RE is not prestigious

Real estate is not prestigious. You have lower prestige than us in high finance such as IB/PE. Even CD is more prestigious than real estate. Maybe you are above PWM but other than that you’re at the bottom

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Controversial

Whoever those people are they’re below investment bankers

 

I just left I-banking after being promoted to associate - pretty sure I can get whatever banking job I want lol.
 

There is an absolute dearth of talent in banking right now. People just don’t want to do it beyond the analyst level. The recruiters were actually so annoying. I’d tell them I’d want to do REPE and they’d continue to ping me for Associate IB roles at BBs and EBs.

Think about that… Evercore is having a hard time finding people at the associate level

 
Most Helpful

Sigh... I'll bite.

I don't think anybody on this board is going to disagree with you that RE generally has much lower barriers to entry than IB/PE, and therefore is less "prestigious" since less people come from Ivy/top MBA backgrounds or had to have relevant internships since sophomore year to break in or whatever.

I also don't think anybody will disagree than RE finance is generally less complex than IB/PE, because modelling out property rents/opex is obviously way simpler than some multinational tech or healthcare company with dozens of business lines.  So if complexity = "prestige", then IB/PE certainly wins again.

But.. What's your point? You want to feel better after sacrificing your entire college social experience just so you can work 100 hour weeks for all that "prestige" when in reality your experience is nothing like the "high finance" you saw  in movies when you put yourself on this path as an 18 year old?

So yeah, I don't disagree RE is less prestigious than IB/PE, but I've also never met somebody in RE who gives a shit, or who wouldn't burst out laughing in the face of some weird nerd seriously talking about the "prestige" of IB/PE to them.  Most people in RE recognize how to be a top income earner while still living a normal fun life.

 

Feeding the trolls... c'mon!

And "prestige" means different things to different people.  I think there is prestige in helping create something, instead of shuffling someone else's money around for fees you don't earn.  If you go by the investment banking definition of prestige, then of course real estate is less prestigious - most people on these forums are so busy pleasuring themselves to the fantasy of all that prestige they'll have in IB that they don't ever bother to think that someone else might possibly prefer to do anything else with their time.

 

In general, I'd say most RE people don't care about "Prestige". It feels as if most people in IB use "prestige" and how they think others will perceive them to compensate for ungodly unsustainable work hours in jobs they don't even like...which also explains why most IB analysts leave so quickly

 

Let's look at the Prestige pyramid using easy to understand numbers.

BB IB: 100 analysts per class.

EB IB: 50 analysts per class. 

REPE shop: 10 analysts per class

EB IB: 5 MDs per class

EB IB: 3 MDs per class

REPE: Partners per class 3 - 4

If you look at just the "prestige" of the job on day one vs the career as a whole I would say RE has far more senior level career paths than IB does.  But if you value having "investment banking analyst" on your CV well I guess go that way and end up in a jr exec job at a f500 company when you retire.

 

I think real estate for sure has a much lower barrier of entry compared to PE/IB. With that said, it doesn’t mean real estate professionals are losers by any means. It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, as long as you are passionate about what you do and you’re doing your very best to kill it, you’re going to be successful. They say residential real estate brokerage is the bottom feeder position within the real estate “hierarchy”, and while that argument has some validity (you don’t need to know math, the exam to get a license is a joke, etc), there are top realtors making 7 figures. It’s also far easier to set up your own acquisition/development shop than to start your own PE/IB firm or a hedge fund for that matter. Different strokes for different folks. Do what truly interests you and don’t listen to the noise about “prestige”, because at the end of the day, prestige shouldn’t matter if you’re happy with what you do and making good money and having opportunities to grow.

 

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