Do you enjoy the real estate business?
For those who are in investment positions (debt, equity, development, etc), do you enjoy what you do? I ask because I always see many of the folks in the IB/PE forum talking about how they are burned out and are considering leaving as they don’t enjoy the work / industry enough to deal with the negatives. Are you happy you chose the RE line of business and do you see yourself staying in it forever or did you fall into it by accident and would rather be in a different industry ?
Yes. I love real estate. Sort of fell into it by accident, but that’s life. The industry (for the most part) has the ability to offer strong compensation and a work life balance. Plus you can do it on a large scale or small scale. Many people I know work for large institutions and manage their own money by purchasing small assets (SFR, duplex-quadplex, small office/industrial). It affords you avenues to grow wealth outside of work.
Love it, but I grew up around RE (on a smaller scale and more resi focused, but regardless) and have always had a passion for it. If you're just getting into it for the money you might have a different experience.
Hours are considerably better at most places than IB/PE, but that's not a firm rule. I average probably 45-50 hours a week, bump to 60-70 during a live deal (80 if its a messy one).
I love it. It's interesting work, very network-driven, lucrative, and offers a solid work-life balance. It's one of the few fields of finance where you are (or at least should be) in the field more than at the desk.
I enjoy it. I really enjoy the tangibility of the asset and place-making aspect of it. Working in development has provided an even greater experience since its more focused on project management and not so heavy on being in excel all day. Work-life balance is good too. I'd say i'm doing around 50 to 60 hours per week, and sometimes playing a little bit of catch up on the weekends but nothing that's more than a couple hours really. Never worked in IB or PE personally but everyone is always quoting there are more hours typically in that area of finance.
I enjoy it. The industry generally attracts cool/chill people and on balance the WLB is better than IB/PE (won't belabor the points about comp). When you're working with assets as opposed to companies, the stakes (and the stress) feel much lower than what I've observed in PE / IB, because its just comparatively a simpler transaction. Some might view this as a con but for me I'll take the lower stakes all day long.
It’s great other than the 1/5 people who are complete narcissistic self unaware pricks.
I’d argue that number is higher in IB/PE. I’m in the special sits team of a MF and there’s a lot more assholes in my current firm than there was in my previous firm (big owner-operator). There were also more assholes when I was in IB prior to that. The big difference I found between IB/PE and RE is the difference in quality of staff, I.e. at top RE firms they’ll be of similar calibre but once you go down market it can change quickly. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though, less Type As / hardos who want to work 80 hours a week, much bigger appreciation for WLB (doesn’t apply to top REPE).
What does get pretty frustrating is family dynasties where the children clearly aren’t up to taking over but need to stay involved, and the amount of shady people who can convince HNWIs to pay them outrageous fees for a project which can’t be that appealing without very aggressive assumptions.
Haven’t started FT yet (a couple more days!) but with the experiences I’ve had so far I love it. Looking back over the last four years I’m very happy to have chosen real estate over IB.
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