REITs - Second year analyst

Hi Everyone,

I am in my second year as an analyst at a real estate valuation consulting firm. My goals, and real passion, are for RE development and REITs. Although my current firm is not nationally recognized, it has given me a great starting point for my career. The issue that keeps coming back to haunt me, is that my undergrade is from a liberal arts school (as I started with an audio arts and acoustics concentration, and ultimately switched to small business management). Further, like i said, my current firm is not nationally recognized, although our staff is highly qualified. I have taken it upon myself to return to school, at U of Chicago, for a certificate, including courses in advanced accounting, corporate finance, economics and portfolio management. I have also taken several advanced courses in valuation.

My questions are as follows: -How do i break into the real estate development/Asset Management/REIT field? -Do employees in these fields have certains skill sets that i can develop to help my chances of landing one of these jobs? -Are there other fields (ex. commecial banking/lending) that would be a better fit for someone at my stage in their career, that would increase my value in these areas at a later time? -What backgrounds, experience and training do leader in this industry have?

Thank you all very much in advance for taking the time to help with these questions.

5 Comments
 

^^^This. Your network will be your most important tool as you progress in your career. Good call on taking those classes at UChicago, make sure to NETWORK THERE. It's a fantastic place to meet people, even younger students who are getting ready to join the workforce. Heck, you could very well meet a couple of seniors who are trying to get into different industries who could help you in a year or two after they graduate.

"You stop being an asshole when it sucks to be you." -IlliniProgrammer "Your grammar made me wish I'd been aborted." -happypantsmcgee
 

Thank you gentleman. Yea, I think just really networking and letting other know that this is the field i want to pursue, is going to be the way to make the jump. I think an MBA is in the future, so that should help to get into some of the more affluent REITs.

Side note: i have done some research on MBAs, and obviously there are some pretty great finance programs in the chicagoland area. As far as real estate goes, is it more benefitial to have an MBA from a highly ranked finance school, or one that is a highly ranked rela estate school. Its hard to find ranking for real estate concentrations, as most of the rankings are more broad. Any idea where to find rankings for B school with a concentration in RE?

Thanks very much for the feed back gentleman, i appreciate it.

 

ALWAYS go to the best school you can for your MBA. You use the MBA to switch or progress in a certain industry. If something happens, you always want the best name and network you can get (and the better the MBA program, the better the network, generally speaking).

"You stop being an asshole when it sucks to be you." -IlliniProgrammer "Your grammar made me wish I'd been aborted." -happypantsmcgee
 

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