Most impressive Real Estate Careers you've seen.
Title, interested to learn about people who've knocked it out the park career-wise in RE, either accelerated to MD etc super fast, or started their own funds / individual investing etc.
Probably Ozymandia—he became an expert in four-unit, rent-stabilized Bushwick brownstones, which has given him the time to focus on this site and promote his fetish for socialism
I came here to say this, too!
Also, one thing you'll learn, if you ever have any success of your own, is that the real beauty of making money is the ability to hire someone to do all your work for you. To paraphrase someone vastly more intelligent and successful than either of us - the first law of business is to get someone you can rely on, train them to do your work, then sit down, kick up your heels, and think of new ways to make money.
You can have fun churning out endless iterations of an underwriting, or moving a corporate logo 2 millimeters one way or another across a screen every time your boss thinks you've got too much free time. That's called being someone else's bitch, and I'm pleased I'm past that stage in my career.
Woah!!
I hate to say it as an NYC guy but Donald Bren is the real estate OG. While everyone else is figuring out how to syndicate deals and generate fee income, he created one giant syndication and spends the rest of his career buying out all his partners. Something tells me he had some very friendly GP control provisions baked into those documents.
Not trying to be a prick here, but I consider almost anyone who "made it" impressive. Real estate is a make it or disappear type of industry, and no one knows who the crash outs are unless they crash out majestically. If someone is a top executive at a big real estate corp or found success building their own portfolio, that's impressive to me. Sure there are differences between $45M, $450M, and $4.5B, but they aren't all that relevant.
What about removing one more 0? $4.5 million would be like being the “poorest rich person in America. The world’s tallest dwarf.”
The tragedy of learning how to ride a horse, but being too poor to stable one.
Hah, I was explicitly trying to not be a prick.
I'm betting there are a lot of guys in their 30s and 40s out there who made some good money between 2017 and 2023 and assumed that was just how the industry works.
...I may or not have been one of them.To echo CRE, if you're reading (in a real publication - not linkedin) about a deal and someone's quoted/mentioned, that's impressive, as it was worthwhile enough for the author (who makes a living writing about real estate and needs to protect their own credibility) to quote/mention them. And for each lender/buyer/seller/attorney/broker who actually makes the deal, there were dozens trying to do that same deal and earn the same fee.
If you're looking for the 'recipe' to these folks, I'd say 99% of the time they have two out of these three things: hardwork, luck and/or risk-taking. If you don't have one of these three, you need the other two. Some people would say 'where's intelligence' on this list? Hugely overrated IMO - and usually confused for hardwork. Let's suppose you do have a 'supersmart' person. They tend to be risk averse, so that's off the list and you still need the other two ingredients. But a less-smart person with two ingredients will beat the smart person with only one. Ipso facto, ergo sum, intelligence doesn't count for much.
Went on a tangent there, but it's week before Xmas so I gotta pass the time somehow! Now put some coal in my stocking you naysayers and save your sticks for '26!
Curious, why do supersmart people tend to be risk averse? is it because risk is inherently foolish? or the people we call supersmart tend to be able to academic vs streetsmart? open to all views
The smarter you are, the fewer risks you have to take. That would be my explanation, though I'm not sure I agree with the premise.
"Street smart" is not equivalent to being highly intelligent. People who aren't very well educated like to pretend like "street smarts" are somehow equivalent to, or superior to, education or academic intelligence. More than that, they like to pretend like the two are mutually exclusive. It's a coping mechanism for people who aren't self-confident enough to own up to their weaknesses, or who confuse bluster and bravado for confidence.
Loss Aversion - people feel the pain of a loss much more intensely (often twice as much) than the pleasure of an equivalent gain.
Super smart people tend to perceive the risks at a greater level and are thus driven to inaction as opposed to others that are able to tune out the risks and effectively putting on the blinders and focus on their vision.
In the end, in our industry and in most of finance in general, it's not really a zero-sum game. There are tides but much like global warming, the water level always goes up and in our case generally much faster and more significant than the tides themselves.
Donald Trump. Did ok early, had the tallest building in NYC for a bit, and then became the president. Twice.
OK I have one. The CEO of Grosvenor USA. Grosvenor - very prestigious OLD British company dating its roots back hundreds of years literally. I don't know what he did but his career went from Undergrad civil engineer to 10-11 years working as a very generic project manager for a large regional General Contractor, then gets a development manager job at Grosvenor in SF, and is elevated to MD then CEO within 7 years of being there. I mean - development in CA full cycle takes literally 5 years so IDK how he did this. That's not usually how it goes especially for the more technical project manger type of background, I don't care how smart you are.
He had some dirt on the queen. That’s how they always do it. No one at the top ever earns it; they just find nudes.
Donald Trump
Donald Trump
Kevin lalezarian and no one even comes close to him....
im sure 99% of people have not even heard of him...meanwhile one of the largest developers in the country. so low key
I'm not sure I'd call him one of the largest developers in the country, but from the little anyone seems to know about him he's a super impressive guy. I always wonder where his equity is coming from - is he making a ton of money, or is he in the Michael Stern camp of just churning fees and giving away the upside?
He’s no Michael stern. He’s a billionaire that probably has long term pension fund $$$ behind him. He only builds rentals and never sells. Not churning anything. His monthly rent roll is like 30m+ between all his buildings
Younger up and comers…
Khaled Kudsi: was at BX, before John Kukral brought him to Northwood. Was Global CIO in his mid 30’s. Spun out in his early 40’s and raised ~$500m without a placement agent, as a first time fund (Sterling Investors)
Krysto Nikolic: Global Head of RE @ ICG. Started at Goldman when he was like 20, then Apollo and TPG (sat on IC), before being head of EU at Starwood when he was maybe 36/7. Probably 41/2 today.
Tyler Henritze: Left BX as head of US acquisitions and raised $1.25B via a first fund (Town Lane Partners). He is probably 46/7.
The pedigree required to raise discretionary capital today is absolutely insane. Consolidation has gained so much momentum and the mid-size GP is getting aggressively pushed out of the sector. It’s actually a real issue, and I think a lot of groups will continue to be forced to pursue sales of a stake in the GP in exchange for LP equity.
Nobody gets fired for committing to BX / Ares / Brookfield - even if they return a net 8% and a 1.25x. It’s flawed - but a reality.
Most of the guys at these pension plans / sovereigns aren’t paid to take the risk of backing an emerging GP, so to attract large format capital on a discretionary basis, your story has to be nothing short of impeccable.
Thanks! +sb'd. Curious- for anyone who's ever worked with people on these trajectories/similar, were there things you noticed that set them apart or characteristics that made you think this guy/gal is going places?
Raising money is one thing
Delivering results with it will be the true test of success
So many people here have real estate all wrong too
The true successful people in our business are not the allocators but the developers and operators who are on the ground delivering results.
Allocators are like hot chicks at an SEC school, tons of them out there and they are easily replaceable and hard to differentiate
I know a litany of successful developers many have never heard of who have been done extremely well
Everyone at this level is really bright, but I’ve seen a noteworthy difference in EQ. By the time people are 33-35, they should have the technical skills down pat.
It then becomes about deal making abilities and knowing when to listen, when to speak, and
when to squeeze and when to make concessions.
It’s where VP’s fall over as some live and die by the model and take a “computer says no,” approach - but have no idea how to actually put together a deal and manage the human element. Eventually you have to have the conviction to bring something to the MD / IC - and be able to articulate the risks and merits beyond just metrics.
Agreed. The transition from 'taking orders' (usually paint by numbers) to 'giving orders' (more art than science) is critical and you either have 'it' or you don't. And for the first time, you have to take actual ownership of decisions rather than 'hey, I did it because my MD said so'. It's why so many in IBD hit the ceiling at VP and can't jump to MD - it's a different skillset.
The power of persuasion is a huge part of it. Not only do you have to understand the reasons to do a deal, you have to understand the reasons NOT to do the deal (which are usually numerous), and persuade others of the pro's outweigh the con's. And you have to play politics (internally, externally, upward, downward) and you can't take intellectual cop-outs ('well on the one hand .... on the other hand .....'). You have to grow a pair, make a decision, defend it, execute it and then survive long enough post-decision to earn some fees/money!
Jon Gray, I’m surprised no one is mentioning him.
He joined a firm mostly focused on traditional PE and he delivered such strong and consistent results that he singlehandedly reoriented what BX is known for.
The guy who quit his VP job in 2012, bought a distressed self-storage facility in a submarket everyone laughed at and now spends his Tuesdays playing golf while a lean team of three manages a portfolio that yields more personal cash flow than a GP's promote check. The ultimate flex isn't the size of your fund, but the size of your check compared to the number of people you had to ask for permission to approve / write it.
OK the success rate of guy-leaving-midlevel-w2-job-to-buy-single-asset-and-grow-from there has gotta be sub-5%. This is selection / survivorship bias, since no ones talks about or notices the 95% who failed.
Avery Silverstein on the Newmark Spies/Harmon team. Executive MD by ~35.
I wouldn’t give much weight to titles at Newmark. Half of the people at the company are MDs
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