Analyst Question
Analyst at a development firm here. Just wondering, do a lot of analyst positions in real estate PE, development, and investments require a lot of cold calling and comp gathering? I am doing some underwriting as well, but I am also calling and checking on sales at various comps quite a bit. Is this normal?
Not in my experience, but I would be curious to see what others have seen...
pretty unusual. how much time are you spending doing that? In my experience it's as simple as calling Cushman, JLL and CB and asking for that information and maybe filtering/editing it down a bit.
I would say about 60-65% of my time is doing market/comp research which includes finding comps online and calling to get rent, pricing, and absorption info.
Rents comps: yes, you want to call and get the information yourself to be up to date and to make sure you are getting effective rents (net of concessions), something brokers tend to "forget".
Sales Comps / New Supply pipeline information: use brokers, it's hard to get this data wrong.
Bump
Not in my experience. If you dont mind me asking, what kind of development are you doing?
Its residential development, for sale and apartments.
I call for rent comps as well, it just feels as if I am doing that more than I am doing actual underwriting. Like for all our current development projects, I have to call the markets every week to see change in prices/absorptions and rents.....I feel like this is more of the asset management side right?
OK gotcha. I think its normal, a few guys I know doing For Sale Residential did that in their first years.
It’s definitely a part of development, because you have to understand the market, trends, etc. for when you underwrite deals and know where your pricing is at vs the market.
It’s probably time consuming and not that “sexy”, however I think it will help you fully understand the market and know why certain decisions in terms of pricing and unit mix definition are being taken.
Only calling I do is for shopping rent comps.
Are you in development?
Acquisitions at multifam REPE shop.
This is normal. How long have you been working there, and how many total years of experience do you have?
Started about 4 months ago, and had previous internships in RE, but this is first position out of UG.
You're fine. Keep your head down and show that you're doing a thorough and accurate job with the market research you're doing. Also keep in mind that development is all about thousands of tiny, un-sexy details like this, no matter what level you're at.
On the development side, absolutely not for cold calling (or at least how I think of cold calling - aka sales calls) but absolutely for comp gathering.
Yeah I meant cold calling in the comp gathering sense. I have to constantly update current deals by calling comps every week or so and checking change in rents.
how do you do this? you call the leasing broker and pretend you are interesting in renting?
I just say I'm doing market research and ask whatever I need.
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