Seeking Advice: How Do You Get Value from ULI Membership?
Hey! I’m a young professional, graduated last year and currently work in real estate finance in NYC. I’ve been a ULI New York member for about a year, but honestly I’m still trying to figure out whether the membership is worth the cost.
I pay $150/year ish for the membership, but for most events and conferences, there are additional fees on top of that. I do use Knowledge Finder occasionally, but I haven’t found it to be significantly different from the real estate podcasts, newsletters, and industry news I already follow.
For those who are active ULI members, how do you actually get value out of the membership? Are there specific events, committees, networking opportunities, or resources that have made a meaningful difference for your career?
I’m trying to decide whether I should renew next year or put that money/time elsewhere. Would love to hear how others have leveraged ULI, especially early-career professionals in real estate.
Thanks!
For me, the value comes from networking through their in-person events (workshops, conferences, under 35 programs, etc). Of course, it's hard to put an exact value/price on networking. Depends on whether that networking leads to actually valuable relationships, but a lot of that depends on the effort you put in and the value you provide others. Keep in mind you may develop relationships that only show their value years down the line, and in the meantime you have no idea if they'll ever "pay off" or help you in any way. So again, just hard to put an exact value on it, but generally it's a solid way to meet people in your market/industry. The one draw in my opinion is that the events sometimes become saturated with non-real estate people (vendors, engineering consultants, title companies, environmental consultants, etc) who are trying to win your business, rather than real estate people you're probably trying to meet (other lenders, developers, brokers, investors, etc). Not sure if that's true across the board or just the ones I've been to, but worth confirming. Something else to consider is how active your firm/role is in your home market. I've lived/worked in cities where the local ULI wasn't a strong value proposition for me because 90% of my deals were in other states, so less of a reason to network with my local ULI. If your firm has a significant presence and business focus where you're based, might make sense to spend the $150, but make sure you actually use it to develop relationships.
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