Morgan Stanley RE

I am looking into Morgan Stanley Real Estate Asset Management. How is their division now? I know in the past before the bubble burst they were highly regarded. Would a position in their RE AM team give you REPE exposure?

Thanks!

 
Best Response

If your ultimate goal is REPE on the acquisitions side, I wouldn't recommend the role. MSREF is still a highly regarded shop (though less so than before), but AM is very siloed from acquisitions there. No real opportunity to move over to acquisitions side as everyone on the acquisitions side has a banking or REPE acquisitions background. Acquisitions side is very much a finance culture whereas the AM side is a real estate culture. If this for a junior role, I wouldn't recommend it even if you're interested in AM. It's more of a financial reporting role at that level, no real AM responsibilities until you really get more senior.

 

Not if you want to be on the acquisitions side. But it also depends what your alternatives are. If you have a shot at REIB or an acquisitions role at a smaller REPE shop. If you don't really have other options, then it's not a bad way to break into RE

 

You will have 0 shot at corporate PE. You may have a shot at REPE but you'll have to try move to something more acquisitions related first, probably at a smaller regional firm, still pretty tough.

Weird that you don't mind doing either REPE or corporate PE though. They are very very different. I'm guessing you don't actually know that you want to do RE. If that is your mindset I would advise you to do something more generalist on the corporate side. It will be really hard to break out of RE later if you find that you don't like it

 

Hmm, I see. Well I have previous RE experience and was on my way to going into RE Development before the crash happened. After the crash, I changed course and have been at a small hedge fund and valuation advisory. I'm really contemplating I-banking because of my end goal of PE. But, I was contacted regarding this position and was hoping to get exposure to RE PE but that doesn't seem to be the case..

 

It depends. I would interview and ask the interviewer specifics about the role without appearing like you are simply using it to leveraged it into an acquisitions role.

Asset management roles vary a lot firm to firm. All of them require some form of mundane reporting but some are more accounting and property management oriented than others. Some shops allow the asset management team to help with acquisitions (mostly in terms of due dilligence) and they take the lead on refinancings, restructurings and dispositions while others use the investments/acquisition guys for all capital events and the asset management team is more of a property management oversight and accounting function. Obviously the former will help you when you attempt to move over more than the latter will. I wouldn't be focused on the internal mobility as it usually takes more time and is not worth the wait; just make sure that you will get skills that will allow you to understand Argus and Excel modeling (structuring - capital stack and promotes) and highlight those skills on your resume.

 

I thought I made it clear that my comments were specific to the MSRE asset management group but want to reiterate - I'm giving you color on that actual group. Major restructuring is done by the acquisitions team, AM is very much property management (leasing, development oversight etc). The junior role is very much focused on financial reporting. Again, this is about 1 year stale so you should see if anything has changed

 

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