ChatGPT’s Adverse Impact on Real Estate Finance: Assessing Graduate Student Attitudes on the Use of GenAI and Its Detrimental Effects on Student Performance

Real estate finance has been slow to adopt new technologies, but the influence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) on industry practice and education now appears inevitable. Graduates of real estate development programs without exposure to cutting-edge tools may therefore be unprepared for the workplace. We examined the role of GenAI in teaching master’s students a challenging, essential learning objective: constructing a joint venture waterfall. We investigated the utility and shortcomings of the GenAI tool ChatGPT as a learning aid for a relevant assignment and explored students’ reflections on classroom learning prior to entering the industry. We found that while assignment scores were similar across groups, students who used ChatGPT performed worse on follow-up assessments than those who received traditional instruction, despite reporting similar confidence levels. These results suggested that the tool hindered conceptual learning and distorted student perceptions of mastery. Both groups found GenAI useful but raised concerns about accuracy, overreliance, and academic integrity, emphasizing the importance of educational guardrails. Our results indicate that GenAI supports task completion but may be detrimental to learning. Furthermore, our study exposed students to questions about ethical and accurate use of GenAI that may help them become more effective learners, job candidates, and professionals.