NYC Brokerages Starting Out

Just some random thoughts here - I'm on my phone so excuse any grammar errors or typos.

There are significant challenges for most people on this forum to starting their career this way–that is not to say that these issues are insurmountable. The main issue here is that if you strike it out of college as an investment sales broker at M&M/B6/Rosewood etc. You are only going to learn real estate at the rate by which you can start digging up deals, underwriting them, and most importantly executing them. Whereas, if you were an analyst for someone else, you could get your reps based on someone else's ability to source deal flow. Those are two completely different schools of thought and I have done both in that exact order.

The year I turned 21 I think I did about 50 of my own BOVs in a single calendar year (as in I cold called, got a meeting, and did a BOV for the owner). I knew how to underwrite but NOT like a guy at HFF or Ackman would. However, I left my job and pursued a different route for a short while that was much more technical. What I have learned by doing both routes is that anyone can learn to thoughtfully underwrite a deal, structure a capital stack, input assumptions into Argus, and size up debt or build an equity waterfall.... While I will say this is very important it does not particularly set you up to the best broker - and by that I mean someone who is out originating and executing their deals. This is not to be confused with a fee-only or hybrid salary+fee execution broker who runs deals and doesn't source.

What the traditional analyst brokerage route won't teach you is how to control clients, how to sniff out motivation, how to ask those "hard to ask questions" to clients upfront or have difficult conversations, how to "make or create" deals (as opposed just to "doing" deals), how actually create value for clients and not just be another suit who "sells" value, how to know when someone is just optioning you for value or trying to fuck you – you can only learn this by going out and trying to build a business. You're going to learn the hard way in most cases. IMO this is way harder than become technically proficient in real estate.

I'm personally really glad I did it this way. I have since left back to be a capital markets broker. Today I now possess stone cold technical chops and can model with the best of them - albeit there's some kid out there in a bullpen somewhere that creates his own macros and would likely run circles around me. That's fine.

The most important training I had in my first 5 years of working is my down and dirty brokerage experience that taught me how to out hustle and outwit most brokers who are now in my more "sophisticated and institutional" sandbox. If you think you can hack it take a shot, but don't ever shy away from spending more time to become technically savvy if you expect to play at the top of your respective game.

Other considerations:

Be patient it takes a long time to build a solid book. Try and meet 2 new clients every week and create 2 really strong and meaninfgul relationships each year. In 10 years you will have 20+ really good die hard clients that feed you consistent deal flow.