Exit Opps. for Research/Consultancy in a multinational CRE company

New to the field and just wanted to understand the role a little more.

A little about myself. I am a fresh graduate, who has previous intern experience at an IB dealing with REITs, but not much else related to RE.

For those who have previously worked in such a role: How much the of the role is finance related? I don't expect to be building financial models. How much external client enagagement is there? Is ARGUS something that will be used in research/consultancy? What kind of career-path can I expect?

Thank you for your advice.

7 Comments
 

Can you clarify the type of company this is? It sounds like a CBRE/JLL/CW/NKF/Colliers type given that you mention brokerage. I am confused by the mixture of brokerage and asset mngt. These are not usually mixed (CBRE Investors is very firewalled from the brokerage side of CBRE, same deal at JLL with LaSalle, at least that is my understanding from knowing people at those two firms). Do you mean 'property mngt' by chance?

 
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Okay, I suspected that was the case, I am going to assume this is a research role inside the consulting side of major RE brokerage firm (clarify if incorrect). My thoughts...

Generally, 'research' roles in arms of the major brokerage firms tend to be very entry level 'analyst' type positions supporting the team to which you are assigned. Thus, your day to day and tasks are really a function of what the team you are assigned does. If they use Argus on behalf of clients, you will do so. Thus, these roles tend to hard to generalize/define. Many of these spots I've known people to have had a semi-pre-planned progression path that would make a person a 'producer' or 'doer' or whatever the first level of actually providing the service is. The 'research' period is where they do grunt work and get a fixed salary/bonus, the next level may involve pay by commission/production/fee share, etc.

There is also 'research teams' that are responsible for firm wide data collection, writing of the market reports, and doing custom research for firm producers and their clients. This is a different role, generally less common, but it does exist. The career path here could still be to jump to 'production' and join a team for real (think of this as a centralized/shared services for multiple teams where the above option is dedicated service to a team), or you could move up the ranks of the research team at the firm. I.e. could go all the way to top spot of 'head of research' or 'chief economist' or something like that.

These positions can make you desirable to principal firms, generally joining at the analyst/associate level. If you do external client engagement, this is easier. Whether you do or not is up to the teams and nature of your firm, I wouldn't generalize a rule for this.

On net, these are 'entry' level positions that can open up a wide range of career tracks from IS/cap markets brokerage, leasing, appraisal, and the like on the service side (easiest transition transition). On principal side, equally open from acq, am, or research/strategy (harder transition due to competition, but not impossible).

Frankly, I'm am generalizing from the 'research' title as I most often see it. It could mean something different in practice for any particular role, so ask a lot of questions.

 

@redever this is brilliant. I tried to get as much info as possible, so yeah posted in another comment below.

I am still unconvinced about the exit opps for research/consultancy. I mean is it impossible to transition from research to, say, RE IB/PE? The impression I got was that the exit opps are limited to other roles within CRE.

Thanks for your comments, much appreciated.

 

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