Thibodeau Hired at University of Colorado

"When is the last journal editor in the Rocky Mountain region? The answer is never. Tom's journal is where you go when you want to really find out what is happening in real estate economics," Byron Koste, executive director of the real estate school tells GlobeSt.com. "We need someone of Tom Thibodeau's quality and reputation to take us to the next level. Everybody in real estate academia knows who Tom is."

Currently, the CU real estate school would be ranked on the third level of four tiers, Thibodeau says from his office on the Boulder campus. However, Koste says with his hiring, and one new hire to replace a junior staff member, the CU school will move to the second tier.

But that is not good enough for Thibodeau and Koste. They both want the CU school to be on the same level as the University of Wisconsin at Madison, MIT, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of California at Berkeley, generally considered the four best real estate schools in the country.

Thibodeau received a doctorate in economics and a master's degree instatistics form the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1980. After completing his PhD, he served as a research associate in the housing division of the non-profit Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. Then, from 1983 through July 2004, he was on the real estate faculty at the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He took one year off from SMU to serve as a visiting professor at Wharton and a visiting scholar at the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Board. He also teachers income property analysis in the financial analysts training program for the Achon Group, the real estate subsidiary of Goldman Sachs.

At CU, he is teaching real estate finance and investments. In the class, he uses a case study of an actual building in Houston. The building belongs to one of his former students. Students in the class must determine whether the building is worth buying. Then, they must decide which finance options makes the most sense.

"They must determine the costs and benefits of different options," he tells GlobeSt.com. After that, they split up the building into debt and equity, with a general partner and two limited partners. One of the limited partners wants a steady stream of income while the other limited partner is willing to defer payment in exchange for a bigger, expected pay off down the road.