So my good friend, who grew up in SF, started a new job after graduating from his MBA . He wanted to focus on primarily multifamily or retail but was getting desperate for a job and took a position in Ohio. It's only been 3 weeks and he wants to quit because the company will be focused more on residential going into the future and he wants to come back to SF. He's worried that he's losing time focusing on residential when he could be focusing on retail or multifamily. I've been trying to tell him to stick it out for at least 6 months. Won't he be screwed if he quits now?
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Never quit. Your friend needs to find a new job first, then put in two weeks notice like a professional.
Seconded, quitting is only going to make the situation worse. Hiring managers vastly prefer candidates who are not unemployed
If one cannot confidently quit his job then he is, by definition, a slave.
Even if he can get a job before he quits, won't it look terrible that he was only at a company for 1 month?
Out of curiosity, what is he focused on? Single family home building? Because "residential" and multifamily have a lot of overlap.
Also, he'll get a ton of experience. Presumably he's pretty young, and if he's learning, it'll carry over
Master-planned community development would be great experience. Lot purchase + homebuilding would not be ideal.
I disagree. Learning how shit gets built is important. Being able to read construction documents, to understand the challenges at each phase of a new development, are very important. Is the experience as good as it would be doing a larger project? Obviously not. Doesn't mean it's without value. If you want to build a master-planned community development, you're talking years and years of time - building out utilities, entitling the project, multiphase financing, the whole shebang. Obviously that is great experience, but is it worth spending half a decade or more of your life to get it? Spending 24 months and building a few single family homes might be a better return, in terms of experience, on your time.
I hear your point, but still think that homebuilding is commodity product these days. Also, from a learning perspective, the financial math involved in modeling a lot takedown schedule plus build costs then an eventual sale is very simplistic, and won't carry over as well to commercial development. This assumes the lots are sold ready.
The process of buying raw land, creating a master plan, getting municipal approvals, managing grading/MEP/landscaping, then modeling a systematic sellout based on various lot takedown structures which may or may not include a sale of commercial land parcels (or contribution to a JV) is a great learning process. An analyst would need to understand how equity and debt is drawn during the process, how hard and soft costs are budgeted, and how cashflow is distributed to partners. This would probably involve a traditional IRR lookback waterfall. Homebuilders are typically focused on their gross margin.
FYI, I've worked in both capacities. I got out of homebuilding quickly (pretty early in my career) when I realized that I wasn't learning development finance.
"A guy I know. him and her GOT IT ON."
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