Earlier this month, UT Austin held the local Women’s Case Competition, in which many BHPeers participated. The first-place team consisted of three CBHP freshmen, Sneha Mittal, Tanya Dhingra, and Aarushi Gupta.

The sponsor for this year was Lionstone Investments, a real estate investment firm. The teams were tasked with ranking a list of preferences for millennials and generation z consumers when trying to choose a city to live in. Teams had to keep real estate drivers, the financial market, and COVID-19 in mind. Teams also had to decide which city that Lionstone Investments should invest in: Pittsburg, Austin, or Raleigh. Then the teams had to pick the best real estate asset type to invest in.

The afternoon before the case competition, my team and I met up to continue working on the case study. We continued our research and started working on the slide deck. Working in a group and bouncing ideas off of each other really helped us come up with unique ideas that we would not have been able to come up with on our own. We played to each other’s strengths and split up the research. We then shared what we found and discussed the effects on the real estate market. After we finished our slide deck, we started practicing our presentation. Many hours later we were competition ready.

On the day of the competition, we met at the Legacy Events room and did our final run-through before going to the judges’ room. We presented our case and then had five minutes of questions from the judges. Afterwards, we awaited the results. It was announced that we made finals! We were excited and that meant it was time to incorporate the judges’ feedback into our presentation for the final judging. The final judges included officials from Lionstone Investments. As each finals team presented, they got to sit in the room and listen to the other cases. It was interesting to see all the different perspectives on the same case that everyone was given. Not every team chose the same city or asset type.

Finally, the winners were announced. My team had won 1st! We were so happy that from this experience we grew closer as a team and learned more about the real estate industry.

Written by: Sneha Mittal