Increasing Real Estate Management Profits: Harnessing Data Analytics

In this final course you will complete a Capstone Project using data analysis to recommend a method for improving profits for your company, Watershed Property Management, Inc. Watershed is responsible for managing thousands of residential rental properties throughout the United States. Your job is to persuade Watershed’s management team to pursue a new strategy for managing its properties that will increase their profits. To do this, you will: (1) Elicit information about important variables relevant to your analysis; (2) Draw upon your new MySQL database skills to extract relevant data from a real estate database; (3) Implement data analysis in Excel to identify the best opportunities for Watershed to increase revenue and maximize profits, while managing any new risks; (4) Create a Tableau dashboard to show Watershed executives the results of a sensitivity analysis; and (5) Articulate a significant and innovative business process change for Watershed based on your data analysis, that you will recommend to company executives. Airbnb, our Capstone’s official Sponsor, provided input on the project design. The top 10 Capstone completers each year will have the opportunity to present their work directly to senior data scientists at Airbnb live for feedback and discussion. "Note: Only learners who have passed the four previous courses in the specialization are eligible to take the Capstone."

• Introduction
• The goal for this week is to learn about the Capstone Project you are tasked with, acquire background about the business problem, and begin to outline the steps of your analysis.
• Data Extraction and Visualization
• The goal of this week is for you to extract the relevant data from the MySQL database you are given access to, and to look at it briefly in Tableau to get sense of what data you have.
• Modeling
• The goal of this week is for you to create a financial model using Excel to analyze the data you extracted from the database, and to start to predict short-term rents for some of Watershed's existing properties.
• Cash Flow and Profits
• The goal for this week is for you to use your projections about the Watershed properties to estimate cash flows and profits Watershed would experience if it converted properties to short-term rentals.
• Data Dashboard
• The goal of this week and next week is to build an analytical dashboard in Tableau using the data models and assumptions you have discovered in prior weeks.
• Dashboard for Decision-makers
• This week complete your dashboard and add design elements so the dashboard is ready for stakeholders (Watershed executives, for example) to use it to test your model's assumptions.
• Final Project
• This week, design and give a presentation for Watershed executives with your business recommendations, and complete a white paper template. Evaluate 3 peer's dashboards, white papers and presentations.