What is the most intellectually stimulating job in CRE?
As the title says, what in your opinion is the most intellectually stimulating role in real estate?
I’m approaching the two year mark in IS and I’m looking to make a switch. In regard to my current role, I’ve grown quite bored of the repetitiveness of brokerage, and the fact that I feel like I’m no longer learning anything new. I hope to minimize these feelings in my next role without completely starting over - I would like to continue doing something finance related that will qualify for CFA work experience. Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Research / Proptech
The cool thing about working in real estate research is the data availability is so far behind other sectors, that their is a ton of cool research to do that hasn’t been done yet.
like what type of data do you mean?
I'd have to say it depends on the person - some people find acquisitions stimulating, others don't. Some like asset management. Etc. For me, I find acquisitions to be the most stimulating, but I would have to say, since you don't like IS, you may not enjoy acquisitions. It's pretty similar in most respects. Maybe you would like asset management?
Depends what you find to be intellectually stimulating to be quite honest.
If you're looking to pursue your CFA I'd say acquisitions is your best bet - not sure if AM would qualify for work hours. That being said, acquisitions isn't going to be much different than IS, you're just looking at deals from a different perspective. In my opinion, the most intellectually stimulating roles are development and research, and the reason for that is the wide range of day to day work you do in those roles.
In development you do everything ranging from figuring out the financial side of things, to diligence, to project management. Your day to day varies widely based on the phase of the project you're in. Depending on where you work and how they allocate work to their development team, a percentage of your hours in a development role would likely qualify for CFA hours.
In research, particularly in-house research, you'll be looking at a broad range of markets and beyond basic market research, will also be researching and compiling information on trends in different asset classes (e.g. in retail you might do a deep dive into e-commerce and how that has impacted retail strategies in fashion/grocery/whatever). Some places will even put their research guys on tasks to support leasing/asset management - doing deep dive financial analysis on tenants to understand their company's current financial position to help in negotiations and in decision making in terms of how many of said stores you might want in your portfolio (for retail) to avoid having too much square footage allotted to a high risk tenant.
Regardless, for CFA hours acquisitions and maybe asset management.
Portfolio Management at a high level might be considered intellectually stimulating. Understanding various fund structures, promotes/cross-promotes, blocker entities, etc. You'd essentially become an expert at how waterfalls work on a portfolio-level which is probably the most advanced you can get in terms of calculations. Portfolio theory comes into play once you're at an executive role and that may be considered intellectually stimulating as well if you're so inclined; asset allocation, diversification, ensuring liquidity, managing revolving credit facilities, etc.
some might disagree with me, a lot of it's personal preference, but i would say a securities research-type gig especially under some crazy fucker like Jonathan Litt. being able to size up an entire company is something i personally admire. there's more going on, it's like directing a symphony vs being able to play 1-3 instruments. i'm sure someone here will say that's giving those guys too much credit.
there is also some other type of research going on at Green Street Advisors that's NOT reit-related (i was told) but still could be stimulating, though i really only say that because they supposedly hire brainy people.
I think the research for a hedge fund type operation like Litt's would be very, very intellectual and challenging.
Research & Strategy is the "brainiest" part of most organizations (bias alert, this is my field...). The analytical nature and constant need to solve problems can be very intellectual. How "sophisticated" a team is can vary greatly by the size/type/nature of an organization, but the trend is to adding data scientists in addition to economist types to many of the big teams.
I'd assume much of the institutional real estate world would qualify for CFA experience, at least for buyside type roles.
There’s different kinds of “intellectual stimulation.” Lots of answers saying research. That could also be incredibly boring depending on where you end up. Acquisitions can also be dreadfully boring (buying stabilized multifamily) or interesting (complicated rescue capital that you invent the structure for). A lot of this has to do with the ethos of the firm rather than the role itself. Find smart, hard working people and they’ll probably be doing something interesting (“stimulating” - honestly I hate that word)
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