I am a non-target student and the only "finance" jobs offered to me after graduation were real estate jobs. I took one and here I am six years later and I hated every minute of it. I have experience in brokerage and development.
I have tried networking with asset management funds and credit research positions to no avail. I really do not want to go to an MBA program due to the cost (and I would likely not get into anything near a t15-t20.
I'm not necessarily set on any one job in particular, I just want to get into an actual finance job that is more quantitative than real estate. I'm tired of growing historical revenue by 3% and calling it a day, for example. It's boring.
Do I hope for a scholarship at a t50 mba? Not sure what to do here...
I'm curious as to what it is you think you'll be doing in "finance".
It sounds like the problem is not with your job, but with your expectations and assumptions are in regards to what it is that people do all day. This may be hard to believe, but working on Wall Street doesn't look like what people in movies are doing.
The best option for you might be to come to the realization that your career isn't supposed to be the thing that imparts meaning to your life. It might be boring. It might not make you feel like you're changing the world or solving deep problems every day. That is most people's experience. Go take up a hobby. Read a book. And then get up and go to your 9-5 and do it all again. You aren't the center of anyone's universe but your own (and maybe your mother's). Once you understand that, you can get on with the business of finding some kind of meaning and purpose.
Fair criticism. I still think there's a difference in satisfaction from an acquisitions role versus a due diligence role like I am currently in... Should've mentioned that.
Yeah Ozy just likes being dismissive and reductive. What he says isn't wrong, but it doesn't address your issue (which yes, you could've been clearer on).
Start your own business. Be an entrepreneur. You're gonna hate it whether it's real estate or finance.
Maybe you're right. My long-term goal IS to buy an operating business in the $5-10m TEV range....
Lol, I love it when people throw "start your own business" on here like it's applying for an MBA or internship
Have a younger cousin thats graduating this year. He told me plans to do a startup and then flip it for a few billion. I asked whats the idea. He said hes got soo many ideas but is thinking what he wants to pursue. I then told him its not easy to flip something for a billion. He said "whatever, I know I can get at least $200m on the flip so worst case ill take that".
Damn. Tell him to stop being so greedy and at least give me his 4th idea.
Bumping for you, I’m trying to figure this out myself. I have 5 YOE and have bounced around at a few firms trying to find my place. Starting to think that I might just be in the wrong industry as I am no longer excited about deals and I’m actually relieved when we lose a bidding process . I have an itch to go out and start my own venture but I’m still trying to figure out what exactly that might be. Hopefully someone on here can share some of their thoughts.
I'm not excited about deals anymore either. I'm in REPE with 3 YOE. Nothing ever pencils and there's no creativity. The fund I'm at is blowing up and recruiting for an acquisitions role at another firm has been challenging. I'm planning to do my MBA and just switch into PE or banking. The work won't be as interesting, but all the fun is gone already anyway. Real estate is something you can always come back to, but you'll never break into another area of finance from real estate.
Thanks to both commenters above. This really does capture my line of thought. I have tried a bit of this, a bit of that, and always felt that it was dumb simple (buy a multifamily apartment and put new countertops in) or overly meticulous (development) and not finance focused. I'm thinking I just don't like real estate period...
Sounds like it's an issue specific to your circumstances and not about real estate at all. Plenty of firms are creative and are currently getting deals done.
Bump
There's no really many exit ops. Your options are another real estate fund, entrepreneurship, MBA, or a very slim chance of breaking into REIB or a PE fund that buys real estate companies. Your odds of the latter only get worse as you get more senior.
If the crux of your firm's business plans entails trending T12 expenses by 3% no wonder you're bored lol. Some of these replies are hilarious:
"After I closed my first multi and commercial deal I felt I could do anything."
"Always felt that it was dumb simple (buy a multifamily apartment and put new countertops in)".
Just obvious Dunning Kruger effect on display. Work for an opportunistic or actual value-add shop and then tell me how boring or easy it is. Is it rocket science? No. But it does require real world experience and knowledge of various design and engineering disciplines, navigating politics at the local, state, and even federal level, structuring complicated capital stacks and how the preferences of different types of investors influence this, dealing with various site constraints, infrastructure requirements, etc. and still producing a final product that fits the demands of your future residents, thinking about your exit and potential buyer pool/market liquidity, identifying real demand drivers at both the micro and macro level, etc. to pull off difficult deals. This is just scratching the surface of issues that VP/MD/Principal level people deal with at these kinds of shops.
To put it simply, it could be you're not at the right place or your grievances are with the "grunt work" associated with all that, which I can relate to. But if you're six years into your career and have not actively dealt with some of the issues I outlined above or seen how they can be extremely difficult but also gratifying to navigate successfully, then maybe you need to learn more, work for a more sophisticated shop, and/or show you can handle bigger challenges. Just my two cents.
My comments were from the lens of acquisitions people at REPE firms. You do not need to be a master at half of these skills. Half of what you're describing are skills that developers need. You just need to know enough to be dangerous. Why would anyone go work for a hands-on shop when they're further from the money and comp is lower? Exactly zero people at my firm (decabillion-dollar fund) are masters at engineering, navigating politics, or creating complex designs. That's what engineers, lobbyists, developers, and design firms do, who you will be working with anyway.
"Structuring complicated capital stacks" is not difficult from the equity side. For the 20% of deals that aren't just mortgage + equity, it just takes a little more work. I closed multiple mezz and CMBS deals. The hard part is navigating the legal docs, which your lawyer will help you with. Again, you just need to know enough to be dangerous. Everything else isn't rocket science.
There's a reason why someone like Grant Cardone can acquire $5B of real estate and survive. As long as you're not doing development (which will underperform for the next 5-10 years anyway), it's not that hard. The head of my group was a 30-year veteran who got fired after doing some of the worst deals in our history. He ignored very obvious trends (didn't buy rate caps, invested in shitty submarkets, turned down offers to buy our struggling assets). Six months later, he's the head of real estate at another fund, making more money, and still doing paid speaking engagements. No one gives a shit as long as you can market yourself and sound smart.
Yeah, what you're describing is basically every industry. People, yourself included it seems, don't really understand risk. When it's someone else's money, it's easy to just follow the crowd, because doing what everyone else does is the way to not get fired or have to answer awkward questions. If your former group head had bought millions of dollars worth of interest rate caps and then the Fed had NOT raised rates, he'd be out on his ass for wasting money.
Because he's more or less defrauding his investors? You point to the most egregious examples of people selling self-help courses and not actual real estate and then pretend like he's somehow representative of the industry as a whole?
More to the point, lets see the degree to which Mr Cardone does in fact survive. Generally speaking, people whose income and career success is derived from the appearance of that success tend to overstate their earnings. Mr Cardone has built a career by telling greedy, credulous rubes to give him their savings on Instagram: the appearance of owning a jet or whatever is actually his main business, not investing in real estate or anything else.
Rumor has it that Grant Cardone is being investigated by the FBI. Not sure he's a guy you want to emulate
And I here I am 6 yrs into my career and been unemployed for 30% of it.
This comment is spot on. Thanks for not bein incredibly reductive like so many other comments (either because of laziness or inexperience with the meat of RE).
Reinventing yourself is a mainstay of living in the 21st century or any time from now on. Either it’s you or your kids or their kids, and so forth.
“In tech, you will have to reinvent yourself several times in your career (due to the amount of change)” said a 70 year old retired pediatrician doctor turned biotech leader and start up supporter (I attended the Berkeley Haas Alumni Conference over the weekend).
To say you cannot change, reinvent, pivot because all you did was real estate up until this point (6 years?), I think is not having the flexibility to survive and thrive during this period of rapid change, which will keep getting faster.
I mentioned several times on this forum (see my post history), think of yourself not as a real estate professional but someone who knows how to work with asset intensity, which can include real estate, machines, operating companies, labor forces, IP, leverage, etc. Have this be part of your professional story.
I believe 3 years, you can pivot to almost anything.
Do you know why I hate going against seasoned real estate developers/owners in lawsuits? Because they are adept in creating optionality for themselves and pivoting, I literally have to trap them. You might have worked in development, but there is more to learn.
The fact that you just want another “crappy finance” job to replace your “crappy real estate” job just tells me you’re a job taker vs the creative, adaptable individual who is going to survive in a ruthless world.
As someone “6 years older” after your RE experience, your personal opportunity cost of time is even higher. To think you would trade this moment and your precious time for something uninteresting and bland just to get away, I feel is spinning your wheels. If you just long for a paycheck, I understand, but rapid change will create risks for the stability of your livelihood.
I hope you change your mindset and build upon what you’ve accomplished. It is you who is pigeonholing yourself at such a young age. When you say you can’t or don’t want to go back to school or can’t find a bridge to the next thing. You should be willing to do whatever it takes.
When I asked a Haas professor what else I should be telling undergrad students that I’m mentoring (because I’m relying on telling my playbook that worked the past 20 years), his advice was that too many young people these days are seeking “instant validation” and that I should advise them to take life and careers, and jobs step by step. They would get more responsibilities, after they do a good job on what they are given, and it builds and builds. I think in a real estate (asset intensive) career, you have to have a builder mindset and temper the need for instant validation.
Wow, thanks.
Noted on on fronts.
You’re welcome and keep striving. You’re doing alright.
Not in RE, but as someone above said, join some distressed/opportunistic RE if that's a thing. I'm sure it's more intellectual.
It’s not more intellectual - it’s more granular. Imagine a simple multifamily proforma. Now imagine there are 8 layers to the capital stack (tax credits, TIF proceeds, mezzanine loans, senior loan with back leverage, etc etc). Theres ground floor retail, some of which is leased but not taken occupancy yet. There are outs in the leases so can’t count it as income in some cases but need to show it on other scenarios.
Think of all the adjustments, footnotes, modeling sensitivities, different ROC calcs, etc you’d have to put on the page to keep IC happy. It’s insane.
That’s what you get when you go work for an opportunistic firm - more granular detail BS. It’s still just real estate - buy, execute business plan, sell. Oh you made money? Cool, we’d like you to do that 6-8 more times every year
The real answer is to get really good at your job. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m super fast and efficient, which gets me out of the office earlier and back to the things that matter
Job advice from someone who wants to get out of the office and away from their job... ironical.
Firms that do more active investments don't simply get more granular as this guy puts it. It actually tends to go the other way. When you're repositioning an asset or speculating on development, you need to understand the macro factors of the deal. It's big picture, high level stuff. If you get the macro wrong, you're screwed. Population growth, asset desirability from
investors and tenants alike, location, etc. - this is all high level, long term speculation that doesn't require granular looks at market data. You then need to sell a vision of the investment, either internally or to external partners - and it's not simply based on a slew of details that are presented. It's mostly conviction.
Yes, you will also need to get into the weeds on the specifics of the deal itself and there are more weeds to sort through, but super reductive to say that's all it is.
It doesn’t sound like you know what real estate is if you claim it’s just about growing revenue by 3%. Not that I’m glorifying this industry by any means. Sorry to break it to you. Have you considered other real estate job functions? Funds raising, asset/portfolio mgmt?
I think it might have been a little sarcasm there my friend.
Just did this, so can give my 2¢ (Went from CRE only shop to LMM/MM PE shop). It really comes down to luck and being able to tell a good story. Once I got past the “….so you’re in real estate” question, I just had to prove I had the horsepower for the job, and pass the case study. I had a bit of a unique situation, but I don’t think it’s not repeatable for someone with a similar background.
Would love to hear more about how you made the transition to PE. Considering something similar but want to avoid spending two years and $ getting an MBA.
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