Who moved into RE from IB?
Wanted to see general consensus of those who moved in RE from a traditional IB analyst/associate position. What kind of work are you doing in RE (acq, AM, development, PE, etc) and did you come from a generalist group in IB or a RE industry group?
Are you happy with the change, are the hours better and is the work more exciting?
Appreciate all feedback.
Edit: Hah, I am clearly not paying attention
"Into RE From IB": so i'd think people from RE would be in this forum.
Its tuesday its okay
I went from MM REIB-->$30BN AUM REPE-->$35BN REIT. Hours declined in each progression and I work(ed) on the investments/acquisitions side in each of the buy-side roles. REIB is more about capital markets transactions that happen to be made by REITs with a focus on portfolio level metrics. I really did not understand the economics of owning commercial real estate until I got into the buy-side. The work is more exciting by far, but everything becomes somewhat stale after enough repetition.
what was the comp progression like from each role? declining with your decline in hours or was there a natural increase because of your seniority?
Average day depended on what was most pressing. I was lucky in that I joined a well capitalised team so I focused a lot on acquisitions, I spent a lot of time underwriting new opportunities and producing materials for internal staff / capital partners which helped me pick up a lot of basic knowledge quickly. As I had a good financial background but no technical background, my project workstreams focused on assisting with investor reporting, raising debt, and keeping the model up to date. I attended key project meetings 2-3 times a week (meetings with design team, contractors, internal project team etc) to ensure I knew of any potential changes in the business plan so that this would be captured in reporting / project model etc.
If the team you’re joining isn’t involved in acquisitions / investor reporting, my guess is you’d spend a lot of time at project meetings, keeping track of the project vs. Business plan, making sure it’s moving forward etc. How the role of the development team is defined seems to vary a lot by company so make sure you get a clear view on this, at the firm I was at they were commercially focused and technical support was provided by the construction team, for other firms they can be the technically focused team and commercials may be handled by an investment management team. My firm’s approach was that by the time someone in the development team reached director, they would have picked up enough technical knowledge to lead projects. Associates would be commercially focused but have enough basic technical knowledge to work under a director without significant oversight.