I'm not looking for anything soon, I still have a long career left in me in development, but I can already see I do not want to be working the same effort and dealing with the same BS in 20 years. I'm a PM at a multifamily developer, my projects are between 100-200 units, and I really enjoy what I do, but I know development is a young man's game and I'm not trying to hustle and start my own shop or whatever later down the road.
Any thoughts on cushy roles down the line that utilize a developers skills set?
I'll challenge the statement about it being a young mans game. Does it take a lot of energy? Yeah sure. But with experience / age you also get exponentially better at it too. So I'd say the 'effort' is less as you even gain rank/title etc. Your value is your experience. Whenever people talk about Development exit ops, I think of a big promote check. That's the exit op. Good luck!
Haha fair enough, I'd love to say I could work my way to a nice promote check, I just fear I don't quite have the financial mind to really make it to the upper management levels that start handing those out. I'm really good at my job and project management, but when I see the C Suite discussing opportunities I realize I don't have anything close to the way of thinking they have on these things. Maybe it just takes time, I'll revisit this in 5 years haha.
The financial side of development really isnt that complex. Don't let acronyms and finance terms you havent encountered yet scare you off.
i would say something in the realm of debt or equity, esp as it relates to development.
i know of a guy who was a partner at a big prestigious 'sweatshop' type of company who got a BIG carry check and, although it was enough to retire, took a desk at one of the large brokerage firms as a debt broker. but there are other ways of doing this... you could go to some PE-type fund, ideally a smaller one if you're not interesting in continuing to put in 70-hr weeks...
So, perhaps your firm only has senior folks (c-suite, principal types) who are in their 30s... but, it seems like an "obvious" answer to this question is be more a senior leader and have others do the grunt work and long hours?? I mean, that appears the case at my firm and many others I know.
Perhaps your "path" is to leverage to a larger, more corporate style firm with more resources, personnel, etc. That may trade "promote/upside" for WLB, steadier pay, etc.. but I think would accomplish what you are suggesting.
I've thought about the first option, it is definitely is the "obvious" option as you pointed out, and I could see myself getting to SVP/Senior PM and topping out there, but I think you still have the same levels of stress being responsible for the developments. I should clarify, it's not quite the grunt work or hours I'm worries about, I don't have too much of either in my current role, it's more the fact that I'm running the whole project and everything passes through me. I'm finding myself thinking about my projects on the weekend and in my free time worrying about getting schedules put together or contracts signed or whatever, and I'd like to find a role where either the stakes aren't as high or I'm not the sole lead on the project.
I think your point of moving to a larger firm would make sense, become a small cog in a big machine would take some of the edge off, I think?
Question: Would moving to the a more finance-driven role in development give you a more eye-in-the-sky type vantage where you were not involved in weekend-worry type work and you could put your very practical experience to use in a different medium.
I do recall development teams like former experienced/seasoned PM’s who also have a strong finance skill-set. I am not sure that would qualify as cushy in any regard though which makes my question a non-sequitur/moot.
Edit: Ok, I see that you talked about finance acumen above. There are massive amounts of finance learning resources available to you and I am sure guys here can help you with a get-up-to-speed plan if you ever wanted to make that transition. Your practical training and dev experience would bring a lot of meat and common sense to any modeling/analysis etc that you learn and produce. Food for thought.
So, being brutally honest... no job is free of responsibilities one could worry about on weekends and during free time. Finding some zen and skills to unplug are just an all around good idea. I'm not a psychologist so don't ask me how.... but I kinda feel like you can get burdened like this anywhere, just pointing it out.
And to your question... YES I think the larger the organization, the better chance its better staffed and resourced. I've seen small shops where everyone must be a jack of all trades and stress everything and larger ones (I work on the large side now) where people def get to leave at the night and only respond to emergencies on weekends. There are people who are able to help and some levels of mngt/corp support. Still.... the job can be stressful, but yes can better with more resources and people, totally the case.
There are probably trade-offs.... must be much more senior to get equity/long-term comp, promotions can take time, pay could be lesser (tbh, not sure if true on strict base + annual bonus, hence a "could"), and you could feel "siloed" or "limited" (the literal opposite of current problem...).
I think making such a move would get you farther than trying to jump to a whole new role/industry, where you start over again on the learning curve. To some extent, I think time in the biz also makes this better, but development can be stressful... no doubt. Anyway.. just my opinions on the matter.
This isn't meant as an insult, but this seems like a problem with you, not your job. Learning to disassociate your personal life from your work is a skill that takes practice. If you find yourself obsessing over your work now, that will occur wherever you go where you have any responsibility at all. If you really want to not worry about your work, go pump gas. Of course, then you'll have a different set of concerns.
Portfolio Management at a fund/IM
1) Cushy, that pays well. Corporate real estate, work on the development side. Think Facebook, Google, Cisco, Microsoft.
2) I think development, you can work into your later years. If you are less into the numbers/finance, concentrate on local knowledge - entitlements, political relationships, history, local players. There’s always a need for people like this as an employee or consultant. String 2-3 of these gigs and you can make a living. But you have to live with uncertainty.
3) find a new career. If you’ve reach that point where you’ve prematurely arrived at the glue factory stage as a DM, pivot. Not so much brokerage as that is probably a different personality. Pick the part of the job you enjoy the best, and seek adjacent career paths. It’s tough, the future (as well as the past) will require you to be able to pivot and be flexible.
Other careers: sell real estate, insurance adjuster, appraisal
Jobs. Something else might be your calling.
I think your first point is a good consideration. I've heard doing real estate for those companies is incredibly boring, which is partially what I'm looking for haha.
Depends on the firm. If the corporation just does cookie cutter leases/workplace analysis and no acquisitions, then yes, very boring. A massive corporation like Google who has $30B AUM of RE holdings and tons of different RE strategy components, then it can be very interesting.
I worked corp real estate before my development gig and can safely say that most people at these organizations working in real estate are half brain dead making it really easy to stand out by doing very little work. You can also afford to outsource almost all the work to blue-chip consultants who basically do anything you want at unreasonable speeds (compared to traditional development) because of the volume your company gives them. The flip side, it's extremely frustrating because you are no longer working in real estate and thus are working with people who see real estate as a means to an end (insert corp function here) so your new challenge will be trying to explain why it takes a year to get a site entitled and that there is nothing to be done to make it go faster (in most instances). Also, good luck getting people to make decisions fast in hot markets as well and expect to lose a lot of good deals and repeat site selection over and over only to come back to the same site but pay twice the amount of money for a BTS...long story short you'll now be and expense vs. a revenue generator and you'll probably be playing second fiddle to a bumbling baboon
Agreed - corporate real estate for sure. Go get stock comp at a tech firm with a big real estate / facilities group.
LifeCo or big corporate developer would also be much more relaxed.
Big corporate groups (think name-brand developers or national merchant build guys), LifeCos and commercial banks, REITs, there’s plenty of paths.
Being on the PM side with a MF developer is a great thing. This allows you to have a grip on most of the project aspects. Being on the financial side of a development is totally different story. Your work is mostly limited to the project feasibilities that has cost inputs provided by GC, because most of the developers prefer managing the construction aspect by GC. So, this takes away the opportunity to learn about the cost aspect of the project which later would be helpful to start up own shop.
I have been with a developer for five years, who operates on typical built-sell model. The market I am in does not offer much absorption for high-end apartments. We launch one project each year. We have a predefined profitability benchmarks, since we can’t play around with the cost element– we attain the profitability by adjusting the prices for the feasibility sake.
Learning the financial aspect of the project is not that difficult. If you have access to your project financial models – have a review of them – hire an independent consultant to walk you through the details. There are great online resources such as breakintowallstreet and adventureincre. Would recommend downloading their free models.
Take a look at corporate real estate. Somewhere like a QSR, gas station chain, grocer/big box, or healthcare system. You can do development for a salary/bonus.
Most developers I know love what they do and can't imagine doing anything else. It's entrepreneurial by nature so not much cushion. I think you'd be better off at a bank in a CRE loan officer role or something like that.
I do love what I do but I can also totally imagine myself doing something else haha. I have thought for a long time about building up a solid nest egg and then going into something lower paying like teaching or community work. This was just to think about different options while still staying in real estate.
Also, just to give a bit more color: I know a lot of developers, too, who can't imagine doing anything else, and I'd say their primary motivation is the hunt, buying the land, getting a great deal on paper, seeing the numbers pop, and pulling it all together. That part is highly entrepreneurial and is where most people who want to be a developer look to. Personally, I don't really care about that stuff, I'm not a finance guy, I came from construction and did my undergrad in mechanical engineering, I'm far more interested in the architecture, design development, construction management, project management part of the job. I'm really good at working *for* a developer, not so good at *being* a developer, if that makes any sense. This website is usually geared towards the financial aspect of real estate (logically so), but that's not quite my forte, I'll definitely never become a CRE loan officer.
Got it. Thanks for clarifying. Have you considered working for a non profit affordable housing group? Could work in their construction and design team and manage projects. Fun, good mission, good lifestyle.
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