SAN DIEGO—Investing an imaginary $1 billion for the best return is the objective of an annual, national competition called the “Real Confidence University Portfolio Challenge.” One of the companies sponsoring this challenge is Altus Group Limited, which owns the subsidiary ARGUS Software, whose Enterprise and Developer programs are widely used in the real estate industry. ARGUS puts on the ARGUS University Challenge each year, and three of the four team members for the Real Confidence University Portfolio Challenge were also on University of San Diego's winning team in the 2014 ARGUS University Challenge—in fact, USD has won six of the eight ARGUS University Challenge Competitions. GlobeSt.com spoke exclusively with Victor Alfonso, VP of Brixton Capital, and Jon Mesa, VP of Wolverine Ventures, both 2015 graduates of USD's Master of Science in Real Estate program and teammates in the fantasy-style Real Confidence challenge, about their strategy this year. Other USD members of the team include Omar El-Mofty, asset-management analyst at Invesco, and Bradley Williams, senior associate with Flocke & Avoyer, both also 2015 MSRE graduates.

GlobeSt.com: What is your approach/strategy for the Real Confidence University Portfolio Challenge?

Alfonso: The challenge is basically to allocate $1 billion of capital between the public, private, debt and equity quadrants. Within those, you can break it down by property types and also by region, so you can get pretty specific about where you want to allocate the capital. There are no restrictions as to how diversified or concentrated the portfolio needs to be. It's similar to a stock-market challenge, where you pick your horses and track the returns to the market as if it were a real portfolio. There are 15 universities throughout the nation participating, and we're one of the only ones on the West Coast—and these are notable universities.