For as long as I can remember, I’ve been passionate about real estate my entire life. I thoroughly enjoy reading and understanding all aspects —residential, local CRE, national, and most asset classes. I worked at a large REIT for about 3–4 years, and now I’ve been with a development company/family office for around 9 months. I have been loving this side of the business as I get to be more involved in real estate as a whole, go on site, give my advice, and really be "in the weeds". My passion for real estate is clear, and I consider myself quite knowledgeable in the field. However, I absolutely despise Excel and frankly have little interest in learning much about modeling. Somehow, someway, I’ve managed to get by not knowing how to model, because my previous company was relatively simple, and I didn’t have to build models from scratch. But now, with more responsibility at a smaller company, I need to either learn Excel quickly or accept that it’s just not for me.
I’m almost 27 and know this is a lifelong career, but I often question if I’m in the right part of the industry. People frequently tell me I’d be an amazing broker, given my passion for real estate and my extensive market knowledge.
So, my question is: Should I jump ship and pursue what I’m good at, or should I tough it out and learn Excel? My friends in brokerage rarely touch Excel and often make significantly more than I do in terms of compensation.
I know the grass isn't always greener, but maybe sometimes it just is.
You're gonna have to do modeling, but honestly RE modeling is not complicated at all and if you hate it, it's just going to have to be one of those things where you suck it up knowing that everyone hates parts of their jobs.
Sounds like you should either be a broker, or go work for a growing but smaller local sponsor or developer. In those cases, you'll still have to model and put together memos, but you'll spend much more time in the field and your office experience will be more fun (think 10 - 15 person team that interreacts together vs. a large stale corporate office setting). If you can work your way up in these type of companies, you'll eventually get to a point where you're spending more than half your time just on calls or in the field and also have analysts to take the grunt of the modeling while you just give guidance and make sure it's right. Downside here is that you'll never get a big salary and culture and be hit or miss (you're taking a risk on a growing company after all), but you can more than make up for it on upside with promote
The brokerage side is not the answer. It's feast or famine even at the top places after a few years and junior guys get fed up eventually due to lack of pay and leave. Look for a small owner developer where you can hopefully find a shop that you have upside - but day to day is working on everything from excel to construction and asset management. I was at a similar shop where we got to work across the board but culture was toxic and they underpaid so be careful where you go.
Just because you may be a good broker is not a great reason, I would take that to say you have a good personality and are friendly. Use that to land at a great shop thats entrepreneurial and you can grow at/learn see upside. I worked at a family office and besides the control the other issue was lack of activity.
Either go into leasing brokerage or learn the construction side of the business. You need to provide value to have a sustainable career and if it’s not gonna be through financial analysis then learn how to get spaces leased up or how to build things.
Go be a real estate representative at a national retailer or go the brokerage route.
I know real estate reps at Chipotle/quiktrip/lululemon/mcdonalds/5 below/racetrac/7-eleven/car washes and they mostly don't do anything in excel, just straight doing deals and on the road all the time.
What do you mean by real estate reps? Like people that work on the corporate real estate strategy in-house at these companies? Currently working as a financial analyst at a brokerage and I'm incredibly over staring at excel all day so I'm looking into other areas of CRE. The corporate route was one thing I've been considering but haven't heard too much about it on here
Ive been trying to break into those roles for more than 3 years now. Very few opportunities and they usually require several years (7+) of experience. I am yet to see junior roles in this area of the industry.
Just learn to model - it's not that complicated
You don't want to be the guy who can't review analyst work and send a model out to a potential capital partner and look stupid
As the others have said, RE modeling is not that complicated. Go on Break Into CRE or A.CRE and download some relevant templates and use those as a base. You could also pay for the Break Into CRE modeling course if you want to learn more about how everything works. But yeah, excel sucks and I hate using it. I use it everyday as a financial analyst at a brokerage. Not fun in the slightest so I get where you're coming from.
You need to know enough excel 'to be dangerous' and call out issues, because there will come a time when you need to understand what's in excel. (As others have said), if you're always depending on junior person, you're limiting yourself and there's going to be circumstances when you don't want another person in the loop on something.
So bear down and do a course, or put in the extra time at work, or shadow the junior analyst guy. And you will be in better position to pivot (to your exact skillset) down the line. Doing it now at a relatively junior age will ultimately be very limiting in a career trajectory.
I know of plenty of 9 figure and 10 figure net worth real estate guys who have elementary Excel knowledge at best. Yes, you need it as an analyst/associate at a big shop. But my rule of thumb is it if doesn’t work on the back of a napkin, it’s not going to work in the most intricate excel model. Plenty of guys have gotten rich with the approach of “if I can develop at $X PSF and sell at $Y PSF, then it makes sense.”
I am naturally good at Excel/modeling and probably learned more than I need to in my MSRE program. But 97% of my time is spent sourcing deals, managing lease ups, and dealing with all sorts of attorneys, architects, engineers, lobbyists, etc. From an operator’s perspective, being able to source/execute on a deal is way more important than building a fancy model.
I think you are going to be disappointed if you jump into brokerage only to realize you probably are going to need to do modeling there as well. Unfortunately, it's really unavoidable but for very specific segments of leasing brokerage (and even then, though, there is some of it). I don't think you need to be good at Excel necessarily, but you HAVE to understand the financial side of the business. As you move farther up the food chain, your day to day becomes less and less about Excel, but more and more about the legal and financial part of deals.
At the end of the day, real estate is a financial asset. You have to be competent at the financial side of the business, or you are going to struggle as your career progresses. The single most frustrating people I deal with are brokers/lenders/investors/partners/architects/city planners/etc. who can't understand a pro forma.
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