I am getting to the point in my life where I am wanting to ditch the States for a few years and move to Europe or Asia, however I dont want to take a step back in my current career in real estate. Has anyone had any success moving to Europe or Asia and being able to find a job in Real Estate Development? I have a feeling being able to get into a real estate firm that does development as an expat from teh States and where English is the main language spoken in the office is going to be a long shot? Any suggestions on where to look?
Thanks
I'm an American expat working for a listed developer in a major Asian market and can say there are limited ways to do this (in real estate specifically, as local market knowledge and contacts are so vital).
-move to your target city and aggressively network, starting with alumni or anyone in RE you have anything in common with (even as simple as both being Americans), using LinkedIn to help find people. Get coffee with them and share your mission; if they like you, they will try to help or intro you to the next person. Use industry gatherings like ULI, RICS, etc to make contacts as well. Depending on your experience level you can contact local recruiters as well. This approach works eventually but you might not be able to be too picky on your first role. Just get your foot into the market and then you can move around.
A few other tips:
-recruiters, contacts in your target market, and people generally will not give you the time of day if you are not on the ground in your target city. It is virtually impossible to move over with a role in place unless you are a very senior hire brought on for a specific reason OR internally transferred by a big global player. Conversely, people will know you are serious if you turn up at the coffee shop in their building's lobby and show them you're setting up shop in their city. You might be able to get something out of lining up tons of meetings for a 1-2 week visit and going from there - but generally speaking, people want to see you are actually moved into the new city.
-it's easier to get on with one of the major brokers/consultants (CBRE, JLL etc) as your first role. From there you can impress investor/developer clients and/or make tons of industry contacts, and lobby them to hire you.
-almost goes without saying it's easier to get in during hot markets. For example SG is dead right now but Tokyo or Shanghai might be feasible.
There are people that made the jump in various places--- but RE is a tough industry for non-locals. Most people jump either at the junior level (associate, sr. analyst) or at a very senior level (partner, office head, etc). In the middle, like as a VP, it's very hard to accomplish given the need for relationships and specialized experience. It also matters a lot the level to which that specific market functions in english and the amount of international capital present in the market (sometimes there are kind of hybrid acquisitions /IR roles if the firm needs people comfortable in english, etc.). If you're trying to go to mainland China, you can basically forget that unless you speak Chinese. Same thing with Japan. In Europe, you generally also must have language skills but its not quite as unforgiving. Singapore or Hong Kong? Maybe. Frontier markets? Definitely possible, but also pretty crazy and tough to transition home afterwords.
Also, I generally agree with 90% of what @longvolatility said above. JLL and the like DO hire foreigners and after a few years cutting your teeth at this places a move to a buyside role is possible if you demonstrate your value to a client. Joining global players at home in the states and crushing it then transferring also works, but do some research on the firm and whether they do that before you join.
You can forget HK as well if you don't speak Mandarin or Cantonese. They have enough people speaking one (or both) of those languages to take the risk with someone who doesn't.
Just don't come across as a brash American. All I can really add!
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