Experienced Development Roles - What do you do?
Writing as a current associate on a team focused on residential housing across a few verticals. I'm a member of the acquisitions team where we focus on site sourcing, contract negotiation, and working the deal through necessary approvals until we are cleared to close on the land and move toward a financial close to commence construction. Part of me feels like I'm missing out on experience of the full development process, in that we don't really play a meaningful role in the entitlements process and certainly don't play a role in the development management once construction has begun. It's just on to the next site and the next new deal.
As someone with a few years of experience and thinking about the future, will this breadth of experience limit my potential for roles at the VP/Director level? Are there shops where your Development Senior Vice President is managing the entire deal process from site sourcing to lease-up for single deals? Or are these Development SVP and above roles similar to what I'm doing today and there are typically adjacent teams that primarily handle the entitlements, development management, etc. for deals that the development SVP (or whatever experienced title) has sourced and that job title is primarily front-end sourcing? Any input would be greatly appreciated, not sure if I'm being paranoid about my experience to date or if I'm missing out on experience that my peers are getting.
It may limit the shops you can work at, and would certainly cause you some issues if you were to go out on your own, but as much as I begrudge the siloing of our industry, what you describe seems to be the way things are going. I’m coming to terms with the fact that I’m somehow already a boomer in this industry, idealizing the way things were done.
I know multiple Managing Directors at brand name shops who have never successfully shepherded a single project from beginning to end, but instead danced between jobs every couple years. Multiple. People get promoted for all sorts of reasons.
I also know multiple big name shops that divide the development roles precisely as you describe at your current company, so if you continue to be good at what you do, you should continue to find employment and progression.
If anything, you may be better suited for corporate advancement in the current-day commercial real estate landscape than the execution personnel. I am somewhat interested in what you mean when you say you get approvals to close but not entitlements though. Surely you aren’t closing on deals and starting construction without the necessary entitlements.
The limited full cycle experience is certainly a limitation for going out on my own, though I don't know if I'll ever have the risk tolerance to really pursue this. Most of my professional aspirations revolve around solving for a balance of the highest cash + bonus comp I can achieve while working sub-50/60 hour weeks.
Your comment about MDs dancing between jobs is a good point given the naturally long dev cycle. I would almost bet that acq professionals who have been at their firms long enough from initial site sourcing to project stabilization are the minority. This is the case at my firm for sure.
To clarify on my entitlements role, we're peripherally involved and help guide that process with our entitlements counterparts and we are always entitled at land/financial closing. My unclear comment was more in reference to not being involved with the day-to-day detail that our entitlements counterparts are engaged in. For example, if I were tasked with coordinating physical DD on a site or handling title objections I could probably work my way through it; but by no means would I have specific detailed experience dealing with that, and certainly not to the level you would expect of someone with a few years of experience in a development role compared with peers who may have a more hands on role in this.
Be easy on yourself. I am in a full dev cycle RE job as a development associate. Deals take a LONG time. Entitlement process (depending where) can take an even longer time depending on political climate and typically you have all sorts of individuals helping with the process (land use folks, engineers etc). I think any deal flow is good deal flow. Sounds like you have an understanding of the numbers and how deals move through company (IC) approvals. That’s great experience. If you have a desire to be on the construction side and more project execution (full dev cycle), those roles are likely out there - just a matter of networking to understand what kind of dev associate jobs have that level of exposure. Good luck!
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