Which roles in RE are typically not over a desk but also have a high earning potential?
Are there any roles in RE that are more “in the field” that also have a high earning potential? Obviously small development shops, entrepreneurial stuff and construction lead roles meet this criteria, but wondering if I’m missing any.
Depends what you mean by "in the field." If you just mean "not chained to a desk," a good senior broker is primarily spending their time at lunches, on golf courses, in speaking events, on top of mountains at ski resorts, etc. The closest I would want my brokers to a desk is maybe a board room presentation, but even then they're the guy who tells you how it really is going to go after the analyst finishes their slides. I'm not hiring them or their blazers to do actual analysis. They're getting paid for their connections.
If you mean literally "in the field" as in construction, then yes, you can make a lot of money that way, especially if you become the MD or the partner who oversees all of that for the company. Also, some of the big name firms have a "project management" execution-based path these days that is separate from their deal-making path. In my boomer days, you had developers who did deal-making AND oversaw execution and construction managers who were hired out of GC shops to speak blue collar to the GC, but more firms seem to have split this into a deal-making vertical, a development management/execution vertical, and a construction management vertical.
Finally, and I'm not sure how many people this would apply to here, but if you are a former GC-type person or even better, a maintenance man-type without a drug problem who is presentable to management, you can make a whole lot of money for yourself as a regional operations specialist. This isn't sexy at all—you're bouncing between properties and lecturing the resident maintenance staffs on how shitty they're performing while making sure a bunch of miserable CapEx gets completed—but I couldn't do it. I don't know anything about roof reliability or HVAC equipment failures, so that means I need to hire someone who does.
Like CRE's comment, brokerage is probably the most "in the field" route that you'll find in CRE, but honestly any white collar job is going to have a large desk component to it. Even brokers need to sit down and review OMs, email people, have Zooms/phone calls, etc.
Even construction isn't really entirely "in the field", I worked for a GC for several years prior to moving to development and spent a decent amount of time walking the site, but there are still long stretches when you're chained to your desk. Project management for construction is a lot of paperwork: RFIs, change orders, submittals, coordination meetings, scheduling, pricing, etc. If you were a superintendent you'd be spending a lot more of your time actually on the construction site, but that's so far removed from "real estate", it's a construction job and is a totally different skill-set and knowledge base than, say, being a developer. Any construction jobs won't really give you high earning potential, a Sr. PM at a midsize GC will be comfortable but they will still be paid far less than a Director/VP at your average REPE/Dev shop. To really make money in construction you need to be in the principal role, and you're not going to be on site for that.
Fundamentally, the key ways to make money in real estate is to have some sort of equity/participation in deals or be in between deals (i.e. a broker) and skim off the top, both require you to be out there and constantly wheeling and dealing.
One option that could work, different from everything above, would be to work for a large retail corporation, like Apple or McDonalds on their real estate teams. I've seen roles advertised for AM work at places like that that are 50-75% travel, you will definitely be spending a lot more time at build-outs. It might not be that sexy (managing data centers for Microsoft, for example), but I think it'll be more involved and on-site than managing data centers for Prologis.
One small bone to pick, i agree that a GC Super is not a real estate role, but if you move from Sr PM to PX to VP in a larger GC firm, you are making good money. I'm seeing VPs get $300 base. They may not have equity like a developer, but $300k plus a bonus is good money.
I'm in development, more on the dev/construction side than the dealmaking side as CRE discussed. I can get in the field a bit and can travel, but I'm in front of a computer a lot.
In some of the corporate roles yes you're traveling, but much of the time you may be sitting at a job site in meetings all day.
How is this not a "real estate" role? A superintendant is far MORE of a real estate role than almost anything else I can think of, since, you know... they're actually working on and in the real estate portion of the deal.
By this logic, no one is in real estate. An acquisitions analyst might never lay eyes on the building they're underwriting - how is that real estate, and not finance? Even the principal of a development shop might do little more than negotiate deal terms (legal role) or engage with local politicians and bureaucrats (lobbying).
GCs construct a project based on a set of plans commissioned by real estate developers and make their money by delivering exactly what was put on paper with not much liberty to diverge from that plan. They aren't incentivized to get creative or apply their vision of what a property could be, as that isn't their job. They don't buy or transact on property. They usually aren't involved when the value and best use of a property is determined and a decision is made to commission a project. They don't participate in the equity raising or have any skin in the game in most cases. If you ran into a superintendent around town and asked them what they did, would they say real estate? No. They would say they are in construction.
This is a real estate forum, how many superintendents are active here?
We're getting into semantics here, so sure I'll say superintendents are INVOLVED in real estate, but they are not real estate professionals under the commonly understood definition.
I googled "who works in real estate" and in the first 25 positions i got back, I'm not seeing construction roles as roles people typically think of when thinking of real estate professionals:
Property management
Real Estate Appraiser
Real estate broker
Leasing Agent
Real estate developer
etc.
Most of the GCs I've worked with play an active part in value engineering and making conscientious decisions about what the building looks like.
This only makes sense if the definition of being in real estate is "buy or transact on property." Brokers don't buy or transact on property. Nor do appraisers, leasing agents, or property managers. So most of the jobs you listed below aren't in real estate, either.
OK, and again, by your logic the only people involved in real estate are the ones actually buying or selling property. Unless you're on the deed, you're not in the industry, right?
Well, superintendents don't work a desk job, so it's kind of hard for them to participate on an online forum. There ARE people in construction who are active on this forum.
OK, I'll buy that, if you also hold everyone else to that standard. I'm a developer, so I'm in real estate. Every broker, appraiser, lawyer, architect, engineer, and property manager falls is not.
As you made clear, none of these people (save the developer) actually work in real estate.
I'm not interested in what the average person considers a real estate role. Average people don't know what they're talking about. If I needed to hire someone to be a project manager in a development office, I'd much rather have a former construction person than a broker or a leasing agent or an appraiser.
Regardless of what the average Joe thinks "real estate" is, I'm sure even real estate professionals wouldn't consider a superintendent a "real estate" role. Defining the industry doesn't really depend on who you would hire, once they're a PM at a developer they'd be a real estate person, they could have been working retail before, that doesn't mean being a sales clerk at CVS is a real estate role.
Would a mechanic who works on the HVAC system be considered a real estate professional? What about the guys framing concrete forms? Just because you work on or in a building doesn't mean your in real estate. My argument would be that the industry of real estate is abstracted from the asset itself, the core value that real estate professionals add is not in direct contact with the building. A developers main job is to coordinate between a various parties to build a building, private equity and lenders jobs are to provide capital for buying or building buildings, leasing agents fill the building with tenants, but none of them actually engage with the physical structure. Construction, as an industry, does.
Hey um, i genuinely appreciate a lot of your posts. Here however you seem to really be straining to have a contrarian take on this, and have even gotten into strawman territory.
I'll just state again - if you ask a superintendent what it is they do or what industry they work in, they will not say "real estate"
Ah, I see you’ve met Ozy
Someone has to challenge the groupthink!
Mine do. That isn't me being a dick. If you ask them what they do, they'll say "superintendent." If you ask them what industry they're in, they'd say real estate or property management. Since we established that property managers are in real estate....
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