Hines to Starwood Development AM
Currently at Hines doing land acquisitions and development management. Pay at Hines isn't great. Have wanted to transition to traditional REPE / pure play acquisitions. Through a connection, interviewing for a development asset management role at Starwood Capital Group. It seems like a good stepping stone to get closer to the high finance REPE world, even though it is still development focused. Pay would likely be way better as well. Any thoughts on how this could play out if I'm eventually looking to be in pure play acquisitions. I have 1.5 YOE all at Hines. I would likely need to stay at Starwood 2 plus as well to avoid the job hopper label. It's not exactly what I want to do in all honesty. By the end of 4 years, all my experience would still be development related. I'm afraid that with 4 YOE in dev, I'd have a tough time transitioning to acquisitions without taking a step back down to analyst / associate. I don't want to always be an analyst / associate doing the number crunching and so on. Would be great to move into the relationship building, sourcing, docs negotiating side of things after a couple more years. However, even if I leave Starwood after 2 years, for an acquisitions role at Carlyle, for example, would likely have me start back at senior analyst or associate. Nonetheless, Starwood role appears to be a great opp that would allow Me to significantly increase pay in the meantime while slapping a world class REPE firm's name on my resume. Also, I should mention at Hines I’ve been exclusively focused on industrial. Starwood Development AM is also exclusively industrial. So by the end of 4 years, would only have industrial dev experience.
If you want to do acquisitions and you currently do land acquisitions and development management - don’t leave to just do development management. Keep doing what you’re doing and wait for the right role - acquisitions only - to pop up. Just because Starwood is “high finance” doesn’t mean any role there will be viewed as such.
Fuck, I mean, you're right. Just so hard to give up having that name on my resume and the fact that I'm getting a promotion from analyst to associate and will likely be doubling my pay. But I do care about what function I am in and your point is well noted. I know someone like Ozy will come in and say "you're a fucking idiot for slobbering over Starwood and a comp increase, you probably don't know anything about how RE truly works" that person would probably be right given that I'm only 1.5 years in. It's just hard to pass on something like that when looking at it from face value. Not sure if this changes anything, but I will add that this development AM team works very closely when acq is looking at taking on new dev opportunities. acq team leads the effort but this dev AM team is right alongside them in that process (to a lesser extent obvi, but still somewhat involved). So I would be able to write on my resume that I did “acq and dev”.
I would typically agree with this but there aren’t going to be good acquisitions roles to apply to anytime soon. I’m at a top shop and have been looking for a change in scenery with no luck.
I would argue two years at Starwood doing industrial development AM would likely position you better for traditional acquisitions roles than two years at Hines doing land acquisition.
Just because of the Starwood name alone ? B/c at Starwood I would also be focused on industrial dev AM. So by the end of 4 YOE, I’ll have all industrial experience. And yes, agreed. There are literally no good roles out there right now.
Generally agree that development is actually a better role all around for learning the business than acquisitions as it teaches you finance, accounting, marketing, leasing, investor relations, budgeting, and most important strategic thinking. However, unfortunately, many people when interviewing will look at your resume and say something along the lines of - you don’t do acquisitions so you can’t do this role. Or you don’t have relationships so you can’t do this role. Unfortunately people are short sighted. However, you just need to find the right firm with the right fit who realizes that your development asset management role is actually much more valuable when doing acquisitions than a straight acquisitions role.
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