Full time MBA necessary to transition to RE with 6 years unrelated experience?

Question

About the only way to break in to IB with no finance experience is to go back to bschool full time to take advantage of the OCR (for the record I know it is possible to transition part time...just tough). I am looking in to a career change to CRE from current 6 years experience in logistics at a F500 company. I'm still working through the various paths, but curious what it would take to land an associate role at an acquisitions or development firm. Is the full time necessary?

SHB · Accepted Answer

For a acquisition/development role? Ignoring an outside .1% chance the answer is yes you will need to go to business school.

BUT

If you work for a logistics company you probably know supply chain logistics as it relates to real estate is incredibly hot right now.

redever · Answer

If you are thinking CRE, you could do a part-time (or full-time) MSRE or MRED, generally less expensive and far better in terms of actually learning CRE. If you are dead set on an MBA, I don't think FT vs. PT makes that big of a difference when you have as much work experience as you do.

Your path will not likely through a traditional analyst/associate path. As others have said, if you stay within the industrial logistics realm, you may be very valuable (not my area to be judge to be fair). You may want to consider corporate real estate, would be an obvious transition path.

redever · Answer

I'm not entirely sure I understand the question. There are firms with portfolios of all sizes in every category of real estate owner. Here is short list of the categories -

Instit/Pension. Real Estate Investment Managers - PGIM, MetLife, Nuveen, etc.
REPE - Blackstone, KKR, etc.

SHB · Answer

I disagree but hey, its the internet, it happens.

I will say I feel there is a pervasive and unhelpful mentality throughout WSO that networking and "hustle" solves all problems. I'm just trying to be real. The best chance for a 28 year old to change industries completely (especially looking for highly coveted equity placement positions) is to get an MBA. Hell there are countless posts of people with 6 years of RE AM experience who cant get into acq positions.

Yes there is a chance but not one that I would be willing to put money on.

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Full time MBA necessary to transition to RE with 6 years unrelated experience?

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