Need direction in life
Hello I am 29 years old, turning 30 November this year and have no college education besides a few classes, I struggled focusing and attending school all throughout high school. I was depressed for many years and didn’t want to do anything with my life because of this. I grew up in an immigrant household in an upper-middle class almost upper class neighborhood and I always felt isolated from many of my peers. It wasn’t until the past 2 years that a friend of mine got me into real estate and all its avenues, mostly the commercial and investing side of it and I got my real estate license and decided to re-enroll in college and pursue higher education. I am currently only a sophomore in college, is it too late for me to pursue internships and other traditional routes for college students much younger than me? I feel like I was never given much direction in life from family and friends.
Nope and get that thinking out of your head. Are you going to get an internship at Blackstone or Starwood…likely not, but you’ve likely picked up some life lessons along the way and employers will value that. It will be harder for sure, but just sell your story hard and shoot for the moon. You may fail more than not, but you only need one person to say yes.
I would focus on an institutional Investment Sales or Debt/Equity team at JLL/CBRE/C&W/Newmark wherever you are. Try to get an internship during the school year or summer and I would try to parlay that into a full-time offer. Say you’ll Intern for free if you are able to and by the time you graduate you should have an offer from them if you perform or at least solid intros to local principals. I would honestly recommend continuing to work for them for a few years and then make a decision.
Once you’ve graduated and have a few years under your belt and are more comfortable talking shop you’ll be just fine. Everyone likes a comeback story and you’ll have a great one to tell along with a different perspective compared to your peers. You’ve got at minimum 35 working years ahead of you bud. Just think of it that way.
This is completely right. Certainly at the big brokerages where I am based it’s actually pretty common for people to enter sales or appraisals as a second career, a lot of them are in the network of current employees though. Anecdotally I also know multiple people who were mature students and started in IB in their 30s so it seems possible in most careers.
Thank you, I appreciate your input.
Most people don't realistically have a shot at making it to the Blackstone/KKR/Starwood's of the world anyways so I wouldn't compare yourself to them. There are plenty of people that go from construction jobs to development careers so there isn't a massive premium put on pedigree in real estate. Given that you enrolled in college you could look to do the "traditional" path into REPE or development by going into a large brokerage (CW/CBRE/JLL) as an analyst on the investment sales or capital markets teams and then lateral to the principle side later if you decide that's what you want to do. For reference, we have an associate who is in their mid-30's without a finance background in college that went from project management in construction -> development coordinator at our Dev shop -> investment team because they were inquisitive and picked up on the modeling in their spare time, so it's never too late to make a career shift within reason.
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