Audit to FP&A to REPE (Let's make it happen)

Good evening everyone, I’m hoping this post gains traction as I’m a newcomer to finance and WSO. With that said here’s a little background on myself for context: I’m a 31-year-old CPA with 5 years of public accounting audit experience in New York City (2.5 years at Big 4, 2.5 years at midsize) specializing in public and private real estate clients. I worked in internal audit prior to my PA experience but they're not really relevant to this post. Aside from managing the audit cycle (planning, execution/financial reporting, conclusion) I worked extensively with real estate valuation procedures (i.e., auditing DCF models and purchase price allocations on new RE acquisitions, testing capital additions, recalculating depreciation expense, and researching recent sales of comparable assets) and analytical procedures/budget-to-actual variance analyses. I was scheduled to be promoted to audit manager at Big 4 this fall but I decided to transition to FP&A and accepted a finance manager position at a F500 company. The F500 company does not operate in the real estate industry.

My plan has always been to pivot from B4 audit to finance. I figured the finance manager position would expose me to operational accounting, variance/budget-to-actual analyses, and forecasting procedures that would be desirable to folks in REPE. Though the F500 I joined isn’t specialized in RE, I have 5 years of experience in the RE industry from my audit days. Ultimately, I want to get back into real estate but as an acquisition analyst/associate. I’ll talk your ear off about RE valuation and the RE industry since I worked in the industry for 5 years but what I lack is RE modeling experience. The way I see it, I can spend the next 1-3 years developing the modeling skills necessary to break into REPE as an acquisition associate. I’m not willing to pay $200k for an MBA out of pocket. I’m willing to take the CFA but I think I’m better off focusing on modeling and networking until someone takes notice that I belong in the industry. Will networking aggressively and self-studying modeling be enough? If not, what would you recommend? If so, which modeling courses do you recommend / should I focus on? What would be the most effective ways of networking and getting connected with REPE folks? Would these REPE folks still be interested in hiring a (potentially) 35 year-old as an analyst or willing to take a risk and offer me an associate position without banking or PE experience? Am I better off using my accounting and corporate finance experience to get myself on track to become CFO (somewhere)? Lots of questions and open to discuss. I would appreciate all advice, insight, criticism, and brutal honesty from the community. Thanks.