Careers that translate to property ownership

My current position is in capital markets/investment sales at a national brokerage firm. I enjoy brokerage, but my real goal is to become involved with investing and property ownership.

Can anybody speak to different career paths in CRE that translate well to property ownership?

Example.) I've heard appraisal and property management offer the ability to learn a great skillset to facilitate growing a healthy portfolio.

Asking specifically about:

  • Appraisal
  • Private Equity/Fund Acquisitions
  • Property Management
  • Brokerage/Capital Markets

Bonus - What activities/content do successful real estate investors (outside of a their career) surround themselves with to build a respectable portfolio?

Thanks in advance!

6 Comments
 
Controversial

The most successful real estate owners I know are people who never worked in real estate to begin with. However, the one thing they have in common is they all had high paying salaried jobs to begin with (think 500k+ doctors, non RE businessmen, etc). They built traditional companies from their professions, and then used the proceeds to buy real estate.

Now, as someone working in MF REPE, my goal is to follow the same path. Build up a lot of capital and go from there. I know it's the simple answer, but ultimately, anybody who's worth anything in real estate had to start off their RE careers with a shit load of money in the first place. Nobody is turning into a real estate multi millionaire by making 70k a year.

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Being in real estate means the periods you are making the most money will also be the most expensive to buy real estate for yourself. Your earnings are positively correlated to the market cycle. I remember when Facebook went IPO I think in 2012 and folks working there had a boatload of money to extract out of risky high tech and diversity into asset classes like real estate. That was a good time to buy.

So, I agree making money outside of real estate helps you buy during the dips.

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Acquisitions, development, asset management. If you want to manage your own portfolio, I would say AM.

If you are interested in this path, I would recommend getting experience working for a small or mid sized operator. The type of assets that you work with at small companies will be more similar to those you would encounter as an entrepreneur.

 

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