Too old to start in REITs or REPE?
Hi folks.
I'm looking to break in to either REITs or REPE (as both are attractive), but I wanted to ask a few questions first:
? MBA or MSRE?
? Should I bother with a fallback school like U Florida since its not a top 20, assuming I don't get a top 20 admittance?
? Am I too old at 33 to try for either the analyst or trader routes?
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BA in Political Science in 05 from a top tier, non Ivy school. 3.0 GPA
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Master of City and Regional Planning in 12'.
3.5 GPA from a second tier school -
Six years working as an economic developer and I am considered highly successful as I've worked with a variety of companies within multiple industries. Mainly focusing on financial incentives and real estate infrastructure issues.
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Four years of business development experience in the private sector prior to that.
MANY thanks in advance here...
You can leverage your experience regardless of grad school route.
I work with someone (I'm at a life co) that has almost the exactly same story - decent state school, masters in urban planning and then went to a top 10 MBA program around 34. We hired him as an associate in acquisitions upon graduation. He works in portfolio management now on one of our largest funds.
The industry hires analysts/associates that are in their 20s because they use them and abuse them and most 30 year olds are past putting up with the bullshit (given, this is NOTHING like in IB, but as they say, shit rolls down hill). Whoever interviews you is going to be asking themselves, "is this guy really willing to x for y pay?" You have to make your hiring managers believe the answer is "Yes."
Thank you for the insight. It's funny to see how pretty much all industries burn and churn those youngsters (we've all been there at some point).
I'm shooting for UNC's and Cornell's programs. Would you consider it worth my time going to U of Florida's Professional MBA ( I live in Miami)? Same question for the MSRE program at Florida International.....thier program is very technical (heavy ARGUS, Excel).
I'm a little worried about getting an MBA U Florida and then not being able to break into REITs or RE equity trading, etc.
Thanks, again MrCheese!
It is so bad at some places that they have had to implement rules about taking weekend days off. BAMLs policy is that interns and analysts must take 4 weekend days off a month or something like that. I'll move heaven and earth if there is a big deadline approaching, but not every damn thing can be a big deadline.
UNC and Cornell are both great programs. Take a look at the profiles of the people that run the student real estate funds at UNC, most of them are mid- late 20s, but I think there is a young 30 something or two in the group.
Have you tried networking your way into a REIT or REPE firm as is? You would need to write your resume to be extremely targeted, but as you already have a masters degree and it is in sort of a related field, it wouldn't be totally far fetched.
To me, if you are going to do the MBA, you need to get one from a good school so you have the whole repositioning yourself story going for you. It doesn't make sense to get an MBA from a local university without the cache & network attached. You would only do that if you were already at the REPE or REIT and were just checking the box to get the promotion you wanted (like what I might have to do soon).
You really just need to spend some time networking - talking to anyone and everyone you can in the industry. RE is a lot about who you know vs. what you know. Knowing ARGUS is great, but most people coming out of MBA/MSRE programs don't have more than a 3 day training session worth of knowledge in it anyways. Excel is a little different, but it isn't like you can't learn those skills by taking some online courses without the 100k tuition bill.
Traders definitely have a different path than investment people. I can't really say much more about it than that as I always wanted to be on the asset side so I never really looked into it.
You probably need to do a little bit more thinking about what you want before you think about how to get there. Working as a trader vs. at a REPE vs. at a private investment firm are three very different scenarios/jobs. You would probably tailor your approach to getting a job in each one slightly differently.
Like if you wanted to be a trader, your best best would be for a M3 MBA and then for placement in an S&T group at a BB.
If you wanted REPE or a private investment firm, depending on who you are targeting, you might be able to get the job as you are now (smaller firm), or you might need a M20 (medium sized firm/institutional), or you might need a M3 (Blackstone).
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