Best RE Analyst Programs?
Curious to hear if anyone has thoughts on what the better real estate analyst programs are in terms of training and producing the best talent
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Following. Curious as well.
If you are on a quality team at a brokerage firm like (CBRE) involved in institutional deals I don't see how anyone can disagree with the quality of the experience. Tons of deal flow and direct interaction with the biggest and best institutions. Instead of being pidgeon-holed into one firm's strategy and process you are interacting with many firms and seeing how they think. I am partial because I am at CBRE and understand the cons of being on the brokerage side, and probably not getting as granular as the principal side but for an analyst role I think its top tier experience.
Hey, just curious how you feel about Eastdil and their investment banking structure?
Surely They’re brokers. Not investment bankers. Tbf same shit…
Yeah unsure of what the investment banking structure / style means when applied to real estate deals, and don't know anything about Eastdill other than they have a solid reputation.
Any brokerage with an actual analyst group (CBRE, Eastdil, JLL(do they have one?)) is solid. There are a few one-off teams at places like Newmark, CW, Colliers who have good deal flow, so I would say being an analyst there is comparable. That being said, the structure of a national analyst group, rather than being under the thumb of a specific team, is probably a bit of a step up. Getting in at any of those is extremely political though.
Can speak for JLL. At least in the strongholds of what used to be HFF (Dallas, Houston, Chicago, NYC, etc) they’ll split up analysts by debt or investment advisory. Debt focuses on all asset classes while IA typically focuses on Office, Retail and Industrial. There’s also IA teams that focus on multi, hospitality, self storage, etc and the analysts in those teams solely focus on their asset class.
"That being said, the structure of a national analyst group"
Careful about this one. You may find yourself feeling more like a credit underwriter, than an origination analyst. You will probably have less client face time because you support a pool of brokers, so they won't bring you in on meetings. Compare this to being a dedicated analyst on a team, a lot of same reps with same team of course you come to the client meetings and you get to see more of the deal instead of just pushing out cash flows :)
Will caveat by saying if you are part of a specialized product team (collateralized portfolios etc) you end up getting a decent amount of face time with clients due to brokers’ lack of product expertise.
Prudential (PGIM)’s analyst program on the equity side is one of the best. If not, the best in the industry.
I’d argue the debt side is stronger. Less of a top-down approach when looking at deals and transaction volume is higher - from a reputable source. PGIM’s debt business is the biggest sleeper on the street.
I wouldn’t disagree that PGIM debt has a great analyst program. I just don’t know enough about the debt side to give my opinion.
Equity tends to be inherently top down (ie portfolio fund managers).
Def agree with the debt program. You will be working at a firm with longstanding relationships with some of the top firms to provide debt, and all those companies know the analyst are on a contract that won't be moving on with PGIM. Usually by year 2 a lot of the analyst get poached away by someone in the originators book of business and its never viewed as a negative.
Can someone help me understand why BX REPE has not been mentioned before CBRE, Eastdil, PGIM etc? This isn't even a prestige thing - their program is objectively just great.
Because BX REPE analysts are scouted and have signed their offers by the time they come out of the womb
Blackstone repe and really any megafund are great opportunities but they train you to look at platforms rather than individual properties. A lot of the times your work at Bx isn’t going to be in the weeds of a property unless it’s a trophy level asset. Instead you’ll be looking at CRE from a very high level. With how big these funds are that’s the only practical way to make it work. The skill set you get from those roles are great but not necessarily the best CRE skillset.
BX REPE rarely invests in property level deals - obviously most people would take BX over any other job in RE but their main strategy is buying out large portfolios or RE companies such as REITs or Simply Self Storage.
this question is impossible to answer but top brokerage team is typically a safe bet from both a technical training and reps perspective (obviously a MF REPE out of ug is awesome but setting that aside).
But there’s also a ton of small shops that are hands on and lethal. You could learn a ton just by nature of no associates/junior VPs in between you and a potentially very intelligent decision maker.
It’s truly case by case.
How hard is it to get into PGIM Debt?
They have a go-to list of schools for OCR. On the other hand, every originator is on the PGIM website with their contact information, so it is very easy to go direct and shoot your shot.
Would be curious to hear if anyone has thoughts on development analyst programs like those at Hines/Tishman/other institutional developers
Do they have structured analyst programs? I’m at institutional dev and my shop doesn’t have one.
Anyone know much about Apollo's equity or credit platforms? Think they both hire at analyst level
A long time ago, we were about to do a deal with Apollo and as an analyst I started doing my due diligence on them. There were a bunch of negative articles about them, mainly around their for profit education investments. Anyways, I told our deal lead about them and how they might be shady. One of my favorite quotes in my career was my boss responding to me “well they’ve never met anyone like me [regarding being shady]”
I was happy to hear that and carried on.
Any actual investing role that you can do as an analyst should be your first choice. Ones that come to mind are below.
After that, your non-investing roles are the next best
This is also debatable depending on your goal. If you only want to work at blackstone, IB would probably be better than working at ACORE or something
Would be wary of JBG, from what I hear not in the best spot financially and lots of Jr people looking to leave
JBG is in REIT jail and you cannot work on their investment team out of UG. AM only.
Still good training and a solid name but not the powerhouse they were pre-merger/IPO.
Assuming for banking: bulges like MS and BofA have a real estate ib group you can apply to or get matched with after applying to the general SA pool. If they hire, they post directly for RE groups for FT. Evercore has a group called RECA (real estate capital advisory). JPM also has a pretty big RE AM team that takes SA & FT as well as a commercial real estate analyst program where you rotate around different functions. MS has MSREI which is their buyside group that hires SA/FT (depending on need).
For buyside: as mentioned here, PGIM has good equity and debt teams that hire. Same with BX for various RE roles like acquisitions, debt strats, cap markets, AM, etc. Starwood also has a structured analyst program but pretty sure they fill it from junior SAs. KKR has a RE credit group, CBRE has bunch of RE teams that hire, Ares for secondaries based in Boston/NY and other RE related groups, TPG RE partners has established analyst program that starts interviews around your junior summer, BlackRock also has real assets group that does acquisitions but for this you would have to be matched for interviews by HR after applying to the general Alts group.
Agree with the sentiment above -- not sure why people aren't saying these programs are good, instead saying CBRE etc is better? Just not true. If you get an Analyst offer at a place like Blackstone, Brookfield, Starwood, KKR, TPG, etc. you take it any day of the week over all the ones mentioned above.
MSREI
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