RE Debt -> Development/Acquisitions?
Brief background on my situation, I've been working at a large bank working on a Balance Sheet originations team for a little over a year now. We, like everyone else, have had extremely limited deal flow and as a result I have yet to be staffed on a single new origination. Granted, I've been staffed on a ton of modifications and extensions where we essentially restructure an entire loan, but haven't taken an OM from cradle to grave. So, my underwriting muscle is nonexistent and most of my day to day education revolves around how to be a great employee at a bank, rather than a real estate professional.
I love Real Estate. I accepted this position because I thought it would be a great training ground to build solid real estate fundamentals until I inevitably decided to move on. Given the lack of transaction volume, most of my responsibilities involve processing FF&E requests and general AM/PM activities which couldn't be farther from the story behind the sticks and bricks of what we lended on.
I've started to shop around for a new role/respond to the recruiter messages I get on LinkedIn and have had pretty abysmal luck. Most of the feedback I've received from the 3rd party recruiter/interviewer is that my lack of transaction experience is a pretty big hole. This whole situation is kind of a nasty Catch 22 in that I'm looking for a new position in order to gain more specialized RE knowledge/experience, but in order to land that role I need the exact thing. I don't love debt and am trying to break into the equity side of RE ASAP, but I'm really not sure how to proceed given the reasons above. Completely unrelated, but my employer knows what they're doing and have about a ~10k higher base compared to what PE shops in the area dish out to their analysts (higher bonuses at these shops though).
I know that most of this is completely out of my control and general market conditions are going to be what they're going to be, but I feel like I could be a lot farther along in terms of tangible skillset/RE knowledge had I been involved in a few transactions. Equity roles, especially outside of AM are pretty few and far between in my Market and I know the answer is more than likely sit, wait, and shut the fuck up you get paid way too much to work way too little, but writing this post couldn't hurt. Appreciate any advice on how y'all might've moved from RE Debt to the Buy Side.
Go Hokies.
Why not go to a debt fund
You definitely sound like a 23 year old whiny entitled baby in this post. The market is shitty, your team has no production and the company hasn't let you go, especially when you've admitted that you are overpaid for the market, and you are worried about "growth" and "reps" as an analyst because working isn't like the movies. Grow the fuck up and actually do something productive with the time.
Just because you haven't been staffed on a live deal does not proclude you from taking the OM and practicing underwriting.
If you were in an interview with me and said, hey, business was slow, but I did a bunch of practice underwriting, talked to me about risks and mitigants of a deal, and said, if it were my money, i would of done xyz. I would be wholly impressed and it would make me think that you actually thought like an investor instead of an excel monkey.
Another avenue for growth: understand that the FFE draw that you are approving was most likely put together by an accountant or equity PM. Run back through those invoices, design/construction drawings and try and figure out the process on their side. Why they scheduled what they did or why they are doing the projects they are doing. Sometimes it is as easy as "this broke so we fixed it" and sometimes it is "this wasn't working, so we changed it." Just because most debt people don't get into the weeds of an asset means that you can't.
tough, but fair. appreciate the feedback.
Going to echo the above. Know that you’re not the only analyst-level person experiencing this, and it might go so far that it’s the experience of most analyst-level real estate folks right now.
You need to be soaking every minute of downtime you have into self learning. Poke around the company files. Re underwrite stuff. Learn everything you can about the deals your team was doing a few years ago and ask questions when appropriate to the guys above you. If you have the access, you can start doing your own side studies of how loans are performing today vs how they were originally underwritten, and you can try to figure out if there was something that was missed originally.
Just get creative and double down on ownership over your role.
Edit: this doesn't mean wasting your time creating busy work. this means doing a set of tasks/exercises that make you more knowledgeable and valuable to your team
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