Program Overview
Master in Real Estate Program Overview
The Master in Real Estate is a 12-month degree that teaches individuals how to acquire or sharpen traditional skills and knowledge required of every real estate professional while simultaneously understanding how well-designed real estate can advance beneficial spatial, social, and environmental outcomes in cities and metropolitan areas worldwide.
Program Details
- The program is a designated STEM program, allowing international students holding F-1 visas to be eligible for a 24-month Optional Practical Training (OPT) extension.
- The program provides robust career assistance, including networking and connecting with faculty, alumni, and friends of the program.
- Leading real estate practitioners regularly visit the program, give presentations, and meet privately with students over meals and other informal settings.
- A student-run Harvard GSD Real Estate Club co-sponsors with its Harvard Business and Law School counterparts an annual spring real estate conference.
Curriculum
The program features a multidisciplinary curriculum of in-residence required and elective courses and a concluding two-month off-campus practicum within a private or public real estate organization. Students learn about:
- Finance
- Development
- Asset management
- Design
- Planning
- Law
- Social and environmental considerations
- Project and construction management
- New technologies, including AI
- Politics
- Public-private partnerships
- Entrepreneurship
- Negotiation
- Leadership
- Other skills and subjects essential to the practice of present and future real estate.
Career Opportunities
MRE graduates are prepared to assume a wide variety of positions in private for-profit, private not-for-profit, and public entities engaged in real estate endeavors around the world. Typical employers include:
- Developers
- Asset managers
- Private equity firms
- Project and construction managers
- Community development corporations
- Family offices
- Affordable housing developers and managers
- Governments and quasi-public agencies
- Real estate advisory and consulting firms
- Anchor institutions, such as universities and medical institutions.
Student Projects
Examples of student projects include:
- ARCA
- Infilling with Outbuildings
- Monterrey’s Urban [River] Forest: Improving Microclimatic Conditions through Public-Private Partnership Vertical Development
- SILVERLINE: A New Model for Data Centers in the Age of AI: Verticalities at the Edge of the Cloud
- The Gansevoort: Design for Longevity
Program History
The MRE program was initiated in the fall of 2020, with the inaugural class matriculating in the fall of 2023 and graduating in the summer of 2024. The program is now hosting its third cohort of students, with around 115 students in total between alumni and current students.
Application Deadlines
- January 5, 2026, 5:00 p.m. ET: Master in Real Estate application deadline
Program Location
The program is located at Gund Hall, 48 Quincy Street, Suite 312, Cambridge, MA 02138.
Cross-Registration Privileges
MRE students enjoy cross-registration privileges that enable them to take eligible courses at the Harvard Business School, the Kennedy School, the Law School, the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the College, and other Harvard graduate schools. Students may also cross-register in eligible classes at MIT.