Nurturing connections between the university and the real estate alumni seems to play a pivotal role in improving the communication within the real estate sector and to continuously align the educational offer to the emerging industry needs. Alumni engagement and building alumni networks are the key elements of the American university system. In the UK some of the universities providing real estate programmes use alumni networks for extending the curriculum beyond the classroom and to build the brand. In the era of digitalisation, when the bonds in the society are weakened, alumni and wider professional networks play an increasingly important role in collaboration between universities and the industry to shape the real estate programmes for future generations of surveyors. The UWE real estate programme leaders questioned that the current alumni engagement practices may be suboptimal. Given the increasing pressures imposed on academics involved in delivery and management of real estate programmes, the programme leaders wondered: what are the current market practices?; how well do they work?; what are the communication channels?; what is the role of social media? and what could be the optimal models?. Hence, the aim of the study was to inform the future strategy for the real estate alumni engagement of the University of the West of England Bristol (UWE). To gain a clear view on the current market practice study included a comparative analysis of networking practices at selected higher education institutions. As this suggested potential gaps in the current practices at UWE, this analysis was followed up semi-structured interviews with UWE staff and real estate programmes alumni, and a survey of real estate programmes alumni to understand they views on the current offering and desired practices. This research confirmed that building engagement with the real estate alumni is important and that the networking can be mutually beneficial for both the alumni and the university, with the main benefits for the university being: improved employability amongst graduates and growing students' enrolment. For the alumni the major benefits included improving professional network, sourcing talent, and shaping the programmes to ensure long terms alignment with the changing business needs. The study also identified the lack of consistent communication strategy, limited resources, and insufficient funding as major barriers for creating efficient alumni networks. These informed creating a model of a sustainable alumni network, which builds on four pillars: the university as an institution, university's staff engaged with the real estate programmes, alumni and current students. The model suggests that development of efficient alumni engagement programmes must be based on clear funding, appropriate resourcing and facilitated communication between the staff, alumni and current students. As the research found deficiencies in the current UWE practices, it provided recommendations for the alumni network at UWE, highlighting the fact that each network is unique, and requires continuous reassessment of practices and initiatives. As the research was based on a small sample of UWE alumni, further research could be considered to understand situation across other universities.