Top Brokerage firm primary mkt VS PGIM Real Estate?
What's the general take on this in terms of opportunities to go to REPE firms outside of LifeCos?
Would an analyst in LA in a top investment sales team have better opportunities after 2-3 year to go to top REPE firms than analyst doing acq/am at PGIM Real Estate in LA?
Could go either way. IMO I think IS analyst in core market, top caliber team > PGIM.
General observation here; a lot of people on this forum like to romanticize being at a LifeCo. Of my friends at LifeCos they basically all want to leave. Reasons are as follows: (i) bureaucratic, (ii) very challenging to climb corporate ladder, (iii) redundant work.
Do lifeco only handle the more boring strategies (lots of core deals)?
Depends, but the big shops like PGIM, Nuveen, USAA, etc. do pretty much everything, core, value-add, opportunistic, development, REIT funds, lending. They are not actually LifeCos.... They are investment management businesses started by LifeCos, they take third party money, and really are no different from any other real estate private equity type shop or large investment manager (like Blackrock).
The traditional LifeCo real estate arm does exist, I think MetLife is a good example of such (Northwestern Mutual and New York Life are others). But even the traditional lifeco can do opportunistic/development deals.
The bottom line (and what is so badly missed on WSO)...
Firm type IS NOT THE SAME as Strategy/Business Model
Core, value add, opportunistic, development, distressed, etc. are all investment modes (or strategies)
Open-end fund, closed-end fund, single deal fund/venture, separately managed account (SMAs), etc. are all business models/fund modes
AND there is no reason that any FIRM can or cannot do any strategy above in any business model/fund mode above (it's just a matter if they can raise the money).
This creates great confusion on WSO, to the point that you get posts that literally ask "Should not take an REPE job so I can do another job to get an REPE job?"
Also, why I advise never say "I want to work in REPE" to an actual professional, you might confuse them, and won't be saying much. (I mean, it's like saying "I want to work in real estate that's not publicly traded")
I will agree and tack on that I recently had a super day with one of the listed firms. They were doing big deals and a ton of ground-up work. They seemed to basically have enough diversification where you would basically be seeing every type of RE investment (e.g. core, value-add, some opportunistic, etc). Any of those would be a great way to cut your teeth and also, an easy way to network with large GPs should you want to lateral away.
This guy gets it
Bump
So, the question before you is.... Do you want to be a broker or investment analyst? If you don't want to be a broker, but do want to work in institutional real estate on the principal side..... I don't where there would be much debate.
First, and I really hope this won't surprise anyone, but working as analyst at for a top IS team is NOT a guarantee of a job at some big name PE shop on their real estate team. I mean, could that job materialize, of course! But you may need to pair that BK experience with an M7 MBA or something up there if you really want to get a job with Blackstone, KKR, Carlyle or their like.
That leads to the offer from the frim that ranks #14 on the PERE Top 100 for 2020 and #13 on the IREI list for 2019 (#8 for North America, and #10 for Asia)..... PGIM.
This is a legit principal job, and PGIM is one of the top names in the business and has a great track record of training new people entering the industry, and they have "alumni" everywhere (since you are concerned with exit ops). They were early pioneers in the institutional real estate game, and they are as much "REPE" as anyone else. They are know for their large open-end core funds, but they also do value-add, opportunistic/development deals, manage portfolios of public REIT securities, and have a huge lending arm (I mean they run lifeco money, so of course they must). They also are doing a lot of SMAs I believe, in short, they are a supermarket of the real estate investment industry. Everyone knows their name, it is possibly one of the best firms you could get a job with in the business (in part, one of the few willing to hire people out of UG).
I get that WSO world seems to find investment management firms started by LifeCos to be lesser than the real estate units of those started by traditional PE firms, but it's not like you can just wave a wand and get a job at the latter. The comments from ThatGuyBalls friends aren't necessarily wrong, and the reasons listed are actually the correct ones (lack of prestige is a BS one you see on WSO). Guess what, I know people who worked for "Mega Fund" PE based RE platforms that hated it also; for them it was simple, getting treated like shit, working 80-90 hours, and not having a life wasn't worth the $200k they legit made a few years out of school (some straight up quit).
I guess that is a personal preference at the end of the day, I know plenty of people with long careers at PGIM, Nuveen, USAA, AEW, BlackRock, and others, some like it a lot, others would probably move along if they could (my first major mentor/boss in RE was a PGIM alum from a decade prior, he is a CEO of a fund business with about $3-4 billion AUM now).
Bottom line, PGIM = principal (i.e. you are in the game), IS BK = service provider (i.e. you are outside looking in). This is no knock on the IS analyst roles, you see tons of deal activity and frankly I can totally get behind the idea of a "stint" in IS for learning and networking purposes. BUT, you may end up jumping for a firm/role lesser than the one with PGIM you turn down to take the IS role.
Would agree you can't go wrong, just think carefully about what you really want to be..... a broker or an investment analyst, that is how to really make the decision IMHO.
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