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Perhaps someone who is actually working can give you a better answer, so take what I say with a grain of salt. I would say it depends on the shop, no? If they feel you're ready and have the experience needed and they need an associate you'd get promoted. Perhaps if you're really good you could make the jump early. Most likely this would be true for smaller shops, where there is not a structured path. At bigger shops with a structure in place, making the jump early would be a lot harder, if it's even possible.
Titles are not so set in stone like in investment banking. It really depends from shop to shop. There are plenty of "analysts" making more at some firms than some VP's at others.
I hate to answer with a non-answer but we need more specifics to guide you - not only is it dependent by the shop but also influenced by the product type, type of shop (private equity, development, asset manager, etc), size of company, the list goes on and on.
As others have chimed in, titles are very fluid in real estate and the analyst to associate jump is probably the hardest to specify as almost every “sub-industry” within real estate uses “analyst” as their entry level position. This includes asset managers, private equity investors, developers, debt positions, market research, etc. - literally just slap that in front of “analyst” and you’ve got 99% of the titles in first year jobs in CRE.
As one of the more senior monkeys on here who has trained plenty of young guns I’ll guide you generally - the speed you are talking about at most shops would be rare. Even the best analysts take a minimum of 6 months to get up to speed but more like 12 months where we can consider them past “break even” from an internal training/productivity standpoint.
The reality is real estate has so many moving parts/lingo/industry specific knowledge that one needs to gain that coupling that with company specific information and basic analyst training (formatting, details, quality expectations, how to communicate, etc.) just straight up takes a long time even if you’re a quick learner. Associate level production requires you to have a grasp on all this while balancing multiple deals and condensing all the detail down to a high level to present to senior leadership while also training other analysts.
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