Real Estate Investment Banking vs Traditional Investment Banking

Im doing my undergrad and would someday, in many years, like to own my own real estate investment company. I was wondering if anyone has advice whether it's advisable to begin in classic investment banking due to the networking opportunities or straight away try and specialise in real estate investment banking or other real estate finance jobs.

 

I have a similar question - I am attending b-school in the fall and would like to know if people would recommend recruiting into a RE group or a generalist group. Thanks

 

The majority of REIB analysts continue to work in the real estate industry. Although the work/analysis is not materially different (IMO), you don't see many people jumping back and forth

Some groups recruit for RE at different times (e.g., Lazard) to avoid applicants "settling" on real estate

Fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds of run. - Kipling
 

If I were forced to decide while in college I would go into an investment banking generalist role, see what I like, and become an expert in that, and if I wanted to switch into real estate I'd do a real estate-focused MBA (e.g. Wharton). But that's if I had to ask the question, "What should I do?"

If, at the age of 21, I knew that I wanted to do real estate then I would do real estate focused jobs.

 
20:

This may be a dumb question, but if your long term goal is to earn a RE investment company, why not try and work in this industry right out of undergrad and gain the necessary experience right away?

Generalist banking is a way of keeping the door open to basically do anything you want assuming you are too young and stupid to be ready to pigeonhole yourself right away. Which is actually a fine position to take. Even if you join a real estate industry coverage group at a bank, you have options if you aren't sure if you want to get stuck in real estate: you can lateral to another industry coverage group and try something else. That, IMO, is where the value is.

Beyond that, even if you ARE 100% sure you want to do real estate forever, I wouldn't blame you for taking a $120k job right out of college. You would learn an insane amount while getting exposure to a variety of deals, companies, strategies, mgmt teams, etc while you get your footing in the real estate industry and figure out which direction you want to run in.

See the point of all this? Investment banking is a great way for conformist pussies to continue putting off making a career choice or doing anything truly great with their lives (kidding).

 

Plus a 120k job out of undergrad is a great way to build capital for the eventual personal investments. Can get a couple of small residential buildings or syndicate a medium commercial property if you played your cards right

 
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