Can one of you all in the WSO community help me understand the difference between being an investment sales broker/analyst and being an office/multi-family/industrial broker?
Why do you prefer investment sales to brokerage or vice versa? The thought of selling an entire building sounds much more prestigious to me, and it seems that investment sales is more modeling-intensive. What other ways does the industry view these two groups differently and how does the day-to-day job differ?
Thanks
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Investment sales is associated with the actual sale of properties, whereas an 'office broker' may describe a broker who leases office space (rather than sell office buildings).
There is no standard description/answer, as many brokers (particularly in smaller markets) tend to do both sale and lease transactions.
I think the confusion is also one of terminology. Both investment sales and leasing are considered brokers. But both are very distinct jobs. Investment sales positions, across all product types, are involved with buying/selling assets on behalf of principals (the owner/operators). The investment sales broker does value and underwrite the property so this career path provides good financial modeling experience which can lead to a large number of career options down the road.
Leasing brokers find tenants in commercial properties (office, industrial, retail). They negotiate lease terms. They do not do under writing. While leasing brokerage is a lucrative career, because of the lack of financial modeling experience the exit ops are more limited than investment sales.
Investment sales Upside: better exit opps (more modeling experience, more relationships with institutional money); higher income potential in a hot/active market; bigger individual paydays; extensive capital markets exposure. Downside: lower overall transaction volume, and thus more susceptible to market fluctuations (bigger hit in a down year); harder to carve out market share
Brokerage Upside: higher volume of transactions; more stable cash flow with regularly rolling leases; more property tours/out of office opportunities; absurd perks (events, prizes, cash) associated with owner desire to generate tour activity/deals (at least in my market). Downside: undoubtedly worse exit opps from brokerage (leave your local market and you are useless); limited modeling/cap markets exposure; income potential is high but essentially capped.
years later but you saying leasing agents have access to deals?
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