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CBRE interview questions

91 questions researched across 5 CBRE seats in Sales & Brokerage, Property Management, Financial Consulting Group. Below are 12 of them.

Seats we researched

  • Sales & Brokerage InternSales & Brokerage · intern · 20 min
  • Property Management InternProperty Management · intern · 20 min
  • Finance InternFinancial Consulting Group · intern · 20 min
  • GWS InternGlobal Workplace Solutions · intern · 20 min
  • Capital Markets InternCapital Markets · intern · 20 min

12 CBRE interview questions

  1. What are your long-term plans, and how does this role fit into them?

  2. Explain NPV and IRR.

  3. What valuation techniques are used in real estate?

  4. Describe a time you had to manage conflicting priorities under pressure. What did you do?

  5. Tell us about your underwriting experience and your financial modeling skills.

  6. What ARGUS experience do you have for cash-flow modeling?

  7. Why did you become interested in commercial real estate?

  8. What do you know about CBRE?

  9. What are cap rates?

  10. A tenant is comparing one space at 45 dollars a foot full service and another at 32 dollars triple-net, with operating expenses estimated at 18. How would you advise them?

  11. Ten-year lease at 40 dollars a foot, six months free and a 50-dollar tenant improvement allowance. Roughly what's the effective rent to the landlord, ignoring escalations and discounting?

  12. What factors would you look at when a client is deciding whether to renew or relocate?

What a strong answer does

The questions above fall into 3 kinds. What a strong answer does differs by kind, not by question.

Technical6 of 12 above
State the intuition first; walk through the mechanics; make assumptions explicit; test a risk or edge case; connect the answer to the role.
Behavioral5 of 12 above
Lead with the claim and context; isolate your personal action and decision; explain the trade-off; quantify the result; finish with what you learned and changed.
Case1 of 12 above
Clarify the objective; build a mutually exclusive structure; prioritize the highest-value branch; analyze with evidence; synthesize a recommendation, risks, and next step.

79 more CBRE questions

The rest of the bank — 91 in total — is asked by the interviewer during practice, so you meet them the way you would on the day rather than reading them first.

Practise CBRE questions

How these questions were researched

Every question carries a provenance grade. Some were reported by candidates who sat the round, some come from the firm’s own published guidance or a source that trains for it, and the rest are written to match how this firm asks. Each seat is studied on its own — the round it actually runs, the order it runs it in, and what it is listening for. A CBRE round is not a generic behavioural screen, and practising one as the other is how people walk in unprepared.

Falas is not affiliated with or endorsed by any employer named. Simulations are independent practice based on publicly described recruiting formats.