Help! Career Change Advice: Brokerage to Acquisitions/CRE Financial Analyst

Hey CRE fam, coming here for some advice as I am in a bit of a stump. I'll start with a little bit of background so you all can understand my situation:

Graduated May of this year with a business degree with a concentration in finance. Low GPA (3.2) from a low-tier state school. Been at a small/mid-size brokerage shop for a little over a year. Started as an intern in June '18 to get my feet wet and they kept me along while I finished school. The deal was that I would partner with a senior STNL broker and learn the ropes while participating in the company's training program. I was supposed to help the broker with transaction coordinating / financial analysis / due diligence, etc etc. It was made clear that this was not just going to be call center and that I would gain a lot of technical experience from the whole ordeal.

Well, it quickly became apparent that the senior broker did not have enough deal-flow to keep me busy nor did he want to delegate some of the more administrative/analytical activities so he could free up time and bring new business. In the end, he just had me doing cold calls and helping with OM's but would never let me fully take charge of a deal. On top of that, when I would bring buyers for one of his deals, there was always some issue he wouldn't take care of which would hold the deal up and since I wasn't communicating with the seller, the buyers would bounce! There aren't any other teams/brokers that need an analyst in this shop at least in my state. Also, the training program is all BS and there is nothing technical about it. Basically motivational sales meetings/trips.

I have huge respect for brokers that can call days on end and make a killing but this is not for me. I want something more technical/stable and I don't want to waste any more time here. I know how to build pro-forma DCF models (though never used in stnl), calculate return and risk metrics, am proficient in excel and have a general understanding of investment sales real estate from a brokerage perspective. I have never taken a deal from start to close personally but have a theoretical understanding of the due diligence on a property-level and have helped in several aspects. I have also done a couple argus runs for shopping centers we've listed but could use practice to get more familiar with the software.

My questions: What would you all do in my shoes to land a more technical role elsewhere? And is there any real chance if I'm not coming out of a top-tier school with over 3.7 gpa? What other financial analysis do I need to know other than pro-forma and debt/equity waterfalls to get into acquisitions? Is there a bootcamp that is all include or close to? I don't know what I don't know :(

TLDR: How would you go from brokerage to acquisitions?

Thank you all so much in advanced!!

 

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