Which route to a real estate opportunity fund?

Hey guys, I'd like to extend the discussion a bit. In a previous thread I was asking about the question of starting in a small fund vs a big one and thanks to your input I think I've got a quite good idea about the advantages of working for a small/young pe firm and currently am leaning heavily towards this opportunity.

In advance: What I wanna do eventually is to make own investments, creating business plans concerning development, redevelopment, renovation, conversion, etc..wheather that be in a own pe firm or in a high position of an established fund. That's why I think starting in the young firm would be just amazing. (The thread: //www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/small-fund-vs-big-… )

However just to be sure to make the right decision, I'd like to discuss further options, in particular:

1) starting in real estate investment management (mutual funds) of MSRE, RREEF Alternative Investments or UBS Asset Management.

2) starting in the Asset Management of Lone Star Funds, i.e. Hudson Advisors.

Concerning 1):

Advantages: -Great names -Great private equity units

Disadvantages: -Core products --> no insight in value creation, which is what I eventually wanna do. -I suspect a pretty different skillset would be developped compared to working with a opportunity fund.

Concerning 2):

Advantages: -Belongs to one of the really big players in Real Estate -Here in Germany they also seem to be involved a lot in the acquisition process, rather than pure asset management.

Disadvantages: -Position would be in a sales team, although I was told that this involves also to develop strategies/business plans for objects which are not yet ready to be actually sold. I'm just not sure how big that part is, since that is what I'm really interested in, value creation/enhancement in real estate.

Can you think of any further advantages/disadvantages of those options concerning my end goal of making own value added/opportunity investments? Thank you very much in advance!

3 Comments
 

your horizon is probably far enough out that you should just go into development. learn the ropes over the next 3-5 years, weathering the storm and save. move to the next boom place, start your own group with a partner or two, put down 10-20% equity and hope it doubles in price in 2-3 years. get rich.

seriously though, in my small group of friends i know 3 guys with middle income backgrounds worth 5-7mil all under 28 through this shit.

 

In this environment, even top shops like MSRE might not be a good place to be, especially considering how dead the space is right now. If you can get a gig in development (think Tishman Speyer) you'll get all the value creation experience you want. Starting your own group is risky, but with the right experience and skills you could be baking serious cake pretty quickly. Plus, I doubt we'll have another crash in real estate prices in a long time once this clears over.

 

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