The Real Estate Game: The Intelligent Guide to Decisionmaking and Investment

The Real Estate Game is a comprehensive guide to successful real estate investment from one of the masters in the field. Drawing upon four decades of experience developing, owning, and managing properties and on almost thirty years of teaching at the Harvard Business School, William J. Poorvu offers an insider's perspective on how to make smart decisions about real estate.

The real estate “game” is played by people, and it’s the stories of real people that make Poorvu’s introduction to the industry colorful and interesting. You will meet players ranging from real estate moguls to small-scale developers to individual investors in exotic investment instruments. Their stories evolve throughout the book and illustrate how these people—with all their complicated needs, talents, and motives—fit into the larger process and context.

In clear and nontechnical language, Poorvu explains how variables—players, properties, capital markets, and the external environment—come together to influence the shape and outcome of a real estate deal. He explains the time frame for different kinds of real estate investments and walks the reader through the key “periods of play” in the real estate game: concept, commitment, development, operation, reward, and reinvestment.

The Real Estate Game introduces a simple but powerful “back-of-the-envelope” technique for analyzing the financial implications of a potential deal. Using this tool and others, Poorvu shows readers how to use direct investments, syndicates, and REITs to get into the real estate game across a broad range of property types: residential, office, hotel, industrial, and retail.

Offering unique insight into the ways that developers and investors can create value, The Real Estate Game is both a perfect introduction for the novice and an invaluable overview for the experienced professional.

William J. Poorvu is a successful real estate investor and developer and heads the real estate program at the Harvard Business School as Class of 1961 Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship. His research has been in the areas of the entrepreneurial process in real estate companies, international real estate and capital formation for real estate. From 1968 to 1977, Poorvu was Senior Lecturer for Harvard Graduate School of Design's Department of City Planning.
Poorvu has been managing partner in a number of real estate companies and Chairman of the Board of Advisors for The Baupost Group, L.L.C., an investment firm. He is a Trustee/Director of the Massachusetts Financial Services Group of Mutual Funds and a Trustee of CBL & Associates Properties, Inc. He was formerly a director of Connecticut General Mortgage and Realty Investments, Trammell Crow Realty Investors, and Sonesta International Corporation. He was a member of the Yale University investment committee. Poorvu has also served as a consultant for various organizations in the private and public sectors.
In 1963, Poorvu became one of the founders and owners of WCVB-TV, Channel 5 in Boston, where he served as Treasurer, Vice-Chairman, President and Director until the sale of the station in 1982.
Poorvu serves on the board of numerous nonprofit and community groups including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the National Public Radio Foundation.
In addition to authoring many articles in various professional publications, Poorvu is the author of Real Estate: A Case Study Approach (Prentice Hall, 1992) and The Real Estate Challenge: Capitalizing on Change (Prentice Hall, 1996).
Poorvu earned his BA from Yale University in 1956 and his MBA from Harvard University in 1958. He currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.