VP/Director Level Comp in Real Estate

Once you're at that level, there's a good chance you're getting salary + large bonus + meaningful carry. How these mix and shake out can vary drastically by the type of place you're at. 

If you want to know NYC, I'd just look at the Rhodes Associates report as that is largely made up of NYC comps. 

Outside of NYC, I'd say it generally breaks down as follows, though it's going depend on location, strategy, product type, etc. I'm assuming this is for a standard VP level around that 8 - 9 years of experience mark.

REPE Fund / Debt Fund - These are always going to pay the most cash comp on a stable basis since they have more steady fees rolling in. I'd say most typical is $300k - $400k in cash comp, usually split about 50/50 between salary and bonus. Anything under $250k and I'm calling you too underpaid regardless of your market. Anything over $450k - $500k and you can consider yourself crushing it if that's on a steady basis (I think a lot of people may have made big bonuses getting them over $500k in 2021 with that insane transaction volume, but that won't continue). Your carry here should likely equate to another $150k - $200k a year on average if your fund's returns are hitting their base case scenario, though most of this is probably paid out in chunks which you likely might not start to see for at least a couple years. 

Local Operator / Developer - These are harder to pinpoint. More often than not, you're going to get a much more significant piece of carry that's paid out on a deal-by-deal basis (which is much better than how it's paid on a fund since you can hit a home run on one deal and flop on the next deal and still walk away with a big check). I'd say generally, you're looking anywhere from $125k - $200k salary for most people. Bonuses here are the tough part, and are likely dependent on how much carry you're getting. Some places will give you a 25 - 30% bonus even at this level but give you a large enough % of carry that it will trump your cash comp just on a base case scenario with the ability to make you do cart wheels if things really go well, though that also means that you could walk away with nothing during rough times. I know a few people that made $1M - $3M checks this way when they were 28 - 32 years old, but most of that happened around 2021 with the insane market we had but now some of them are back to making $200k all-in and hoping that they can at least scrape together a new deal or two this year so they don't lose their job.  The name of the game working for a local operator / developer is to consider what you could be making in a more typical REPE / debt fund setting but know that these firms typically don't have the balance sheet to compete on their cash comp, so take into account the trade-offs and benefits here to come to a package that you're happy with (working for these companies is typically a better lifestyle and a bit more fun as you're a bigger fish in a smaller pond and have much more control of your time and success, but you're going to trade off surety in near-term cash comp in exchange for potential making a huge upside if things go well).  When you go into the other thread of people complaining about not getting bonuses this year, I bet you they almost all fall into this category of company, but nearly all of the people my age I'm most jealous of due to the amount of money they made in 2019 - 2021 also fall into this category. When you here about folks that made huge bonuses that fall into this category, it's usually because their bonuses are explicitly tied to the amount of deals they closed that year or the amount of acquisition fees their deals brought in, so in insane years they can still hit big cash bonuses.

I really don't have a go sense of what VP level comp is on the lending side outside of debt funds, but I know they're generally a bit lower on cash comp compared to REPE/debt funds and don't have nearly the upside, but they offer a lot more stability and a lot better chance of working 30 - 40 hours a week on average. 

Final point to make is that there is an insane depth when it comes to the different types of CRE companies / opportunities. So what I'm saying above fits towards the middle of the bell curve that applies to most of the places we are all working for, but you'll come across plenty of opportunities that may fall well outside of these parameters and it's up to you to decide if it's worthwhile due to the circumstances. Maybe you're becoming the #2 to a young developer that's starting to crush it and he's hardly going to pay you cash comp but you decide it's worth it because you have faith in this guy and know you're going to be the first partner of a successful endeavor once things start to take off. You may find a company that has an excellent founder that just raised their first fund and it's too small for them to pay you $350k - $400k a year in cash comp, but you know that if things go well they'll eventually triple the size of their fund and you'll have an MD position waiting for you. Or maybe you'd just rather work 80 hours a week the rest of your life at Blackstone to be making some seriously big cash comp checks. There's all sizes and flavors to this game.