Hey WSO. Right now I am a rising senior at a liberal arts school in Greenville, SC working towards a degree in Applied Math/Computing. Despite the degree I am working towards, I have long been fascinated with the real estate industry and have been putting a lot of thought into pursuing a career in the field, ideally as a broker.
6 months ago I took a position as a research analyst with a site selection consultancy, I was looking for anything that would help me segue into the world of real estate. I am enjoying this position and have been surprised by the amount of trust the firm has put in me, allowing me to perform analysis on greenfield and brownfield industrial sites to then create deliverables for client presentations. While I am confident that the skills I am building here would be an asset in just about any career path I choose, real estate or otherwise, I know that there is a more specific set of skills that I need to be learning in order to position myself for a career in CRE brokerage.
So WSO, I am hoping you all can help me brainstorm how to make this internship work for me. If there are particular synergies between real estate consulting and CRE brokerage that I am missing that I could be focusing my time on, I want to do that. I also want to know what sort of material I should be studying in my free time. I am reading The Real Estate Game and will move on to another book after, any suggestions? Lastly, is it too early to be reaching out to CRE professionals in my area? For the time being my goal would just be to establish a rapport and learn more about what they do day-to-day. I'm just not sure how I would initiate that conversation.
Any and all advice/criticism is appreciated.
What kind of analysis do you do? You're an intern, so I imagine you have free time. I tell my interns and junior ppl to practice modeling. I send them case studies we use to hire at higher levels, and probably as equally important, don't just run the models, but really understand the mechanics of what it is telling you. Essentially, put yourself in a buyer/client/fund's shoes.
Understand and ask questions about the economics of the land you guys are working with. Why is the buyer interested? What values does it have? What value can you create on it which will make it worth more? Is there currently a market for it i.e. if I buy it today, will someone buy it from me or will I have to do stuff to it? What's going on in the town down the street; did Sony just build a $1b manufacturing plant? Etc etc
Brokerage IS consulting and high level sales (most jobs in finance are, i think it's important to remember that); you are connecting buyers with sellers and advising them on stuff in the deal - financial implications, REGULATORY STUFF THAT WILL FUCK YOU OVER, the market, etc
For example, understand and look up the principals of interest, inflation, discount rates, and the time value of money. You'll see that it's not as solid as, say, finding the volume of 100 freight ships. There are many moving parts in financial analysis, so there's rarely a 'right' answer, only a risk adjusted answer that will hopefully yield returns. Idk how to exactly explain it, but you'll see.
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