RCLCO Thoughts?

Hello WSO Fam -

Hope everyone is having a good summer. Have an opportunity to connect with folks at RCLCO, and wanted to get some insights.

  • How is the company culture? 
  • What is the company's reputation in the industry? 
  • Is this a good place to learn? 
  • How well does this skillset transfer to other specialties?
  • What advantages does working here provide that you wouldn't get elsewhere (capital markets or principle side)
  • Anything of note about leadership?

Thanks in advance!

12 Comments
 

Limited interaction, but the two or three people I met both seemed very smart but arrogant. Consultants who seemed more focused on showing how smart they were rather than executing deals.

Probably not a bad place to learn a lot, but not sure how smoothly the exit to a development or acquisitions seat would be if you get pigeonholed.

I would rather hire someone who cut their teeth at a brokerage rather than a consultant to join my investments team.

 
Most Helpful

I worked there a while ago, so some of this is stale, but I keep in touch with a few people there. They split the company into Fund Advisors and and Real Estate Advisors? Which are you talking to, or both?

  1. Company culture - Generally decent "no jerks" applies, but as the comment above said, given its consulting roots it attracts a lot more intellectual types that are academically smart, but maybe not as socially adept. Work hours were 8:30 - 7:30, but if there's a live deal/urgent deadline it can go to midnight+.
  2. Reputation - Generally well thought of, but not a major brand. Exit opps were decent when I was there, Fund Advisors will be much better from that perspective, and I really like who heads that part of the company.
  3. Learn - you'll get a very broad real estate education so it's a good place to figure out what you'd like to do while learning more about specifics in the industry.
  4. Skillset - decently well, depends on whether you go into the RFA or REA side though and depends on what you want your next step to be. Coming out I knew a lot about general market trends/overall real estate and got decent in excel, but I was behind who I would consider peers in actual deal modeling (this was a while ago before the split, RFA may be better now and REA is probably worse)
  5. Advantages - You'll get similar exposure that other consulting jobs would to CEO's/VPs etc. at other companies, just limited to the real estate world. 
  6. Leadership - Not a fan of Chairman, but the CEOs of the respective companies and the MD in Texas I personally thought were solid and great people to learn from. 
 

One thing you need to be eyes wide open about. The business model of RCLCO is effectively this - asset managers, acquisitions guys, and developers pay you to validate their ridiculous assumptions. You are effectively trying to back into an analysis that justifies what your clients want so they can use that to sell to lenders and LPs. I think it'd be a good place to learn for a couple years. But I would not want to do that long term.

 

Ditto what Larry David and CoffeeBong said. I did my MBA internship there. I learned everything I needed to from their platform in those 8 weeks. Once you've done one of their apartments studies and understand the mechanics of their models, you're basically just doing a creative writing assignment on justifying why this building is different from the others and why it deserves top rents. 

Hours definitely aren't 8:30 - 7:30 for the real estate advisors, maybe the fund guys are different. Definitely had some hardos who really bought into the consulting mission.

It was very hard to stay engaged, I could do the work in like a quarter of the time they gave me and didn't need to continuously review it with my boss even though she was like it's an iterative process. You'd need two rounds of edits at most, I could do the job in my sleep. Didn't get a return offer lol, I was literally quoted "He's good at the work but doesn't seem interested in being here" in my end of internship review. I don't disagree with the assessment. 

 

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