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The Advanced Real Estate Equity Waterfall Modeling Class (Udemy.com)

A Step-by-Step Guide To Modeling GP Catch-Ups, LP Clawbacks, Cash-on-Cash Waterfalls, and More For Real Estate Investors

Created by: Justin Kivel

Last updated August 2026

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What you will learn

  • Learn to model real estate equity waterfall structures with a GP catch-up clause
  • Learn to model real estate equity waterfall structures with an LP clawback clause
  • Learn to model real estate equity waterfall structures with multiple preferred returns based on IRR and equity multiple hurdles
  • Learn to model real estate equity waterfall structures with cash-on-cash-based preferred return hurdles

How it compares

Against the other 75 rated Udemy courses in Real Estate on CourseDuck:

  • Rating4.7 out of 5higher than 58% of them
  • Reviews585#35 of 76 by number of reviews
  • Length4.9 hourslonger than 58% of them
  • Last updatedAugust 2026more recently than 68% of them

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Course Description

Welcome to the Advanced Real Estate Equity Waterfall Modeling Class!

In this course, you'll learn how to create financial models for some of the most commonly used JV equity partnership structures in commercial real estate, and how each of these structures can ultimately affect returns to all investors in a deal.

My name is Justin Kivel, and throughout my career, I've worked on over $1.5 billion of closed commercial real estate transactions, working for and with some of the biggest real estate investment, brokerage, and lending firms in the world. After spending almost a decade in the trenches of the industry, I decided to teach the skills I learned on the job over the years, and since then, I've taught tens of thousands of students real estate financial modeling and analysis through the Break Into CRE platform.

This course was created to be a practical, hands-on guide to understanding how some of the most commonly used JV equity waterfall structures actually work in practice, and how to build out financial models to split cash flows between investors.

In this course, we'll walk step-by-step through four different equity waterfall model build-outs, including:

  • The Cash-on-Cash Waterfall Model: This model incorporates a preferred return and promoted interest using cash-on-cash-based hurdles during operations, as well as the opportunity for the GP to earn promoted interest when the property is sold.

  • The Dual-Preferred Return Waterfall Model: This model incorporates two preferred returns using IRR and equity multiple-based hurdles, with promoted interest only earned by the GP when both return hurdles are exceeded.

  • The GP Catch-Up Waterfall Model: This model incorporates a "Catch-Up" clause into the cash flows, with all distributions above an IRR-based preferred return hurdle split based on these terms, up to a maximum GP allocation of all distributions to investors.

  • The GP Catch-Up With Clawback Waterfall Model: This model incorporates the same "Catch-Up" structure as the original GP Catch-Up Waterfall Model, but also includes an LP clawback mechanism where promoted interest will be returned to the LP if preferred return hurdles aren't exceeded.

Whether you're trying to land a job at a real estate private equity firm and want to make sure you're prepared to model the different waterfall structures you might come across on the job, or if you're raising capital to fund your own deals and just trying to find the best structure for you and your partners, this course will be a great resource to take a deep dive into this topic.

Here's what some of our students have had to say about the course:

★★★★★ "Very clear explanations! I like the repetition through the different examples to embed learning. It's also helpful to say which shortcuts you are doing so that this becomes second nature."

★★★★★ "This is amazing training. It covers those hands-on things which are hard to get without being into the CRE business. Very detailed, error-less explanation of complex scenarios."

★★★★★ "Unbelievable course. I spent the weekend working through this and the prerequisite Equity Waterfall Modeling Master Class. This was the practical deep dive I needed to compliment my real world and academic exposure to Real Estate Private Equity."

★★★★★ "Fantastic course, and just like with Justin's other courses: crammed with great content and hands-on application. No fluff. Just into the materials and the mechanics. This course is rather advanced, but it covers a lot of different techniques, methods, and concepts."

Ready to get started? Just click "Buy Now" button on this page, and I'll see you on the inside!

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Instructor Details

Justin Kivel

Master real estate financial modeling, advance your career, and earn more money.

If you’re an aspiring real estate investment professional looking to break into the real estate investment field, or a current real estate professional looking to advance your career and increase your compensation, you’re in the right place.

My name is Justin Kivel, and I’m a real estate investment professional with a love for teaching. Throughout my career, I’ve worked on over $1.5 billion of closed acquisitions across multifamily, retail, office, and mixed-use properties. I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the brightest minds in real estate investing and have spent almost a decade in the industry across private equity, finance, and brokerage roles.

Unfortunately, most of what I know today I had to learn on the job. Although great courses exist on Microsoft Excel and financial modeling, I couldn’t find a resource that was specifically tailored toward real estate investment professionals that would actually walk me through exactly what I needed to know to succeed in the real estate investment industry.

These courses are that resource.

After dozens of phone calls and coffee meetings with college students and aspiring real estate investment professionals, I realized that most people were asking exactly what I was asking when I was in their shoes.

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Reviews

4.7

585 ratings on Udemy

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By Avery Scott on 1/12/2025

Great course and love the fact you can rewind to take notes and make comments in models. Sometimes the concepts are more important than the timing triggers calculations and nuances.

By Miguel Valrie on 5/17/2024

Great course to take your ability to create waterfall models to the next level. I believe the equity waterfall portion of any real estate deal is the most difficult, yet rewarding section to complete. If you are really into the finance side of real estate mastering this component will take you a long way. Look forward to continually learning and implementing what I learned into real life deals.

By Sumanth J on 1/4/2024

The course was pretty good as it covered all the topics I needed. However, having a few visualizations in between to show how the distributions work could have made it far more engaging and intuitive. Good work, Justin

By Ran Sahar on 10/26/2023

Justin is amazing. I took almost all of his courses. Highly recommended. BUT, in this specific course he didn't explain the difficult formulas good enough (actually didn't explain them at all, while in the other courses he did) and I had to dig in the Q&A to try and understand them.

By Jinli Ma on 9/8/2023

Greetings! I've just successfully wrapped up a course while hitting the gym. My typical approach to learning involves two rounds of study. Initially, I aim to grasp the overarching concepts to assess my familiarity, comprehension, and pinpoint areas needing further attention. Though I lack experience in CRE investment, I do possess expertise in PE fund taxation and have led teams in K1 preparation. Beyond that, I've engaged in extensive self-study across a wide spectrum of topics, ranging from accounting, taxation, risk management, cryptocurrency, process automation, data analytics, machine learning, and even GenAI. In all my self-learning endeavors, I must commend Justin as one of the finest instructors I've come across. Exceptional work!

By Diego Gomez on 5/26/2023

porque no encontré nada similar en internet que tenga el contenido completo que ofrece este curso y está explicado de forma excelente. La única mejora que haría sería poner subtítulos en español

By Zachary T. Furr on 1/5/2021

I just completed The Advanced Real Estate Equity Waterfall Modeling Class. The course was very intense, thorough and detailed. Very in-depth Excel spreadsheet modeling. I enjoyed the course and learned a lot. I would highly recommend the course to others looking for this type of training. Thank you Justin. Great course, good job.

By Marc C on 7/14/2020

I took both this class and the Real Estate Equity Waterfall Modeling Master Class, I am now buying another 3 classes from this instructor, I would HIGHLY recommend these to anyone interested in the topic. The instructor is extremely thorough in explaining what is going on in every cell of the model, and also highly responsive to Q&A, in the off chance that your question has not already been asked by another student. Also, he has extensive RE experience, check his LinkedIn, so this is material that will be highly valuable in practice. I look forward to other classes. As a bonus you will get to fine tune your excel skills. Thank you Justin, you are an amazing teacher.

By Will P on 5/13/2020

Fantastic course, and just like with Justin's other courses: crammed with great content and hands-on application. No fluff. Just into the materials and the mechanics. This course is rather advanced, but it covers a lot of different techniques, methods, and concepts.

By Prince McAnthony on 10/29/2019

this course is an eye opener for understanding multi-apartment real estate profit distribution system. It has primed my knowledge to understand real estate private equity profits distribution system.

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Overall Score : 94 / 100