Acquisition Team Staffing & Responsibilities
Curious how everyone's acquisition teams are structured from a staffing perspective and how everyone's responsibilities are allocated. Our team seems to be top heavy with just one analyst/associate and four acquisition officers. As a result, the younger officers are expected to take on all responsibilities including underwriting, due diligence, memo preparation, admin work, etc. while simultaneously sourcing, negotiating, leading investment committee, and being the market lead for all asset classes within their respective markets.
For context, I'm at an institutional shop with $25B+ in AUM, so feel free to include your firm size, along with any other resources you have at your disposal (i.e. analysts/associates, internal/external due diligence teams, administrative staff, etc.).
Primarily just looking to understand if this structure and lack of resources is more common or if my firm is more of an outlier.
Based on the most helpful WSO content, acquisition team structures and responsibilities can vary significantly depending on the size of the firm, its focus, and available resources. Here's a breakdown of how teams are typically structured and responsibilities allocated:
1. Team Composition
2. Responsibilities Allocation
3. Resource Allocation
4. Your Firm's Structure
5. Is Your Firm an Outlier?
If you're feeling stretched thin, it might be worth discussing resource allocation with leadership or benchmarking against other firms in your network to highlight potential inefficiencies.
Sources: Life in Acquisitions (Analyst/Associate), Life in Acquisitions (Analyst/Associate), Q&A: REIT Acquisitions Associate, Acquisitions Analyst Advice - New Analysts, Q&A: Real Estate Acquisitions Analyst. Uni -> BO -> Mtg Financing -> Acquisitions
AUM $5B, we mainly focus multi family, condo and ground up. I am the only one analyst there with 1 project manager, 1 office manager, 1 construction partner, and the big boss who oversees the business. So, it’s pretty tough to work as an analyst there. I have to responsible for everything of underwriting. Since, I have been there for only 2 months, so maybe they have a few finance guys before I joined them.
Sr Assoc here, and my firm is $50B+ AUM. I’m starting to do some sourcing work but still expected to be staffed on other people’s deals. Deals just get staffed according to availability and prior history. The VPs and MDs tend to work with the same people over and over once they find someone they like.
In most institutional real estate shops—especially at the $25B+ AUM level—you’ll typically see a more balanced acquisitions structure than what you’re describing. It’s common to have a stronger analyst/associate layer so the officers can stay focused on sourcing, negotiations, and IC prep rather than juggling underwriting, DD, admin, and market-lead responsibilities all at once.
A typical setup at comparable firms usually looks something like:
When those junior and mid-level resources aren’t in place, the workload gets pushed downward and outward, and younger officers end up doing everything. That structure is more common in mid-market firms—not usually in large institutional platforms where deal velocity is high and specialization matters.
So yes, your setup sounds a bit like an outlier for a firm of that size. Most groups invest in a deeper talent bench to keep officers from burning out and to maintain consistency in underwriting and execution quality.
If your team ever explores rebalancing or adding analyst/associate support, firms often lean on recruitment partners to build out that junior pipeline. At Alliance Recruitment Agency, we work with real estate investment teams to structure and staff acquisitions groups more efficiently, but the general takeaway is: your experience isn’t the industry norm at the institutional level.
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Yeah that was tip-able not going to lie...
Ok this was good smut but can anyone else at a true institution validate? Otherwise, it’s OP’s word (actually inside an institutional shop) vs a recruiting firm and this is a really great example of how AI will sell you all a pile of hallucination MS in the future.
What is all this “officer” talk? I’ve been in acq for years (currently director) and have never heard of that title. I don’t like it!
DELETE
Great plug for your company. Love it.
pudding we now have yourself & op vs this AI slop countering that OP’s experience is not” an anomaly”. Idk why I’m feeling so passionately about this, but that’s not a good plug imo and should be viewed as spam. Especially on a board like this, no?
I’ll speak to my exp at RxR.
The acquisitions team was made up of 4 ppl, analyst, associate, two vp’s all overseen by the group head.
Deal sourcing wasn’t really a priority but that’s also bc the time I was there office was on a tear, we had a JV with BX — I’d say deals were certainly abound.
Responsibilities included building the Argus model, repositioning the underwing model (excel) to run the return profile at deal and partnership level, involvement in establishing the business plan, prepare the deck then one of us runs the IC meeting.
If the king said go, run the DD, at that point it’s about everyone picking up the slack to get the deal quickly as possible.
Deal closes, hand the model over to asset management, onto the next one.
Boom.
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