My aspiration to distinguish myself as a real estate development professional is a product of my unique childhood, educational experiences, cultural exchange and entrepreneurship. Fully dedicated to lifelong learning in the international context, I long to attend to University of Southern California’s Master of Real Estate Development Program to pursue my life goal of creating meaningful physical spaces that promotes healthy human activity, creativity, and commerce, designing human-cantered commercial and residential housing with global perspectives.
I have approached real estate development from an entrepreneurial perspective and have learned experimentally the comprehensive skill sets needed to make successful businesses decisions concerning development from the ground up. Born in a small city along the border of China and North Korea, I grew up witnessing North Koreans risking their lives for a more democratic state and often fleeing oppression, a desperate attempt to build better lives for themselves and their children. Later, I observed, both in Canada and the US, the sacrifices that migrants make to help their children gain a foothold upon which they can build new lives with security and freedom. After my family immigrated to Canada, we spent half a year in each country until I reached the tenth grade, when I stayed with a homestay family in Vancouver and later moved to Princeton for my undergraduate studies in Comparative Literature. These experiences of constantly adapting and thriving in different cultures helped me to develop a multicultural mindset especially sensitive to the needs of new immigrants from China.
Working in France, Canada, China during undergraduate breaks, as a reporter and a teacher, broadened my horizons and experience. My position as a part-time teacher during my semester abroad in China, with New Oriental Technology, the leading Chinese study abroad and language training company, further honed my understanding of international education and migration of children and their families much like that of my own. When I found myself at a podium in Beijing giving a lecture to more than one hundred Chinese students, I realized that I was on my way. When I returned to Princeton for my junior year, I enrolled in the Teacher Preparation Program and founded my own test prep company in Vancouver. Based on my own experience of achieving near perfect SAT scores, I launched a technique-based SAT curriculum in Vancouver. The massive influx of immigrants from China to Canada under the Investor Immigrant Program, my market segmentation of Chinese immigrant students aiming for top US schools and the effective 20 day curriculum, allowed me to develop quickly and expand classes to over 40 new students during each of my Christmas and summer vacations. I invested the profit from my company in real estate in Vancouver.
In hindsight, the rapid increase in supply and demand for international education services have shaped my initial understanding of real estate, an essential need and reflection of residents and newcomers alike. I have long been engaged in community discussions and routinely spend several hours a day staying up on the news and the literature, especially those concerning China and its relationship to rest of the world. Over the next seven years, I have built a niche college consulting brand and transitioned to a managerial role for three counsellors. I have also continued to expand my real estate portfolio and obtained my real estate license, taking a variety of professional development courses for both Realtors and developers, from marketing to project management to construction courses.
After three acquisitions and earning a profit margin of 10%+ annual for each one, for consecutive years, I started investing along with my father in 2011, as my parents had moved to Vancouver. My father improved his English and obtained his professional home builder’s permit. Together, my father and I have developed, built and sold residential houses, multi-family suits in Vancouver and are currently developing a 30-unit condo project and 15 luxury single houses in Sechelt, British Columbia, with an expected revenue of over $40 Million. I had the privilege of learning and making decisions about purchasing the land, finding the subcontractors and doing the marketing. I have worked and learned from mentors, consultants as well as experimentally, the roadmap and skill set of subdivision, negotiation with the government, acquiring development and building permits and so forth. I have come to love the comprehensive science of real estate and the role of developers to enrich the community. Our efforts in real estate investment have allowed our family to reunite, being together in one city for the first time in almost two decades.
Growing up in Vancouver, I watched it become one of the least affordable cities in the world, with speculators buying up homes just to leave them empty; locals protesting and young people leaving, soaring property taxes and loss of community spirit. Local Chinese who grew up in the city often came into conflict with more recent Chinese immigrants, and discussions of race and immigration have become a sensitive topic for the famously multicultural city. I want to help solve conflicts and find solutions to challenges in these areas, especially with respect to multicultural communities such as Vancouver, from acquisition to design to construction. I am grateful for the first hand experience of growing up and working in in this particular field laboratory of migration and globalization, so that I better understand the root causes of needs and tensions that affect our increasingly globalized world.
It would be a special honor for me to study under Professor Fallertta, since I very much admire her work on the the interplay of architecture, development and planing. I would love to share in research on built environments resulting from migration, especially the Chinese diaspora, as I hope to one day realize my dream of building physical landmarks that embody considerations of both globalization and Chinese heritage and sustainable homes that allow for harmonious environments in a global age. A lifelong learner, I am currently pursuing an executive master’s program in Education Entrepreneurship, a joint program by the Wharton School and the Graduate School of Education at University of Pennsylvania. Courses in marketing, economics, finance (financial modeling), management and entrepreneurship have honed my business skill sets in both education and in real estate.The Price School’s perfect combination of course offerings on real estate capital markets, development, construction and planning will provide me with precisely the tools I need to leverage my past experiences in such a way as to make my maximum contribution to both public and private sectors, including planning techniques, finances and and economy on a macro level; and that of scale.
The University of XXXX is my first choice for further graduate study in real estate development. The expertise and experience of the XXXX School’s top-notch faculty in academia and practice, with exposure and opportunities in the vast California real estate environment and network of the most established professionals in development, government, law, design and finance will be invaluable stepping stones for the development of my career. I sincerely believe that pursuing the Master’s Degree in Real Estate Development at UXX will enable me to pursue my dream of building more sustainable environments based on two essential pillars of society, housing and education, and ultimately help more families live, laugh and learn together in communities of homes, businesses and schools that I hope to build.
Thank you for consideration my application.
