Curious if anyone here has done this successfully or has hired someone on this type of basis.
Background is institutional CRE across acquisitions, asset management and lending, most recently in a senior investments role on the principal side. I've since moved into doing deals independently and have been building my own investment platform. I'm continuing to pursue acquisitions, but obviously there is downtime between deals and I'm looking at whether it makes sense to use some of that bandwidth doing fractional / outsourced work for other firms.
Initially I was thinking simply underwriting, modeling, IC memos, deal screening, etc. But the more I've thought about it, I don't know that competing for one-off modeling assignments is really the best use of my background. Seems like the bigger opportunity may be broader fractional acquisitions / AM support for smaller sponsors, family offices, lenders, etc. that need another experienced person but don't necessarily need another full-time hire.
Could be monthly financial reviews, budget vs. actuals, tracking performance against underwriting, PM oversight, lender/investor reporting, covenant compliance, refi / hold-sell analysis, lease audits, CAM recs, special projects, etc.
The part I keep coming back to is trust/confidentiality. If I'm a principal handing someone my models, rent rolls, financials, investor information and live deal pipeline, I probably care as much about knowing who I'm dealing with and trusting them as I do about whether they're technically capable.
For anyone who has done this:
- Where have you actually found clients?
- Are most engagements one-off underwriting/modeling jobs or have you been able to turn them into recurring monthly work?
- How are you pricing it - hourly, per project, monthly retainer?
- For anyone on the hiring side, what would make you comfortable outsourcing this vs. just hiring another analyst/associate?
Not looking to turn this into some huge consulting business or stop investing. More so looking at whether this can be a good complementary business while continuing to build my own portfolio.
Interested to hear from anyone who's actually done it.
Based on the most helpful WSO content, your idea of offering fractional underwriting and asset management services aligns with trends in the CRE space, especially for smaller sponsors, family offices, and firms that may not need full-time hires but require experienced support. Here are some insights and considerations:
1. Finding Clients
2. Engagement Types
3. Pricing Models
4. Building Trust and Addressing Confidentiality
5. Hiring Side Perspective
6. Balancing with Your Investment Platform
This approach can indeed be a complementary business while you continue building your portfolio. By positioning yourself as a trusted, experienced partner, you can carve out a niche in the fractional underwriting and asset management space.
Sources: AM vs HF: The Business of Our Business, Out of Brokerage --> Into Ownership Side (Acq/AM/Dev, etc), Working with MBB as a client, Fintech is going to kill Private Wealth Management jobs?, AM vs HF: The Business of Our Business
What you’re describing is literally the entire job of an investment firm. If they’re outsourcing all of this, what is even their job? Brokering to you?
Yeah but there are plenty of people who invest in real estate that are not professional investment firms. I work at a family office and before I started here they didn't have anyone on staff that was a "real estate" person. No one knew how to put together a proforma or build any sort of custom excel analysis, they just bought real estate and managed it. For developments or JVs they just relied on the models of their partners. They would have been the perfect match for something like this.
You ask what even is their job? It's to allocate capital, not do grunt work.
Sounds like all that shit could be done in India.
Usually have an overnight overseas team in India to do most of the data entry/budgets/covenant compliance/monthly financial tracking then we look over their work in the morning.
There's usually a bit of mistakes so we have to go in and manually correct them. But still saves a lot of time especially with a portfolio of 30-40 assets per AM.
For multifamily, most property management companies would do some of that stuff as part of their normal service and then add another 1% AMF for the other parts. At least the ones I worked at did.
I too once had this ambition as someone who went off on their own and would hope this would keep the lights on. Doesn't exist lol, or very hard to find consistent work.
At asperiores porro saepe quos illum animi. Aliquid earum illo illum harum. Dolore quia quae deserunt consequuntur modi. Officiis est ut quae odio quia ut sed.
Ipsa impedit ab voluptatem. Molestias corrupti dolore temporibus autem. Qui possimus dolores vero et voluptatem voluptatem nihil non. Iste est nobis eum qui at sit sunt.
Eveniet adipisci et facilis qui commodi. Quos temporibus ut molestias suscipit ducimus voluptatibus cum. Ipsum ut commodi aperiam iure dolores hic alias.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...