Accounting Students Take First Place in Inaugural Real Estate Competition

Further proving that accounting is the foundation of all business, team Due Diligence took first place in the Whitman School’s inaugural Real Estate Competition held in March. Four of five members of the winning team were accounting majors who applied their knowledge to a real-world scenario to take the win. 

Due Diligence consisted of Adam Best ’25 (accounting/finance), Carly Conway ’25 (accounting), Christian Ellis ’26 (accounting/business analytics), Nick Gee ’25 (finance/real estate) and Michael Pellizzari ’25 (accounting/finance). The competition required students to come up with a redevelopment plan for a large vacant building and an extensive amount of undeveloped land in nearby Fayetteville, New York. Competing teams were required to include a rationale and the basis for their proposed redevelopment plans, including initial financial calculations, market data, legal permissibility and more.  

Team Due Diligence’s initial proposal made it to the Top 5 of 11 teams in the competition, allowing them to present to local real estate developers and faculty judges in the final round. In the end, the team took first place and was awarded a cash prize of $5,000 for their vision of constructing a 200-unit residential apartment building with an adjoining park designed to preserve the environmental integrity of the site and the character of the community. 

“We thought we would be at a disadvantage because only one of us had a real estate background, but we found that we could apply the business foundations we have learned in accounting, for example how an income statement works and how to create a balance sheet,” says Pellizzari, who has accepted a job at KPMG’s Denver office. “We also had to do qualitative research on the project’s environmental factors for the Department of Environmental Conservation and apply numbers to that on our own. That’s where our accounting skills really came in handy.” 

“Being accounting majors gave us an edge because of the broad foundation of our curriculum. Specifically, our tax and law courses, managerial and financial accounting courses and business formation concepts set us up to succeed. Understanding how to model profitability, assess risk and structure a viable business plan played a major role in our success, too,” adds Conway, who has accepted a position at KPMG in New York City. “Winning the competition was incredibly rewarding, and competing against entire teams of students with more experience in real estate made the victory even more meaningful. It was a proud moment to see our hard work recognized.”