Freshman Looking to Learn

Hey everyone, 

A freshman studying Finance looking to go really in-depth in CRE in hopes of breaking into RE at a private equity firm (or any position, heard working at firms like Eastdil or working development far down the line was a good option) one day. I'm just looking at some common books/podcasts/WSJ for RE?/YouTubers that people in real estate highly recommend. 

Have some connections within the industry and have gotten really excited to delve deeper. Would really appreciate some guidance and answers to exploring a passion 

Thanks

14 Comments
 

If you’re serious, try your hardest to get an internship or part time work at a RE shop doing some form of excel technical work. And then buy A.CRE and get Argus certified. Seriously put in the work and you’ll be way ahead. Don’t worry about the money it will pay off if you actually do the above and use it to leverage into an internship as an ES, etc. depending on your school this can be easy given low competition for RE internships (kids recruiting into RE have horrible resumes compared to IB kids)

 

God willing, I just finished an interview with a REPE shop ~15b aum for my freshman summer, you get to work with one of their portfolio companies afterwards too so that's cool. Looked into A.CRE, seems like something worth doing. Quick question: What's SE (sorry if a crazy question)

 

Read, "The Real Estate Game" by William Poorvu. The numbers are highly outdated, but the concepts are all there and is a great intro to CRE

 

This is how I'd go about it in your shoes, if I were gunning for a megafund REPE offer/internship:

 A.CRE for sure for modeling. For books, I'd choose ones on deals more than textbooks; it'll make you more conversational in real estate and you'll get all the textbook stuff from class. Other People's Money (Charles Bagli) about the failed BlackRock/Tishman Stuytown deal is good, Liar's Poker is a classic finance book that mentions the start of MBSs. For news, also to get more conversational in RE, I'd sign up for the free IREI news blasts and read what speaks to you.

A word of caution (that might get me MS'd) but I think it's important to appear institutional for these roles. It's better to have your RE knowledge come from institutional news/deals than the RE guru & used-car salesman syndicator types. I'm at a SWF after REPE and have worked on hiring/internship processes at both, and we've X'd people who seem like all their knowledge of real estate came from get-rich-quick youtubers. It's just not the type or caliber of real estate we do.

 

I appreciate the detailed answer! Definitely doing A.CRE, just waiting for a subsidized discount through my school now. Question since you mentioned REPE (especially in regards to recruiting): how much more different is it than your typical banking timeline? What are some big players in the space and are comps just as high as banking too? 

 

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