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Would be curious to hear other opinions
Bump
Depends what you want to do and also how partitioned stages of development are on the master planned side.
Some shops have an entitlement/planning team that is purely focused on developing a vision for the site and getting the land approved. While a hugely useful skillset, it's not going to teach you to take a development A-Z, as once the project is ready to go in the ground they hand it off to the execution team.
If you're at a shop that isn't so huge as to have separate teams for every stage and are truly involved in every aspect of a master planned development it's absolutely useful and transferrable. It's just single building development on a larger and far more complex scale because you're not building to an existing neighborhood/space, but creating an entirely new one.
The horizontal aspect you'll learn (utilities, drainage & detention, etc.) will come into play with any future development role.
Both will teach you plenty about development. Pure development roles are not too common compared to other CRE paths so you won’t get pigeon holed easily.
Consider very carefully whether you want to take the development route if you have other options. Unless you’re going to start your own shop, it’s not worth it. Pay is less than acquisitions/portfolio management and the work less interesting. Starting your own shop is much harder than dreamers here think it is.
I don't think this is completely true. Even if it was, I do think that people end up making the most money pursing what interests them and what they are good at.
Plenty of money to be made in development just like acquisitions. I honestly think this is really bad advice.
Name a firm, large or small that posters here would recognize. State the salary for a midlevel for both development and acquisitions. Then the incentive structure that determines the bonus. It is pretty obvious why being a director of development or senior development manager isn’t such a great gig. If underwater basket weaving is your passion, you’ll probably make less money in it than being an acquisitions associate where you hate most of your workday.
Short answer is yes but depends on what your other options are and what you ultimately want to do. If this is your only way into the industry than you should purse this. If you have other options that are more traditional CRE (I would still consider large scale SF sub divisions commercial scale), and that is the path that interests you, then purse those, but if this is your way in you’ll definitely get some transferable skills. It’s all relative.
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