Post MSRED Career Ops
I have 5 years of work experience across hotels and boutique real estate development advisory firm. Beginning 3 years of my career were on the corporate strategy side. Latter 2 in development and were split equally between the hotels and boutique firm. Recently, I was accepted into a top MSRED program on the east coast (one of the usual schools mentioned on WSO) for Fall 2020, and am exploring what possible career options I may have through this degree. Career Path Options:RE Development - Try to work for a major developer like Hines or Related and gain the experience necessary to learn and eventually open my own firm IB - Work across RE or the gaming, leisure, and lodging division. Exit into PE afterwards Equity Research - Work across gaming, leisure, and lodging covering the companies I used to research and know well. Exit to working for a major hospitality company as a senior executive. Would really appreciate any insight and opinions on ways to leverage my past experience (or not?) for a role in one of these areas that I'm actually interested in. I understand I may have given a broad range of jobs, but want to make sure I'm carefully evaluating all pros/cons of them with other's insights and not just my own rambling thoughts. Thanks in advance!
So, I am a bit confused, you presented three clear paths, but do you have a favorite? Are you aiming at one? Or just want feedback across the 3?
Initially, I was focused on working for a developer, but would like feedback on all 3 please. After being accepted, I had the chance to speak with some of my mentors and colleagues who basically advised me not to not tunnel vision myself, and encouraged me to think about the options listed
okay, glad you said that... here are my brief thoughts...
An MSRED pretty much is a specialized degree for option 1, RE dev. The other two are very finance intense and generally look to hire MBAs (at least at the top shops) and/or expect a lot of finance/econ backgrounds (not sure your UG).
If you applied to an MSRED and are going, I assume you you would want to focus on development. If this is not the case, you may want to look at MBAs instead. I am not saying REIB or ER is out of the question, far from it, just you are not setting off on that course of study.
The hospitality background will be respected, but I see no reason to focus on it unless it is what really interests you. You are free, you can develop or work on whatever. Would you have some natural advantage to a group with hospitality or gaming deals, of course, but it was mostly entry level by your description so I wouldn't see it making or breaking much.
There are other areas to consider. Like real estate lending/debt, many of the top firms really like MSREDs for analyst roles as they need people who understand real estate and development. You can't have all finance types on those teams/shops. Same for any form of real estate investment management (pension fund, insurance company, bank, REPE, etc.). on the equity side, but that should be fairly obvious.
There are also advisory and consulting options, you worked for one year in this, did or didn't like. Still working for the firm? Curious why you did or didn't want to stay with it.
That's my two cents. Good luck!
Thank you for the thorough detail! Regarding your 4th point, I have not looked much into RE debt/lending or investment management.What kind of career path does debt/lending lead to long-term?I saw you mentioned REPE regarding investment management. Doesn't that field usually recruit out of IB? Would it fall under firms like BREIT or Starwood?I did enjoy the consulting role, however, I was doing more business development for the firm than actual consulting. It was cut shorter than expected due to Covid. Fortunately, I was accepted to the program shortly after.
Got it, the consulting thing makes sense now, crazy times for sure. As to other questions...
Career path in debt/lending, is well a career path, so I'm sure how to answer that. It's within what people call 'capital markets' or the debt side of the business so, I mean, I think it is what it is. It's principal investing or intermediary work (like for CMBS type deals), so I think most would think of as the end game itself. You could go from there to the equity side or development, certainly on the capital markets team for sure but acq/AM/IR are all possible as well.
As to REPE, that is a really broad term, with tons of firms of all sizes. Sure BX or Starwood or KKR and that top tier may preference IB exp (and IB exp is valued generally) or top MBA grads, but many grads of MSRE/Ds go to work for various forms of REPE or other RE investment managers/investors.
Overall, just keep an open mind, try and talk with as many alum and others when the program starts. Remember that a lot of people on WSO have a semi-distorted view of the industry, hiring, and career paths. Not their fault, it's a lot of people still in school giving advice to each other (at times). Like the time spent on the whole 'target' vs. 'non-target' thing.... totally misunderstood (I did a post about that awhile back). REPE is also really misunderstood, people just know the names.
Don't know about options two and three, but I can comment on option one- coming out of an MSRED into a development role.
Keep in mind that development is a tough business to crack into. Teams tend to run pretty lean. You should keep an open mind about which firms you're looking at; Related and Hines are very blue chip companies and your odds of getting hired by them won't be high. Definitely try- anything's possible. But even the average HBS grad has no guarantee of an offer from one of those places.
The pedigree you'd get from a blue chip developer is great, but you'd probably spend your time there working on core high-rise projects. Which you may love, but unless you're a major star with deep-pocketed friends, you're unlikely to do projects like that on your own. So a solid but less famous developer that does (say) podium style MFR just outside the urban core might be a great fit. You'd be doing projects that you could conceivably do on your own later.
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