I don't know how you could ever determine this decisively. Obviously owning or running your own shop, whether that's a brokerage shop, a development shop, or a private equity shop, is how you make the most, and obviously very few people get to the point of owning their own shop, even fewer succeed, and even fewer succeed so dramatically that they get into the stratosphere.

For someone looking to get into the business, the most important thing is following the route that is interesting to you and that you're good at. That is the best way to find success, which is the best way to make a ton of money.

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 

Yes, the second part of this is not something you should underweight. As dumb as it sounds, when you're genuinely passionate about something, you'll be willing to put in ALL the hours it takes to make it work and naturally become one of the best people at whatever it is you're passionate about.

I'm sure we all know that "one" guy with a weirdly niche job making like $800k a year doing something absurd but it's usually the result of being obsessively passionate about something which leads to being the best and the top 1% can always charge much much much more for a skill than anyone else. Like... THE underwater basket weaver is much better than being an average X.

Also if it matters, you'll probably be happier optimizing for work you enjoy VS making money.

Touching on his first point, running your own business is great too because you don't really need to succeed too hard to make much more money than you would working for others, especially in something as sweaty/eat what you kill as RE. If you're cool with feeling anxious as fuck all the time and risking your net worth then do it. You'll learn a lot even if you fail and build up a ton of full circle experience. Like Aristotle said, "#yolo ur life savings lOL."

 

Yeah... I'm biased but I gotta think that having a meaningful piece of the promote at a development shop, which means being a partner, is the easiest way to hit that "stratospheric" wealth, like high 8 figures of net worth.

Being an office broker is great, and I've also heard they make a killing. And while making 3-4 million a year is fucking awesome, the real money in RE is in owning the actual bricks.

 
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