Not finding brokerage intellectually stimulating
Age: 27 years old
Market: Boston
Now: 1+ year as tenant rep broker in Boston
Prior: 3 years supporting industrial agency team in DC
I want to pivot into another vein of CRE where I can engage my mind more than in the heavy personality/sales culture of brokerage. Ideally I’d like to be in NY in an acquisitions capacity.
To switch disciplines and markets, I believe an MSRE from NYU, with the goal of getting into the Hirsh Fellows program, would be the most logical step.
Brokerage is heavy on personality, and I want to do something more analytical. I like the problem solving aspect of the principal side where you need to craft and execute and investment strategy that makes sense within the context of changing local market dynamics and other micro and macro economic trends. Brokerage is really just BD followed by the same steps to transact a deal.
For those in other veins of CRE, do you find you work truly interesting? How would you recommend pivoting into both a new market and a new discipline?
Acquisitions is going to be similar to what you’ve described as your brokerage experience.
The larger the company, the more accurate this will be. Sounds like you want a role at a smaller company that blends acquisitions with initial operations at least, and helps oversee execution as well.
You'd probably like development. Acquisitions is very repetitive and it's just plugging in the broker's OM into your own model and making a few adjustments of the assumptions to see if it pencils out or not. Development is always solving some problem that is caused by a 3rd party architect or local government officials needing certain things done to keep your project up to code to get permits and things like that. Also, there is the modeling aspect of development that you could do that is similar to acquisitions, except you are negotiating contractors and hard/soft costs (land included) to get a proforma to work out rather than just keep bumping rents and re-trading on purchase price to get the yield you want in acquisitions.
You might also like investment sales compared to tenant rep in brokerage if you stayed. There is some modeling involved and still being able to be personable.
I’m taking the longer view and thinking about what my work substance might look like 5, 10, 15+ years down the line. I’m sure acquisitions is very repetitive, but the part that’s most interesting to me is getting to a point where I can help strategize how and where capital should be deployed and set direction for an investment vehicle. Obviously it takes time to get to that point and you have to be a foot soldier in the beginning.
Development is interesting if you’re a partner, but I’m not interested in project management or asset management type work.
I guess in a nutshell, I want to get to a point where I’m coming up with the battle plan to take capital and figure out where the market opportunities are to grow it.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you want to making the investment thesis (CIO type)? There is still this role in development, Hines and the massive developers aren't building random assets on a whim. For example, when I first started out I was predominantly modeling all of our developments and doing market research (very much acquisitions type role rather than project management) and helping coordinate DD rather than constantly bothering 3rd parties to do their work. After a while the responsibilities became preliminary "yes/no" on site selection and asset class based on what I believed to be good markets and good investments on top of checking over analysts' models and giving opinions and guidance during development meetings and investment committee meetings. I'm not the final say by any means but I have a long (hopefully) career ahead of me to get to that point that it seems like you want.
On acquisitions, you might be able to lead deals at an associate level on a very small team, but even then every major decision is run by a VP or director first. I would say at a VP level or so in acquisitions are you given more freedom to decide on specific assets and in what markets. However, typically REPEs have overarching asset classes or markets that they heavily focus on (i.e. MF in the southeast) so decision making is very limited on directionality on the whole.
Yes. For example, Alfonso Munk is the Americas CIO at Hines. That type of role is the ultimate goal. Now figuring out how to backtrack from that end state to where I’m at now.
I think the analytical skillset you get from acquisitions, whether at a PE shop or elsewhere, is an essential fundamental building block that you need before you can get closer to that goal.
Got it. With that in mind, any role labeled "investment analyst" or something similar that mentions underwriting and market research is the direction you want to head in. Both Dev and REPE have those roles and would put you on the path to make the investment decisions. "Development analyst" is the role that would be hit or miss on the analytical aspect of development and obviously on the REPE side "acquisitions analyst" or "investment analyst" is going to be the modeling path.
I do know some VPs who made the switch from asset management to investment strategy so it's not unheard of, just more of a traditional route through acquisitions.
I think you’re dumbing down acquisitions a bit much here. Let’s be honest, acquisitions, especially at a place that does opportunistic investing isn’t just plugging numbers from the OM and tweaking it. Understanding risks, legal docs, JV docs, credit docs, managing DD, it takes alot of effort especially if you’re doing anything programmatic with a partner
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