Careers in CRE
Hello. I am a “career-switcher” currently enrolled in a top 25 MBA program. I am currently taking a class in Real Estate Development and have really enjoyed it and am considering a career in Real Estate when I graduate. I am curious what options/roles are available to me and what roles may be a good fit for me given my background. I have a degree in Mechanical engineering from a top school and have over a decade of industrial sales experience selling capital equipment to manufacturing facilities. (For many reasons that I won’t go into here, I don’t want to work in manufacturing anymore.)
Other than the classes in my MBA curriculum, I don’t have a lot of Finance experience but I am a “numbers guy”.
I live in Atlanta.
At this point, I’m really just trying to understand the industry and learn about different roles/companies.
Dude, tons of threads on this, use the search bar. Can't give you much meaningful advice on your engineering background, but with lots of sales experience, brokerage comes to mind as a solid place to start and learn the biz. Either Investment sales, leasing, tenant rep, and the likes.
The overall fields of CRE, off the top of my head, are: - Development (Hines, Related, Trammel Crow, etc.) - Brokerage -- leasing and investment Sales (CBRE, JLL, C&W, etc.) - Capital Markets -- debt & equity placement (Eastdil, JLL, Meridian, etc.) - Investment Banking -- entity level M&A, recapitalizations, corporate advisory (Wall Street Banks, Eastdil, CBRE, etc.) - Private Equity -- debt funds, megafunds, family offices (Starwood, Apollo, Blackstone, ARES, etc.) - Lending -- pension funds, life companies, government agencies, commercial or investment banks (Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, AIG, etc.) - REITs (Vornado, Alexandria RE, JBG Smith, etc.) - Appraisal - Property Management (Greystar, Lincoln, JLL, CBRE, etc.) - Construction - Architecture - Research (CoStar, Yardi, etc.)
Then keep in mind many of these fields have similar positions such as acquisitions or asset management. Also, a lot of different roles might be lumped under one title depending on the size of the company, so you could be a "Capital Markets Analyst" doing asset management, financial modeling, administrative duties, marketing, and property tours all at once. Usually very relative company to company. Most RE companies run very lean and only tend to have one or two analysts supporting a group within the company.
Research each of these yourself and find what appeals to you the most. Also, find out which asset class (Office, Retail, Multifamily, Industrial, Hospitality, etc.) you like working with and apply for positions with companies that focus on that asset class. Your sales background will help, but you'll need to learn the business so your best bet is to network your ass off in your MBA program to meet as many different industry players as possible and ultimately land a solid job.
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