Credit Risk to CRE

Hi all, Need some help into breaking into commercial real estate (not brokerage), Acquisitions in Private Equity in Los Angeles is the goal or maybe developing Little about me: Non-target In SoCal Ok GPA Experience :Residential loan originating, CRE internship at very small shop, incoming credit risk summer analyst at BB I was finally able to land an internship with a BB and I only did it because I needed a big name on my resume, however after previous experience in CRE I realized that's what i wanted to do. I was under the acquisitions team and saw the work done and "found my calling". unfortunately, they had me doing bitch work and never really got experience in underwriting properties or any of the real work I was only able to pick up some lingo. I consider myself to be intermediate in DCF and three statement modeling I also took a class in Argus but definitely not close to intermediate and currently working on learning waterfall models, amortization tables, and trying to self teach real estate underwriting on my own. I know exit opportunities from credit risk are probably much sexier such as LevFin but I prefer CRE Is it possible to hop over to commercial real estate from credit risk? Have you seen it done before? pros ? cons? How can I set myself apart? What type unpaid internship would be best for acquisitions? Developing? What are some things to watch out for in LA with cre? Is capital markets the best? what transferable skills do analyst get? exit opportunities? Not really concerned with salary atm Any help would be greatly appreciated

6 Comments
 

It depends on the lender/type of lender. I've worked for a few that were ok with Pro-Forma as the assets weren't stabilized and we were just ballparking it with a set of conservative UW. Some (like GSE's) are all based off historicals and it's hard to just get by with pro-forma.

Then you have hair like ground leases, tax abatements, roll schedule, etc that messes it up.

 

I jumped from credit risk to CRE at a MM bank. I started in Credit Risk out of college interfacing with the OCC and was able to move to Commercial Real Estate lending. It took some internal networking but I was able to pull it off in just over a year. Networking is key. A contact of mine was in the CRE group and gave me a heads up when a position opened up.

 
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