Goldman Sachs Urban Investing Group

Curious to know if anyone has experience recruiting for this group at GS? Seems like they're more involved with social impact, so I am wondering whether the interview process will differ from the other groups encompassed within the Asset Management Division.

 
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Great group. If you go here you’ll either not leave or go where ever you want. I know some alumni of the team and they are extremely smart. Very hard working group - hours are tough at the lower level. If you can get the job, go for it. Great starting ground. Just be ready to work IB hours. The deals they work on are complex and you would learn a lot. Sure, it doesn’t seem sexy to buy in bad neighborhoods, but personally, if I could figure out how to buy in bad neighborhoods over good ones, on an institutional scale, that would be very interesting. The old adage of location location location is the biggest factor in real estate, but they are doing institutional deals revitalizing blighted neighborhoods. You’re working and coordinating with city government to receive tax abatements, figuring out the needed and wanted product type, and trying to revitalize something. I would argue it’s extremely opportunistic investing and you’ll learn a lot. It’s also probably more interesting, in my opinion, than chasing the same urban downtown high rise ‘sexy’ apartment building everyone else chases. Remember, this is merchant banking, sure they are doing social good, but they need to make money too. They aren’t investing to feel good about themselves. It’s to make a return at the end of the day. 
 

For instance, take a look at Teacher’s Village in Newark. Goldman committed $100 MM and it helped kick start a redevelopment of this area. It was a redevelopment play. Although PGIM invests in Newark because they are based there, many institutions won’t go near it. Run to where everyone else isn’t. It’s a less crowded field. 

 

Agree with what's been said above. In the end, the group was formed to satisfy Goldman's CRA-requirements. This means the group will grow/decrease depending on Goldman's growth in other segments (i.e. I was told they were expecting to grow due to the popularity of Marcus). 

I went through an interview process with them a few years back and even though I had a really good impression of the group, it did come across as a rather niche segment of real estate/impact investing. If you're interested in getting more asset/portfolio-level experience I would recommend checking out the GPs that they work with as that would probably more interesting for people who want to work directly with real estate, but still in the affordable housing space. 

The recruitment process was also fairly simple and consisted of two intro calls with various members of the team and then a final Super Day-style with various members of the team (2 at the time). There was only fit/behavioral questions throughout the process and I left with a generally good impression of the group. I've heard nothing but good things about UIG from the GPs they work with as well so probably a great place to work if you were interested in their niche. 

 

Thank you so much for your input! Interesting to hear that the superday was all fit/behavioral. Given that it's real estate/private equity, I assumed there would be more technical questions. Also, in your experience, do interviewers tend to be harder/easier on candidates who don't come from finance backgrounds (i.e., myself).

 

Actually, I wasn't too clear above and would like to expand a bit. There was definitely no straight-up technical questions like "how do you calculate IRR/EMx/CoC/YoC?" or "What's a development yield?" etc. However, I did have some deal experience listed on my resume that they asking a lot about, making sure that I knew what I put on there. The questions were like "can you walk me through some of the complexities with deal x", "in retrospect, what went wrong/right with deal y" but I don't count that as a technical question. My advice is to know the ins and outs of your resume as that's pretty much all that they were asking me about. Generally, they were just loosely testing my understanding of real estate investing while throwing in some background/behavioral questions. This was a while back so can't remember fully, but the initial phone calls might have had some technical questions as I was speaking to mainly associates. The role I was interviewing was for their Acq. team so not sure if the same would apply for the AM division. I think they follow the same format for everyone, however, I will say that I was definitely on the younger side of the candidates (the candidates I spoke with typically had 2-3 years of experience, while I only had relevant internships). 

 

Bumping this, is the Urban Investment Group considered a good placement? Do people exit to here, or if not, where do they usually exit to?

 

Reading the job description for what they currently have posted, it does not sound like a gig I would want

 

A poster above said it correctly, they were definitely created to meet CRA requirements. It's community development at the highest level. This heavily focuses on deals that leverage NMTC, HTC, LIHTC. The complexity of deals come from strict guideline of these programs and how to best structure these deal so there is no risk of recapture with NMTC, cliff event with LIHTC for investors, and dealing with a specific jurisdiction to review the historic integrity of building with proposed upgrades for HTC. It can also be complex with the term they used called twinning which essentially where they use multiple programs to put a deal together. 

Social impact investing is growing space but definitely not the sexiest. NMTC is not a program that is permanent at the moment but was extended another 5 years, HTC is dependent on where the investment is, and LIHTC will probably get a huge boost if Biden's infrastructure plan is passed.

Gratifying work because of the impact on the end user but in a lot of case it's a lot slower than real estate development because of all the damn paper and compliance. As someone that works in LIHTC and have received pretty decent exposure to HTC and NMTC it can be very arduous.   

 

Given that you're in the space, do you overall enjoy the work/would you recommend this field to prospective applicants? I am ultimately planning to enter PE (and RE sounds interesting, though i'm open to exploring other industries). The social impact side sounds pretty cool though.

 

I enjoy the work, but I've found it hard to make progression because of the deal taking so long. I work in real estate development, so it's different animal. I'm honestly thinking about leveraging my experience and connections to get to the lending side of multifamily specifically.

 

Hey, just wanted to bump this thread and ask if anyone was aware about potential exit ops from this group? Does one get "pigeon-holed" into social impact real estate private equity?

 

Agree that this question has been answered but I'll explain a bit more. Realistically you are still building a similar skill set to traditional AM (not perfectly the same but similar) it just has another layer of complexity added in. Know some guys doing LIHTC/HTC/NMTC/S8/Workforce type deals primarily and they are having no issues in recruiting to other shops. It's really about telling the story of your work properly and at this stage (assuming since you have the prospect tag) you won't get pigeonholed by doing a stint at a respected shop and you just might like the work.

You're not really a born and bred, traditional aristocrat if you work hard enough to get into Harvard.- Prospie
 

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