UCLA to Offer Master’s Program in Real Estate Development

UCLA, after more than a century of Los Angeles development and urban sprawl, has launched a Master of Real Estate Development program.

The Westwood-based University of California campus and the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs will offer the one-year program known as MRED to produce more thoughtful and community-driven real estate leaders, the Los Angeles Business Journal reported.

“We are leveraging the fact that we are in probably the best urban laboratory to learn real estate, where we have the unique aspects of it being intimately tied with the industry,” Greg Morrow, founding executive director for the MRED program, told the newspaper.

“This should be one of the best, if not the best, program for learning real estate in the world.”

Morrow, a UCLA graduate, has led the UC Berkeley real estate program for the past six years and launched a similar program in 2017 at Pepperdine University. He earned master’s degrees in city planning and architecture from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a doctorate in urban planning from UCLA.

UCLA is the second UC school to offer a Master of Real Estate program behind UC Berkeley, which established its MRED+Design program founded by Morrow in 2018.

Unlike the other programs, Morrow said UCLA is the only one to operate on the quarter system. And because Los Angeles is a major metropolitan city, its program will likely have much broader and more ambitious goals, he said.

MRED’s goal, he said, is to create a generation of real estate professionals that will marry their expertise in development and asset management, finance and consulting, and advisory services.

He said the curriculum will explore themes that challenge students to think critically, including climate change’s impact on real estate, rising inequality, gentrification and displacement, international trade and post-pandemic work practices.

Most courses will be taught by industry professionals, who helped design the curriculum. Morrow expects the first class to be between 20 and 25 students, although he hopes it will grow to 40.

UCLA, a dense landlocked campus on L.A.’s westside, has undergone its own real estate expansion.

In September, it bought a nearly completed complex with 62 apartments in West Los Angeles for $39 million.

Last month, UC paid $700 million for the former Westside Pavilion in West L.A., for a research campus anchored by a medical institute.

UC bought two other properties to be used as satellites, including the historic Trust Building in Downtown Los Angeles and the former Marymount California University campus in Rancho Palos Verdes.

— Dana Bartholomew