Grinding Hours in RE

Once the world finally returns to complete normalcy I think it will get better. It’s been pretty unanimous among my friends and peers in RE that the amount of hours worked over the past year have been shitty.

At a top CRE lender. Hours have been 40-50 hrs per week. Typically I am able to get my work done in that window. My manager stresses efficiency. He’s right because typically if you are working 60+ hours then it’s probably because you are involved in in unnecessary/inefficient tasks. 

Our deal flow has been absurdly high so between that and the mental shift of trying to separate work and home while WFH my hours have been high. Probably 60 on average vs 50 before, periodically 70-80.

I think a big part of it is working from home people have just been putting in more time, not by necessity. This industry will never have the absurd time requirements of corporate transactions because there’s far less to the DD process.

Been close to 60 hours/week lately. Normally 6:30-7PM was checkout time, now it's more like 8 or 9PM. We're well staffed but the extra work comes from underwriting deals we know we won't offer on (for market intelligence during this tumultuous time) and doing much more reporting to track credit loss/see where we can trim expenses/perform scenario analyses at properties that may experience trouble.

At a debt brokerage, consistent 55-60 hour weeks but a lot of that time is mundanely spent. Mainly waiting for clients to respond to questions, producers to get back to you on that off-market deal, underwriting team taking forever to get a quote back, etc. So while I did not think I would be working so late all the time, it's not like I'm working. Mainly just trying to stay "available" on Teams.

50-70 hours per week as land broker in 2nd tier market

40-50 hours a week, financial analyst in investment sales 

Better on average. But real estate is very diverse. Could be at KKR (etc) debt or equity or top nyc debt brokerage and work on par with IB/pe… or a developer / smaller owner and work 45 hours. I will say flow rn is crazy … even thirds party vendors are jammed up and lagging. Hearing it from everyone

NY acquisitions => 60-70

Really busy tbh. Just a lot of deals

45-50hrs, family office in the southeast. Has bumped up a bit from earlier in the year but the family office setting keeps things pretty steady despite an uptick in flow.

Large GP developer in 2nd/3rd tier city. Been rough since the beginning of the pandemic. Not every week, but consistently enough 65+/week. Colleagues in adjacent cities/broader region seem to be in the same boat.

Middle market acquisitions on the West coast, but working remotely in the Midwest. Hours fluctuate pretty heavily. I'd on average I'm working 50-60 hours a week, of course we closed a deal this past week and my hours were in the 60s. Hardest part is the time difference for meetings.