Need some advice on next steps. I started in development for a family office for 3 years, moved and joined an investment sales team as a senior analyst for 2 years, made the jump back to development, I’m two years in and we work on “cool” unique deals and some historic tax credit deals, but we barely do any volume and the company doesn’t even have predevelopment dollars to actually pursue new opportunities.
It feels like I’m on a sinking ship, but I really enjoy working with my “partner” equivalent at the company. In a perfect world we’d start our own shop, but we don’t have much $$ to either of our names and not many groups are going to hire a package deal. I’m looking for a lot more volume or upside while I’m still young and have time to grind (I’m 29). Not sure if I should look back at investment sales on the broker side or try to make another lateral move to a more established development shop. I’m in a smaller market so need to be careful about “networking” so they don’t know I’m looking around.
Comp right now is $100k and no one received a raise or bonus last year because of then financial position of the company. I’m at the associate level but hoping for better this year come December and a promo because of value added, but we haven’t sold or refi’d out of anything (and I’ve seen company financials). I feel like I’ve wasted 2 valuable years of my life with not much “resume” experience or financial gain to show for it. Also 3 mid level people have left this year and it’s a team of ~10 not including accounting.
Writing is on the wall, no raise or bonus at all and 3 out of what were a 13 person team left. Was at a similar sized firm and 4 juniors were gone within a 2 month period, it points to a toxic culture and seems those 3 maybe were owed money that was never paid out - you don't know why but you know it was bad enough for them to leave (did they have new roles lined up).
It is a sinking ship for everyone and they will get rid of you if needed. Start looking for a new role, brokerage on the top team in your market.
No new deals = no new revenue at a dev firm. Maybe they aren't great at what they do, how can they/the principals have no liquidity? Time to leave was yesterday, who cares about working relationship when you're both unemployed. Everyone will look out for themselves first even your friend.
Just going to second this, primarily, "the time to leave was yesterday."
All 3 had new roles lined up in the same city at firms doing similar things, I know one was owed money.
We call ourselves a development firm, but we don't even have a formal investment committee and don't have actual capital to move forward with projects if we needed to. We have a $300M+ portfolio, but a lot of the properties are sucking wind and it feels like we operate like bootstrapping syndicators who are hungry for fees, but have a "good reputation" in the market. Which isn't anything, but also doesn't pay the bills or inspire a ton of confidence.
So that tells you, smaller portfolio and it's not doing well. There's family families in NYC with billion dollar portfolio's who have minimal staff, $300mm is really nothing I mean what can they be earning from cash flow on that 5% so $15mm? That's not a lot especially if there's a principal who wants to make $1-2mm+ for a lifestyle.
There's massive firms in NYC that have gone under due to the risks of real estate development and timing/liquidity (see HFZ), look for a new job this firm is going down and can lose these properties in a second. Reputation means nothing when they can't pay bills and are not paying employees what they owe, seems like leadership should've been better at liquidity management and very conservative with cash.
I feel this to the core- i'm not sure what to do so i'm softly looking and decide come bonus time at year end
There could be no bonuses lol and if the firm is not doing well there likely may not be. Start looking asap.
Start applying and interviewing today.
Disagree with the above poster. A couple things:
1. You're in development. Market has been crapp. Many have lost their jobs in this cycle. So you not getting a raise/bonus makes complete sense.
2. You have been working for 3 years. So thats since 2021. Therefore all you experienced was rate hikes and a market slowdown. What do you expect for the company to do? Even the larger shops have struggled.
3. Of course you havent sold or refi'd, interest rates have spiked and unless your company is in distress or has floating rate debt why would they sell/refi.
Your career trajectory isn't like a linear growth chart. It might be my age or me giving you dad advice but you're fine given the market that we're in. I used to be like you too when I was young, full of ambition and wanting to grow year after year (careerwise), but unfortunately there's outside factors at play. If you're unhappy then apply elsewhere but just remember the grass is not always greener. I'm seeing lots of people in development that got laid off that are looking.
FYI, historic tax credits are a very unique niche that not a lot of people know how to navigate. You might have built yourself a very nice skillset in the long run.
I agree with you that the market is crap, I started working in CRE in 2017 so I was riding the wave on the investment sales side when interest rates were sub 3.0% and we were selling value-add multifamily.
I also agree that the HTC process and developments are an interesting niche, but working on them for the last 2 years I think there's a reason not many people pay attention to them. They're incredibly complicated and from the deals I've seen the juice has not been worth the squeeze.
I think part of it is attributed to the company leadership and how there's a general lack of focus on what we specialize in. This means that we're looking at ground-up multi and HTC hospitality deals, and mixed-use retail sites which make looking at a new deal like starting ground 0 every single time knowledge-wise. Part of it can be attributed to the market, we delivered a few projects at tough times construction cost-wise and interest rate like you mentioned, but looking back at the basis and how deals were underwritten previously to my arrival it's not shocking they're in the situation that they're in today.
Ideally, I'd like to find something that's compelling enough to work on that the company doesn't have the resources for or "won't contribute equity towards" and use that as a launching pad to break off and pursue our own deals / start our own shop.
Take the leap. Compile a track record ,and start your own shop.
This
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