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Career Resources
West Coast
Dev manager ~10 years experience
Base: 175k
Bonus 20% target (though have had close to 100% bonus one year)
1% of all deals at company (acquisitions and development bought/built since I started) roughly 1B AUM. ~4 years in but have not received any promote payments.
Promote, that is long gone on your ZIRP era deals if you are a developer. Your investors will be lucky to get a 1x.
West coast Dev manager ~5 years experience $135k base $25k per deal closing, $25k once deal achieves TCO Bonus between 20%-30%
Texas Dev Associate.
4 YOE
$130k + $37.5k/start.
Smaller bonus at completion but not sure what that is.
Supposedly carry is available but terms not yet specified.
Comp is vague because I am at a small, new shop that is changing comp as growth happens.
This has been my comp over the last 5 years (first job was right out of MBA, 3 YOE prior to school)
West Coast Family Office - VP Dev: $145k -> $160k, 10% bonus
Northeast International RE firm - Sr. Associate: $160k -> 180k, 30% bonus
NE Family office - Dev PM: $150k, no set bonus, last year was about 20%, project milestone bonuses as well + completion bonus
My job history is the poster child for why titles in real estate are BS lol, been basically doing the same work at each place with wildly different titles.
How much were your milestone bonuses
Haven't gotten them yet, but I should be getting two by the end of this year so I'll know soon. The current family office I'm at is very, very casual haha, there isn't a very formal process for this.
$0
Senior Associate (5 YOE) doing development asset management at vertically integrated developer with a fund -$160K base + ~$80K bonus, no carry. Role is probably 80% finance 20% project management though, we have construction managers run with the day-to-day.
Sounds eerily similar to my firm but I know it is not because your comp is wag higher lol
Dev Associate
Merchant multi
$155k base 25% bonus
I’ve often seen Dev Associate roles as more of an entry point with 1-2 years experience. Is that your case, or do you have more experience? West/ east coast? Sunbelt?
I’m in a HCOL market.
Near the end of my associate years. Expect to be promoted in 6-12 months.
Have 4 total years of dev experience, and another 6 or so in semi-related real estate finance roles before that
Let’s get some more numbahs in here. Been a very helpful thread thus far. Adding YOE is helpful for sure
There are some good threads elsewhere that go much further in detail, they usually come out around the end of the year as people get raises/bonuses.
https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forum/real-estate/new-comp-database-goo…
West coast
Development Associate
1 yr experience in dev, 3 years prior in construction mgmt and a 1 yr MSRE
$95k base, 10% bonus
Acquisitions/development associate - 4 years on principal side, 2 years debt before that. Not a brand name but strong regional presence.
$130 base and 25% bonus. No carry/promote. Getting hosed but on VP track within 1-2 years assuming all goes well (self-sourced a deal recently that we’ll likely close and break ground on next spring) and should move up to $175-200 base, 30-50% bonus. Not sure on carry.
SoCal
YOE: 8 years, 6 years in general contracting, 2 years multifamily development
Base: $135k
Bonus: 10% + project completion bonus variable (avg. 25k-30k annual)
All-in: $175k
NYC
YOE: 9
Base: $250K
Bonus: Really depends. We get a % of the developer fee with 50% paid at closing and 50% paid at substantial completion. Also get a discretionary bonus (not tied to deals) of ~20%-25% of base depending on the year. In addition, get a % of the promote. Generally ranges from $250K-$350K annually and then far higher in years we have been paid out promote.
Seems like very very solid comp. What type of firm if you don’t mind?
Multifamily developer. Mostly rental, some condo.
Maybe I just need a little hope in the form of someone else’s success/win, but can anyone who has actually RECEIVED some sort of somewhat meaningful incentive comp outside of Base/Bonus (carry/promote/cut dev fee).
Understanding it has been a shit market, this forum skews younger, and the folks who have landed these aren’t always going around on message boards posting comp - but would be great to hear, for example, a 3rd year VP (or director, or manager, or senior director or whatever the hell) share that yes, back in 2017 when they were that level, and their deal sold, maybe the deal was double, but they still got a check for $200k or whatever based on their incentive comp.
During my time at my last company, there were 3 deals that I would consider to be “home runs.” VP level people made high 6 figure comp from those deals.
I don’t think anyone junior is making $200k from a “double” though. “Bases” don’t scale linearly, because of how waterfalls work for the developer. It was more like:
That’s that hope baby! Appreciate the anecdote.
I’m content where I am for the time being (large multi merchant builder), as I for the most part like company, defintely my local team, and feels like I’m in the right seat to make some money.
What I wrestle with occasionally is at some point do I -
A.) keep grinding in this world. If over the course of a career, hit 2-3 cycles that yield results like that (some variance of course depending on seniority, deal luck, politics, whatever) on top of solid regular salary and bonus, that is a pretty straight forward path to the financial level I’m seeking to achieve. However, it can be hard in a very corporate environment, it’s a grind sometimes for all the typical reasons: reporting, lots of personalities to manage, politicking, IC, red tape blah blah
On the other hand, I could “go off on my own” which to me likely means something more likely like being a 2nd or 3rd man at a smaller outfit, being a dirt dog, or something similarly entrepreneurial but not quite the risk tolerance of truly doing it all myself (or with a partner) and signing guarantees. Frankly, I don’t have the risk tolerance, stress tolerance, nor do I find the reward worth it personally. Yeah building up to $50-100m+ nw would be sick but frankly seems like a headache being that rich especially with the path it takes to get there.
Honestly, just slowly thinking of the best path to get to $7m-20m on a risk/stress/family-positive/well rounded-life-accommodating basis . Aware that is wide range, but a lot of variability in there - how long you go at it, risk, market cycles, luck.
That’s it, that’s my three-drink inspired stream-of-consciousness thoughts. Thanks for tuning in.
Fair edit there.realizing my question really was more for home run, very successful deals. Overthought what I was getting at with “double”.
More just meant a great outcome in a standard MF deal. Not the once in lifetime dev deal that gets written about in books, articles, told as lore on podcasts. Not many of those in the institutionalized world of MF development this day and age!
When you quote these ranges - what does that actually translate to? Has to be over 5% right?
Or what is a home run deal to you? +30% deal level IRR?
2019-2022 received numerous checks >$100K and some >$300K.
The confusion on this forum seems to be the compensation structure for these seats. There are some years where I made ±$150K - $200K. There are also years at ±$1MM. The business is not for the faint of heart.
It averages out to a pretty good living if you can stomach the volatility.
I wish there was a way to pin this comment at the top of every comp or “when does comp get good?” thread.
Add in the whole “you can do everything incredibly and make the low end or make moronic decisions and still get lucky and make the high end” element and this is as real as it gets.
What would you say your total comp averages out to over a decade? Curious how it compares to just making $400k as a VP for a fund
My contribution to this topic is as follows - when you negotiate your comp, yes you want carry but what you REALLY want is a slice of the devco fees. Those are real, come in immediately, and have no dependence on the outcome of the deal. It's like a barbell approach - I wouldn't want to have one without the other.
Think of it this way - most development deals are 5+ years (unless you merchant build stick multi, that's still gonna be 3+ min). Your promote might be 100k or 500k aka 20-50k annually. If you have 1% of the dev or acquisition fees, they probably amount to a similar amount (depending on the size and how much carry you have), but you get those right away and can sleep at night knowing the Fed won't ruin your future overnight when you wake up one day.
One more thing - if you're at the level where you are getting carry you should be able to do some quick napkin math calculate what your carry would be worth at various percentages of the fund/deal. So if average deal size is x and target return is y at capitalization x, assuming we hit returns it should be $x. Understand its helpful to hear the range of what some have actually gotten in the past, but a few basic questions during an interview or negotiation and you should know what you're signing up for (at the target fund returns).
Are you seeing this a lot these days outside of low-income and/or people who put the money in on the GP side and deserve it to begin with?
I’m currently in conversations for a role where among getting a cut of other fee streams (carry, origination, etc.) my base salary would increase the more I help the firm increase the # of projects under management and therefore $ generated from dev fees.
While it’s not a direct cut when the fees come in it is somewhat indirect... granted given those fees are supposed to pay developer overhead I guess that’s in theory how it always works just maybe not as explicitly said. Worth noting, I’m likely getting a cut of all that in exchange for a flat base with no set annual increases or bonuses.
Its standard at my relatively large multi-family dev shop
It's really, really tough to ask for a slice of fee revenue. Your salary is your slice of fee revenue.
I mean if you don't have a bonus I don't see why it's tough. You either have a discretionary bonus or a slice of fee revenue. If you have neither you got got. Especially if you join the company early why shoudln't you have a slice of ownership of that devco which collects all the fees.
$150k + 30K bonus no carry and Sun Belt MCOL city. 2.5 years at this group but ~7 total in the industry with a crazy amount of different roles (brokerage, AM, etc)
YOE: 1
Title: Associate
Location: South Florida
Base Comp: 135k
Bonus: 50k+
Associate: $200k with 5 YOE
Location: LA
Separately, we are hiring for 2 Analysts. Comp is ~140k base. Can be based anywhere in the US with preference for Austin/TX area. PM me if interested to learn more.
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