to do this as a full-time job before going into the workforce.”

Sobczak said the award reaffirmed the team’s hard work in preparing for their first competition.

“There were a lot of long nights for the competition alone working out the model, so winning the financial feasibility award meant a lot,” he said. “The award validated what we are doing as a club, showing that with the right teamwork, the right guidance from the people we spoke to, and the right education we are trying to push, we are able to go right up with the best of the best and compete well.”

Following graduation, Sobczak plans to work with a real estate development firm in Florida but will continue to mentor RECAP students on the team’s advisory board.

The team will look to continue to grow RECAP and improve on this year’s finish.

“Receiving this award in this competition certainly gives me and the other team members a lot of confidence moving forward,” said junior Dylan Salvigsen, who will take over as RECAP director next year. “That was our first major competition, and going through that, I got to learn the ropes, see what works for other teams and what works for us, and hopefully come at it from an even better angle next year to hopefully take home the (overall) first-place prize. It was definitely a confidence builder showing us the program has a ton of promise. We can really compete at a high level.”

> Students interested in joining the Real Estate Club can email Pettit at adpettit@liberty.edu or follow the club on Instagram.

> Two years ago, Liberty added a real estate cognate to its Business Administration & Data Analyst degree program, providing students additional opportunities to gain practical real estate knowledge prior to entering the workforce. More information about this and other School of Business programs is available at Liberty.edu/Business.