Accidentally ended up in REPE - need advice

This reminds me of the time I accidentally ended up in bed with Jessica Alba. I too did not fully understand what I had gotten myself into, but like REPE, she was both gracious and exciting. 

To answer your questions: 

• REPE is the exit opportunity, it does not lead to exit opportunities. Working for a Real Estate Private Equity company and/or a developer (if you prefer walking around in dirt and talking to overweight men without teeth over doing math) are the endgames in commerical real estate as an employee. The only higher calling is doing deals on your own. You should not be worried about exit opportunities. You made it. You should be worried about capital accumulation.
• Compensation improves from Analyst to Associate. It can be a 25% bump. It can be a 50% bump. It can be a 100% bump. It depends on the firm.
• Work/life balance also depends on the firm. Some companies are beyond sweaty and will work you 12 hours a day, give you pointless deadlines, and ruin your life with fake fire drills. Others only care about results, not facetime, so if you are a hitter you can essentially make your own schedule. It really just comes down to how much your boss hates his family.
• The skillset is transferrable enough but people who work in those industries will take some convincing. The better question is why would you want to work in those industries. Private credit is like NFTs - there was an 18 month period where everyone involved thought they were cool but time quickly passed them by. Infrastructure isn't anywhere close to real estate, even though you would think they're similar because they both deal with large structures. Public market asset management is lame compared to private market asset management, which you can do in REPE.
• Moving from a smaller REPE firm to larger REPE firm is certainly an easier sell, especially if there is some MBA/MSRE rebranding thrown in the mix.