Breaking into RE Development from Traditional M&A

Hi Everyone -

Couldn't find a thread that was relevant so hoping I can get some help from the RE community here. To summarize, I am about 10 years post-grad and my career has gone as follow: CPA --> audit  --> Transaction Advisory Services (M&A diligence) at large global accounting firm  --> running M&A department for a PE-backed portco --> running M&A and global strategy for a bigger PE-backed portco. 

So, while I have a lot of experience in finance, accounting, strategy and M&A for operating companies, my RE experience is pretty limited to a few leases we did on companies we bought, few sale-leasebacks, and exposure I had on the credit side when doing banking advisory / audits.

To answer the obvious, "Why do you want to get into RE?". My family has quite a bit of land that is starting to be developed (think master planned community with 3k houses + few hundred acres of commercial/retail etc.). My family has done several SFR and a few quadplex developments, but we do not have experience on the commercial development side. In our eyes, that's where we will make our margin. I'd really like to contribute to the family business as I am virtually the only one with strong financial acumen (family of attorneys). From what I do know, like most things, RE is a relationship business and I need to start building relationships with brokers, tenants etc. Ideally, I'd like to find some partners that can bring development expertise and access to more capital, and we can put up land as equity, and contribute in other ways too.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I might be able to slide into the RE world and get some development experience? I am trying to avoid taking a FT job or even worse, a FT job that would otherwise be filled by a 1st year post-grad.

Thanks in advance for taking the time to read and respond!