Our Approach

If you’re a college student or graduate student looking to break into the real estate industry, you’re switching careers into the real estate space, or you’re already in the industry and looking to take your career to the next level, you’re in the right place.

Meet Your Instructor

Justin Kivel, Founder

Welcome to the Break Into CRE site!

If you don't know me already, my name is Justin Kivel, and I’m a real estate consultant, investor, and now teacher, with over 70,000 students who have used the Break Into CRE coursework to land their first job in the industry, advance their existing real estate career, or do their first deal on their own. After almost a decade of working with and for some of the largest institutional real estate firms in the world across private equity, finance, and brokerage roles, I set out to teach what I had learned through working on over $1.5 billion of closed transactions across multifamily, retail, office, industrial, and mixed-use properties throughout my career.

When I was first getting started in the industry back in 2012, information was much harder to come by than it is today.

Excel courses existed, and real estate courses existed, but I couldn’t find anything out there that blended the two topics and would teach me the three things I was looking for at the time – the technical skills to land a job at a top firm in the industry, the practical skills to do my own deals (either on the side or in the future), and a curriculum that was easy to understand and wouldn’t be over my head (even without a ton of Excel or real estate experience under my belt).

After realizing that didn’t exist in academia or online, I spent many years learning the hard way. And through on-the-job trial and error, far too many sink or swim scenarios, and all-too-patient mentors and managers taking the time to answer my questions and guide me through what I was looking to learn, I finally started to get the hang of this whole “real estate” thing.

And by the time I got to this point, I took a look back at the things I had worked through and the experiences I had, and couldn't help but think that it shouldn't have been that hard.

I started to take phone calls and coffee meetings with college students and aspiring real estate investment professionals looking to do what I had done, and kept hearing the same questions over and over again – the same exact questions that I was asking when I was first getting started and back in their shoes.

So, I set out to create a resource that I wish I had when I was first starting out, using everything I had learned through working on hundreds of deals with some of the smartest and most accomplished real estate investors in the industry, in a way that I wish someone would have taught me when I was first getting started.

It started with one course. And then another. And then another.

Today, we have have 20 courses on our platform and have helped over 70,000 students land their dream jobs at some of the top real estate investment, development, and brokerage firms across the globe, including Brookfield Asset Management, Hines, Starwood Capital Group, LaSalle Investment Management, PGIM, Eastdil Secured, JLL, CBRE, and many, many more.

So whatever that next step in your real estate investment career looks like, we're here to help you get there as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Check out the Break Into CRE Crash Course for free below to get a sneak peek into what our training is all about!