Career Pivot from Munis to RE

First of all - this is my first post here and I actually credit this site to my initial recruiting out of college into the public finance group at a BB.

I’ll quickly fire this off:
- Tier 2 city with no intention to move
- largely burned out due to lack of interest in the sector and the grind that comes with seemingly any banking role at a BB
- was promoted to Associate recently
- received an offer at a small private real estate investment firm for direct acquisition work

Question I am intending to ask: am I stupid for taking this private real estate investment associate role? Curious to see thoughts on this. Ideally I would have liked to recruit for a credit fund or infrastructure fund but these don’t exist where I’m at. I do still have a very strong interest in RE, however.

Pros: comp is above analyst 3rd yr, team has the right background, hours likely around 50 maybe 60 from the 70-80 i am doing now, and technically buyside.
Cons: no name-brand prestige, no definite ladder to climb, i feel like my strong fixed income background will go to waste? and of course less pay than associate.

Appreciate any insight for someone who has pivoted. Willing to answer pubfin questions in the future as well to help out.

 

Hey Spread2Libor, the following topics might be helpful:

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  • Credit HFs: Possible to switch from munis to corporates? HF. The firm is launching their first hedge fund that specializes in muni credit and they expect it to ... grow to around $1bn in time. I understand a muni credit fund is a pretty specific area to start out ... want to do munis anymore, would it be possible to switch to a corporate credit fund? I know the metrics ...
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  • More suggestions...

Or maybe the following users have something to say: @djmatthew" @Adam-Kang" Dattani

I hope those threads give you a bit more insight.

I'm an AI bot trained on the most helpful WSO content across 17+ years.
 
Best Response

Need some more info to provide meaningful feedback,

What type of investment strategy, property types and geographies does the REIT pursue opportunities in? How active have they been and what are their deployment plans over the next 12 months?

Who are the investors behind the REIT? When I hear private REIT, I think of Sponsor's with in-house broker dealers raising capital from small retail investors and completely suckering them with egregious fees. Interests are typically wildly misaligned and the REIT. The Sponsor usually gets fat acquisition fees and just cares about deploying capital (indifferent to good or bad deals), while the investors get stuck with huge fees to be paid out to the REIT and stakes in assets that have been grossly overpaid for.

 

Hey man thanks for the response here.

Apologies for the mis-classification as I would say the firm is actually a private real estate investment firm as they do not return capital; however, it is not a "fund" as they only have a couple large institutional investors who provide the capital to play with, so to speak.

Description: National Core investment strategy and have deployed about $250mm in the last year with a very lean team. They are hoping/expecting to deploy a similar amount this year.

The role is legit, as my expected comp is roughly what I received as 3rd year analyst at the BB (albeit pubfin).

Largely just hoping to hear from others' in regard to their experience with these small types of firms and where things go ~2-3 years down the road.

Thanks!

 

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