I was thinking about buying a vacant lot and building a small personal home to gain first-hand experience about real estate development. Do you guys think this is overkill? Would an interviewer find it admirable or think I'm a tool? I want to work in commercial real estate PE/Development in a few years.
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Pursuing a similar career, and from what I’ve been told, residential and commercial development are worlds apart and knowledge in one will not necessarily help you succeed in the other.
I think a much more fruitful use of your time would be in financial modeling courses, books, certifications, and maybe even some sort of higher education.
There are cheaper ways to learn how to develop RE and I’m not sure how transferable the skill set would be to larger development projects.
Agree with the other comments. Some of the skills you learn will transfer to CRE, but not that many. On the other hand, if you plan to go into personal, direct RE investing on a small scale (ie owning small multifamilies or SFR rentals), building a single family house would teach you a lot.
You'll also be surprised how time consuming it is, and how much management the subs will need. The best SFR general contractors tend to do custom, high-end houses for individual homeowners. They do a good job without needing too much babysitting, but they're expensive. You'll find that the project won't pencil out as an investment if you use a GC like that, which means you need to find a cheap one or GC it yourself. Many SFR and small-scale MFR developers have construction licenses and GC the projects, but you may find that difficult if you don't know much about construction.
Solid input, thank you
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