56 Comments
 

You can make $50K working at a fast food joint or driving a forklift, with regular hours and no student debt.  $100K hardly seems like a deal. 

 

Truth. I know a few folks break $120k already doing truck driving (competitive pay, shortage), along with welders I used to work with (300-400k for under water/deep sea welder). They work a few months out of the year and travel around the world working welding contracts. Free hotel/food/etc. Most of the most blue-collared, humbled folks I met working at the shipyard.

 

actually, if you have 2 brain cells to rub together, you can almost go into any line of work, find the inefficiencies, and carve out a business.  Another way that is pretty logical imo is look at Yelp. Find categories where existing service providers in your area have shite reviews, and just start one that competes with them.   There are a million opportunities out there if all you're after is making money and you're willing to learn and hustle.  I am pretty sure I could get my income into the mid 6 digits within 3-4 years if I had to start all over in an entirely different industry.

 

ES constantly works until midnight. Not uncommon to get an email from them at 1am. Their bovs are a tier better than your average (not top) cbres, jlls, both in terms of granular understanding of the asset and framing the narrative of the macro economy

 

As a broker I find this comment hilarious.  Basically….they have better BS.   The future is not in brokerage, certainly not in taking what they write or say as gospel, it’s in auctions imo. That’s true price discovery.  You then just need to pay to have a bunch of DD done on the asset and ready, plus preparation of an OM.  All that can prob be done for 5-10% of what the broker costs. 

 

Assets should be put out to bid and transaction costs are way higher than they should be in an age where there is more readily available data and ability to find buyers without the assistance of a broker.  

 

No but I suspect fees will go down overtime. The reason to work there so you can move up the chain but it prob won’t be as lucrative in the future, long term if you’re looking to build a career.

 

You can roll your eyes all you want. But transaction fees are going to be ground down to nothing in the next 10 years as machine learning gains more and more ground with institutional buyers.  As the game shits more and more to an institutional game there will be continually decreasing value for brokers to play in the CRE environment. 

 

Nope, while you are correct regarding the fiduciary component however as the number of potential buyers continues to contract, the value of networks for brokers falls. Why would I pay a group millions of dollars to what essentially the auction will do?  If auctions are how transactions are done then everyone knows about every transaction.  The only value brokers will have in those situations is entirely off market deals.  

 

Oh for sure.  After watching what has happened on the residential side, which it could be argued is even harder for tech to drive buying and selling given the highly emotional state of the parties, I find it inevitable that this will happe on the CRE side.  Also, tokenization might make it happen even faster.

 
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PEarbitrage it's not your opinion that I disagree with but your conviction in this opinion on a topic you clearly no very little about. Your post the other week soliciting cap rate guidance for your "new office deal in FiDi" is a good example. Maybe you should consult with a seasoned broker who transacts in this market? I'm sure they'll save you more than any commission they earn. 

Real estate is an imperfect market on every level and full of emotions. Every building is a unique market in itself with a unique cap rate (a useless and opinionated metric in most cases) and especially in NYC. Brokers keep the wheels spinning on every level, from the hustler showing apartments to the top dogs moving massive size. They're making a market and earn a % of the value transfer they facilitate. 

Not saying that brokerage is a growing field of opportunity, but that there will always be value in the services of a knowledgeable dealmaker. Tech and the transparency it provides will undoubtedly squeeze commissions and lower-tier brokers but selling buildings and leasing space that people live and work in are not like trading stocks. Buy shares of ESRT/SLG if that's what you're into, probably better than play than the FiDi deal, which is a notably depressed leasing market with limited exceptions. 

BTW, your friend's company seems to be less of a great idea than you believe. REX undergoes second round of layoffs. Announces plans to scale back business and join MLS

 

Many companies are waking up to the realization that they have to pay more for competing talent. We are starting to see mass migration of employees leaving employers, more increases to follow.

 

First year ES associates are at ~100k base + 100-200% bonus at the moment.

 

I just want to point out that a 80k or 100k salary sounds great (and for a recent grad that is a really good offer).  However when you think of it in terms of dollars per hour its not a bargain. ES analysts work extremely high volume hours id guess between 70 - 100 hours a week, then when you take out taxes its really nothing too crazy.  Sure you don't have to eat ramen everyday but your likely not living in a penthouse either.  Also your bonus gets taxed even more heavily than salary so a 50k bonus sounds like a ton of money but in a high COL market, again it may not be as glamourous as some might think.  

 

No matter how you shake it the analyst program at ES is one of the best intros to the institutional side of the business you can get. When I worked there people would tell me its like getting a "masters in underwriting real estate" which was essentially true. Generally work on all asset types (sales and financings), extremely high deal volume and the biggest/best deals out there. You do work a ton but you should know that going in and shouldn't care all that much at 22/23 years old. You can stay at the firm or leave with endless exit opps but the ~$150-170k all in can't really be beat when you factor all that in.  Of course there are outliers like people going straight from undergrad to a top PE or niche developer or something..   

 

Best training programs are in a legacy HFF/JLL office and ES for underwriting. I mean if you can get on Dustin Stollys group that would be great too. I think if PGIM RE is your offer, you should take it. Great place.

 

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