Teo Nicolais is a real estate entrepreneur who loves to teach.
Nicolais lived and breathed real estate as the Director of Finance and Acquisitions for a $500 million real estate investment company in Illinois active in the development and management of apartments, condominiums, single-family homes, office, and retail properties.
Nicolais personally identified and negotiated the purchase of new investments and arranged project financing using equity, taxable and tax-exempt bonds, institutional debt, and conventional bank loans. Nicolais also managed the due diligence process for new acquisitions and worked directly with the firms’ owners on capital allocation strategies.
Nicolais currently lives in Denver where he runs his own real estate investment company, Nicolais, LLC. With the help of his employees, Nicolais invests in multifamily rental properties in the Denver metro area and is active in the city’s “fix-and-flip” market. Nicolais served as Vice President of the Apartment Association of Metro Denver (AAMD), Chair of the AAMD’s Independent Rental Owner’s Council, a member of the Urban Land Institute, and served as a Director of the US Fund for UNICEF.
Throughout his professional life, Nicolais has always made time to teach. Nicolais recently taught his 63rd course at the Harvard Extension School including 14 of his own real estate courses with a cumulative enrollment of over 9,000 students since Nicolais starting teaching.
In response to the student demand for his Real Estate Courses, Harvard Extension School recently established a Real Estate Certificate Program. Of the four courses required for the certificate, three are taught by Nicolais. To date, over 1,400 Harvard students have taken his Real Estate courses.
His students recently honored him with an overall rating of 4.94 out of 5.00 in their course evaluations and the Harvard Extension School awarded him with the 2016 Joanna Fussa Distinguished Teaching Award. Nicolais has previously received the “Harvard Extension Student Association’s Student Choice Award” for 2012 and 2013. He was also the recipient of the Harvard Extension School’s First Annual Dean Michael Shinagel Award.
He earned his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College with a concentration in economics. As part of his undergraduate academic work, he studied advanced real estate finance at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
