Legit Chill and Easy Jobs in CRE
Like many of you I thought I wanted a challenging and stimulating job, crushing it in the office and not mind working long hours, closing deals, making a fuck ton of money etc. But reality crept in quick that that's not who I am. I just want a job that I can typically leave at the office and not have to think about it at night and stress about it. I still love real estate and finance and it's what I want to do for a living, but I honestly just want something chill, easy/repetitive, and has upside to pay decently (I don't need to make millions). I'm currently in MF underwriting and that's probably pretty easy and laidback to some but it's definitely higher stress at the VP/Underwriter level than I think I want to take on. I'm thinking appraisal or asset management might be more my jam. Anyone follow a relatable path have any guidance? I'm aware I'm in the minority here as most ppl on this forum are after the prestige and dreams of ultra high NW. Thanks
This is an interesting post, not the standard for WSO for sure. Honestly, I think a lot of people will wish they had taken a more 'chill' path, whether it really means loss of income/wealth over the long term is much harder to say. So a few observations...
A lot of the 'kill your self' jobs do produce 'high incomes' from time to time, they also involve higher risk of strike out/fail out (i.e. watch what happens to many high income people this year)
There is a trade off on expertise and effort, meaning, the more your expertise is valued, the less effort required. Appraisers (and lawyers) understand this, still an appraiser can work 'harder' and do more reports in same time, thus not really 'free' of the rat race, but have clearer path in decision making. The broker/I-banker/deal person doesn't have that luxury as they can't really know which pursuits will payoff or not, so they have to go 100% all the time.
To the point of 'expertise', if you really want to minimize the effort/earnings trade-off (with some decent earnings), you need to maximize your effective 'hourly rate'. Consultants, lawyers, accountants, and appraisers all get this. Check out what appraisers who do expert witness work make, easily $300 to $500 per hour or more. The trick is the highest hourly rate, not the most hours, that is naturally limited.
Here comes the catch, getting the highest hourly rate takes time, experience, training, and sometimes advanced certifications and degrees (i.e. big up front investments, for big payoff later). These hours could be 'stressful', but so could working at Wal-Mart, stress is personal, I think you can find any job stressful or un-stressful by your own attitude.
You are posting as a '1 year analyst', this time period just generally sucks regardless of profession, firm, or track you are on. It gets more 'chill' the longer you work, true for appraisers, asset managers, i-bankers, brokers, chefs, or whatever.
All that said, I have personally noticed that working in more traditional 'corporate' roles can be less time consuming due to more resources, bigger teams, and narrower roles. Doing asset mgnt for a big owner of CRE would probably fit this bill, you get in at 8:30 pack up bags by 5:30 most days. Same for corp accounting, etc. Is the day stressful? eh, depends on the firm, boss, etc. You could get laid off (really no different, but appraisers have less risk as self employed generally), but again its just different risk/return trade off.
That's it, good discussion. Good luck!