How much does RE Asset Management pay a year?
I've was working in CRE banking and now one of the Eastdil/HFF/CBRE/CWs in a major market. Quite frankly, I've a little burnt out with the hours and know brokerage is not for me long term. I'm looking to switch to something with a little more work life balance and am looking into asset management. Does anyone have information on the day-to-day lifestyle and was compensation people are hitting? I've seen the chart thats been shared here before, but don't know how accurate that actually is.
Firms use "Asset Management" to refer to nearly anything, but on average I think AM Analysts and Associates make pretty much the same as Acq guys. At the end of the day AM is responsible for making sure all of those lofty assumptions that Acq guys underwrite actually happen, so they drive just as much value as Acq. I think a lot of people find being a deal chaser the sexier job and they assume that it pays better, but on the last CEL Associates survey, AM and Acq were shown to have paid more or less the same (at junior levels). We just hired an AM Associate, with 2.5 years of previous experience for $100,000 base. I'm not sure what his bonus range will be though.
As for the day-to-day lifestyle, our AM guys honestly spend more time in the office than our Acq guys a lot of times, because they get way more stuck in the weeds on deals. Once Acq's IC pitch gets approved they can go home and rest easy. 3 months down the line when the re-development process is over budget and behind schedule it's AM who has to deal with the clusterfuck and try to appease everyone on all sides. They have to deal with the future/current tenants and completely rework the models depending on what the new timeline and cost/revenue schedule looks like, they have to negotiate with construction managers and architects over costs, they have to explain to the Investment Committee why we need an extra X dollars when we previously pitched them the deal on the premise of only needing Y dollars, etc.
But what our AM team does isn't necessarily indicative of what the AM team at any other shop does. I'm sure AM teams at a lot of core shops or REITs are basically glorified leasing and reporting admins. You need to make sure you know what you're getting into before you take a job in RE. "Asset Management Analyst" can mean one hundred different things.
Loan asset management pays ok--in a typical major market, $55-70,000 for analyst level; experienced analyst $75-90,000; senior guys (7-10 years) might be in that $100-140,000 range; managers in the $150-175,000 level; and directors in the $200-250,000 level. It's ok. It's a living.
Property-level asset management or principal asset management (where you're dealing with the actual properties and working on refinances and redevelopments and strategic dispositions and acquisitions, etc.) is going to vary wildly. The above poster said $100,000 with 2.5 years of experience. In my experience in this biz, that is way over paying for the position, but it's not really an easy apples to apples market comparison because each job is sooooo specific to the company you're working for or the properties you are working with and how many actual transactions you are working on. My current company is heavily focused on asset managing the firm's existing properties, and the company's director is paid something like $400,000. I'm the director's right-hand man and make about 1/4 of that, but I also work like 15-20 real, actual hours a week and have a 33-hour work week. So it's really dependent on your specific role.