Mill Creek Residential vs CIM Group
Where would you rather build your career?
Mill Creek - Start as a Development Associate in a regional office in a major west coast market. Focus on developing 2-4 Class A multifamily projects per year. Work your way up to MD and start earning promote.
CIM - Start as a Development Associate at the LA headquarters. Focus on the SoCal market and develop all product types (office/retail/multifamily/mixed-use). Lean on in-house pm, investments and leasing teams. Work your way up to a 1st VP / MD level.
I'd take whatever one is an actual offer.
What do you do in each roll? Development associate is a broad role. In the mill creek role are you underwriting investments as well? The CIM role just based on the fact that you mentioned in house PM, investments etc., will you be assisting with underwriting and closing deals too? Or is this a project management (read construction) role? I ask because you need to ask yourself what you want to do. Also - do you want to do resi or office/retail/ etc. ?
Both roles would be typical development responsibilities (involvement during the acquisition, oversee procurement of entitlements & permits, hire and oversee the design team, hire & manage GC/work with the in-house GC, stay on project through stabilization). The one difference… at CIM there is a dedicated Investments team that focuses on sourcing new acquisitions. The Dev team provides support during the acquisition DD /feasibility process and determines the project program & budget, but Investments team own the financial model and is responsible for income projections and deal structuring. At Mill Creek, the Dev team is 100% responsible for the sourcing underwriting.
My curiosity is mainly regarding comp. Which company would be better to work for at the MD level? Mill Creek as a merchant builder with promote paying out on most deals. Or CIM, with a large AUM, many complex and interesting projects, numerous sources of capital and differing strategies.
Don’t worry about how it’ll be to be in MD. You have 10 plus years until you get there, if that. Figure out where you want to be as an associate. You may never be an MD at either of these firms.
Promote >>>>> and in any case I hear CIM has an awful culture
Have heard the same about culture. My wife is a controller at a retail-focused shop and two of her recent hires came from CIM...said there is a huge exodus right now across all departments and that the whole organization is a mess.
Mill Creek will likely have you working on more cookie cutter midrise developments with a quicker timeline to getting promote and the ability to transfer to wood, alliance, TCR, etc. without skipping a beat. Would guess you are also working on a higher volume of deals.
Thanks. Why do you think Wood, Alliance or TCR would be better than Mill Creek?
Also, from what I’ve heard about CIM, most people in the LA office are working on 3-6 projects and work a lot of hours.
I don't think he's saying that they're better, rather just that they're similar firms that execute the same stick-built merchant build strategy (and I believe all of them are founded by ex Trammel Crow guys).
Would do mill creek. I’m at a merchant builder and it’s fun seeing so many new deals while executing on multiple projects at the same time. Best of both worlds in terms of acquisition and development.
Agreed, at a different one but really enjoy the deal volume.
I think another important question you should be asking yourself is do you have aspirations of doing MFH the rest of your career or would you like to see multiple product types? If you go to Mill Creek, you would pretty much be siloed into doing MFH the rest of your career. I know a lot of people on this side and its a mixed bag. Some people love MFH, others it seems regret not having optionality earlier in their careers.
I know nothing about CIM's culture, but I do know a big factor for me recruiting post-MBA was finding a shop that allows me exposure to multiple product types because it give me optionality down the road and personally, I find it more intellectually stimulating.
Mill Creek x 1000. CIM is a mess and a real revolving door. They'll never take the time to train you or really show you the proper way to do things, because most of them are running around like chickens with their heads cut off. A lot of their equity has pulled out as well.
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