Rare inquiry: REPE to Brokerage?

I have worked in both sell side and buyside - below are a few differences that I noticed between the two:

Personality - as can be expected, brokerage is a much more social environment. This is both externally talking with clients, as well as internally (you are sharing the office with not just investment sales but also the leasing teams which are pure sales roles - lots of extroverts). I found the brokerage environment a lot more fun for this reason, but if you are more introverted it may be a negative. I will add that this will likely sound fun if you are earlier on in your career, but the senior brokers would sometimes complain about not being able to go home to see their family because they would have to go entertain clients after work - typically drinks/dinner.

Skillset - despite a lot of buyside people liking to think they are superior to brokers in their underwriting, I would argue that is not the case if you are on a good team, and the two are very similar. I actually found that the underwriting I did in brokerage was more realistic than in my current or previous buyside roles as we had better access to data through our internal leasing teams and comp database. I had a better overall view of the market in brokerage as you know what everyone is doing, whereas on the buyside you have a bit of a blind spot to what other firms are doing. You also underwrite with less bias because you are not an owner trying to achieve a target return, or a buyer trying to win a deal or push something through your investment committee. Sometimes you may have to be a bit aggressive on cap rates to win a pitch, but it is always in the realm of a realistic value - nobody wants to win a pitch on an unachievable value, and then upset your client by the actual bids being much lower, or worse - waste everyone’s time because they aren’t willing to sell at its actual market price.

Risk tolerance - as expected there is higher risk in brokerage. At a certain point you are expected to go purely commission (typically this is at the associate level but it sounds like you are getting a base salary so may not be the case for your firm). If you are on a strong team in at least a decent market, you should always make out alright. The downside is there is no carry that can result in big paydays down the line as there is on the buyside, but overall I think you are doing better than the average buyside employee in a typical year (again, if you are on a good team). Paydays can also be very lumpy with transaction closings being dispersed so you will have to be good at budgeting. This is more the case if you are joining a lean team as there will likely be fewer closings than if you were on a larger team - a bigger piece of each sale, but fewer sales in total (larger gaps between closings).

Exit Opps - I disagree with people saying senior brokers can’t move to the buyside, and that if you want to do it you have to do it early in your career. Especially if you have buyside experience. I have seen VP’s and SVP’s move to reputable firms on the buyside with only brokerage experience. One limitation however is your market - most of your knowledge will be on the market in which you work, and your network will also be within that market. Depending on your buyside firm, that may or may not be the case and I believe there is more flexibility to relocate to an entirely different market on the buyside.

One other consideration, and likely the most important, would be to gauge how well you will get along with the brokerage team. May be hard to determine this, but try to gauge how happy the juniors on the team are - are they being treated fairly in terms of their split of the fees generated or does the senior broker take advantage (the split is negotiated within the team, not by the company)? Once you are with one team, it is not very common to lateral to another firm unless the entire team is going. If you do, you will likely take a hit on pay and responsibilities until the rapport is built with the new team.

Hope this helps and good luck with your decision!