Curious on what the forum has to say about the pros and cons of being a career Multifamily analyst at a JLL/CBRE/etc. I’m considering hunkering down with the current team that has good deal flow and aiming for a more managerial role. Work life balance and comp are respectable, albeit there’s more of a capped upside compared to chasing originations or repe. Thoughts?
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It’s all about what you want in terms of lifestyle. You’ll never have a house in Malibu or a luxury condo in Miami Beach, but you’ll live well, have time to pursue hobbies, spend time with family, or pursue side hustles that could get you that Miami Beach condo.
It’s a solid, stable career path. But if you want to make millions (per year) you need to move into originations or move out of DUS lending altogether. No right or wrong answer, just personal lifestyle preferences
Curious why you’re not interested in originations. Agency origination is a ridiculously competitive business. But originations for other product types can be less sales oriented.
Originators at community/regional banks mostly service existing bank customers. These banks mostly just care about growing deposits and they have sales/relationship managers for that. CRE lending is just a tool to incentivize new deposits.
Smaller deals than what you’re probably used. Still a salaried position, but there isn’t a hard cap on bonus/commission.
Are regional bank loan officers making more than 200k off existing customers? Seems like I’d be taking on cyclical risk for a sideways salary move. The upside is there but if I’m putting that kind of grind on networking/sales to capture it I’d probably push for repe instead
Where are you located??
Digital nomad
I was in the agency business few years ago in my early 20s then left to a buyside shop and have been there ever since. You and others have already got it spot on. It's a chill, nice comp, type of job that is pretty hard to go away from. But here are my 2 cents anyway.
Pros:
- Nice lifestyle good pay. For those don't know, underwriters can probably clear 75-125 all in, sr underwriters may be 150-200. Not exactly crazy money, but nice for a 40hr/week job.
- (if you're at one of those top 3-5 DUS lenders), deal flow is good and you're consistently working/traveling around, keeping yourself busy
- Low risk during down cycle. The refi cycle is there for you even though people may slow down on new deals.
Cons:
- Let's be real, underwriting those agency deals gets old real fast. Ticking boxes in the DUS guidelines ain't exactly thought provoking work.
- Cap on career earnings - you're covered at those 50-70% leverage and there isn't much risk taking out there as a lender. It's all just getting those checks from fees and repeat.
- Harder to move to buyside. This has always been bepuzzling for me until I experienced it. I figured if you're transfering to the buyside, it'd be very translatable skills sets if you underwrite multifamily deals all day. But apparently, you're just catergorized as a "debt" person, which equity firms won't prefer over Investment Sales candidates. Happened to me, so just throwing it out there.
Can't make the decision for you, but of all my colleagues at the DUS shop where I was 7-8 years ago, 90% of them are still there, doing the samething, having the same titles (may be a bump in title for few folks). These aren't dumb people and they're sticking around for a reason. I left due to my ambitions and wanted to the cliche/higher earnings/more interesting work from the buyside shop. But had I been in my late 20s/early 30s, I'd probably have stayed in DUS and tried to do some side deals.
Could a lot of what you said be applied to working directly at a GSE and an agency shop (Berkadia, W/D, etc)? I get that people switch between the two but if pros/cons are the same, whats the biggest driver for people switching between the two? You touched on underwriting pay, what about originations? I am not yet an originator but in the screening group working with originators sizing their deals. Yet to figure out if originations is my thing long term but could see myself becoming a screening manager type, would there be a similar pay to underwriters for those roles and a little less upside than originators? Thank you.
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