Real estate investments vs real estate secondaries

It really depends on your personality, skills you want to develop and what you like. I have been a few years in direct investments, now in secondaries, and I regret the move. Hopefully I can get back to direct investments quickly.Let me explain. In secondaries, most of the time your team will source co-investments, GP/LP recapitalization type of deal. You will receive materials (model, market studies) and will have to check that everything makes sense. You will then chase the GPs or whoever and ask him about its assumptions, challenge everything they have been saying, and voila. It's kind of a capital allocation role in my opinion. It is very rare that you underwrite deals by yourself (at least at my firm, pretty big secondaries player, this is the case).What I liked during my stint in direct investments was to be the one in charge of modeling, putting together nice presentations for IC but also for investors, etc. I was paid to underwrite a ton of deals. I loved the pression of deploying capital and being able to raise a new funds etc. I don't feel nothing in secondaries, despite my team being great. That's my 2 cents.