USA --> CA
As the title suggests I am inquiring about moving from USA to Canada for family reasons. I would prefer Toronto or Montreal to be close to family. I am still young enough to get my MBA; however, I am reluctant to take out student loans and take a hit on opportunity costs.
I was wondering if Canadian REPE/Brokerage shops prefer USA experience over a Canadian MBA or vice versa? This move would take place in 2 years. I can either stay at my shop and save up until I land a Canadian job, or study for the GMAT and get into Ivey or something of the likes. Any feedback would be much appreciated.
(PS I am a CRE broker now in the LMM $1mm - $10mm transactions. Mix of owner/user and investment sales.)
Bump to avoid robot.
From my experience covering Canada, it’s far more institutionalized than the States as a whole. Toronto, Montreal, Quebec, Vancouver are all going to present different challenges from an entitlement and pricing perspective.
If I were in your shoes, I’d be looking hard at the top brokerages in any of those markets (Colliers is based out of Toronto, CBRE, etc) as well as the big private/public players should you want to be on the other side. It would be a tough hike working boutique when you don’t have a good existing network to bank on up here.
Thanks for the info. Do you think working at Avison Young would help? I believe they are based out of Toronto, too. I could potentially jump on the capital markets team where i am now. The guy who runs it in my market wants me on his team.
I would say no - Avison Young is generally not viewed that well in Canada. Would you prefer to move to brokerage or buy side? Brokerage-side, our strongest brokers nationally are by far RBC Capital Markets' brokerage team and CBRE's National Investment Team (CBRE also has a few strong asset-specific regional teams). Regionally speaking, Colliers is also quite strong in Toronto.
Would much rather go buy side if I had the choice.
Is that still the case for Colliers? I thought their Capital Markets team went over to Institutional Property Advisors.
Depends on the product type. I would stick to larger shops than that personally though and I haven’t had any interactions with them so can’t speak to them personally.
Imo, actual work experience trumps the additional degree. I know quite a few people including myself, who’ve made the move from the US/UK to Canada and found it not as difficult (albeit with post-grad degrees plus the work experience to back it up).
I think you should leverage your existing strengths and experiences… if you’ll like to stay in brokerage (and you work for a global company with presence in Canada), start utilizing that network. If you want to work in REPE, the biggest up skill between that and brokerage is probably modelling skills. If you’re adept, you should be good, if not then build it up.
Ultimately you’re already in the industry and not a newbie trying to figure things out from scratch. Yes it’ll help if you fit the typical status quo from a recruitment perspective, but nothing wrong in standing out as well.
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