Advice for RE Intern Moving Forward

Hi All,

I just wanted some potential career advice moving forward as a young adult looking to further my career in commercial real estate. I'm a current penultimate student at a GO8 uni, studying finance and law, set to finish up by the end of 2025. I also work as an intern at a top 20 Australian REIT, working in their unlisted funds division directly supporting the fund manager. I'm at that stage where I am thinking about what I want to do moving forward, and I've got my eye definitely set on commercial real estate, and have gotten rather interested in private equity real estate. I don't have huge aspirations to work at a MF (Brookfield, BX, Starwood, etc) and would be extremely happy with a mid-market or boutique PE shop that specialises in REPE and maybe even credit. My main focuses would be a good balance between salary and quality of life (happy to work 60-70 ish hours per week, with minimal weekend work), and I understand that this is definitely possible in Australia as the hours aren't as killer as the tier-1 cities (NYC, London, etc). I realise that usually getting into REPE, you have to do a 2-3 year stint in IB, and I have been applying for all of the vacationer programs, but the market is tough right now, and I have not received an offer for a summer program. Whilst this is somewhat demoralising, I'm positive moving forward as there are still the graduate programs which start taking applications from early next year. That being said, the REIT I am currently at is very accomodating, and people are rarely in the office past 6pm, with very minimal if at all weekend work, and I could probably expect a starting salary of circa. $70k AUD + bonus if they agree to take me on full time (which I am confident that they would). The firm would also let me do a rotation, such that I can see which team I like best, between funds management, asset management, capital transactions, and investor relations. I have seen on some other forums (mostly in NYC), of people moving from a REIT to a PE shop, but this also mostly happens in acquisitions. Would this mean that I have to get far more involved with the cap trans side of my firm, or is it possible to move into PERE as an asset manager or fund analyst/manager? Personally I don't see myself as a huge excel wizard as I haven't had the training yet, and a lot of my skills lie in communication and my personability. I'm sure that I could get trained up, and I'm an efficient learner, but just haven't had the chances yet, although I will do a rotation around AM and transactions later this year to get a feel for it.  With the final goal of getting into REPE, what advice would any of you have for me. I see two main options currently:

Stay at my current REIT and see how it folds out, either staying with the company, or looking to move to a PERE firm if the opportunity presents itself.

Apply for all of the graduate programs and take one in IB, looking to move into PERE after a couple of years.

Any help is greatly appreciated, sorry it's a bit of a long message, but just trying to flesh out my options. Thanks in advance.