Time Off in Real Estate
When you were an analyst in IS/DE, we’re you able to take time off fairly easily? Or was vacation time not well respected?
How about for those of you in Dev/REPE?
Curious to hear how time off is viewed in the RE industry.
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When I was an analyst, it was fairly easy. There may have been a couple comments made about me taking off for long chunks as opposed to small bites. I made it clear to my team that I would be available during vacation but my team did their best to not bother me. Generally it was respected and to some degree encouraged but I always made sure to do the most amount of work possible before leaving.
Nowadays it's a timing act of predicting when deal flow will be lightest. My last vacation cost me $100k in fees.
At the mercy of the deal flow. But if you are incentivized to close deals, not the worst thing in the world...
At my development shop, you can take off whenever you want, more or less for however long you want, but being off is not an excuse to have things fall apart on your watch and you should generally use good judgment to not take off right at important milestones.
You're not expected to answer every email, but if there's a fire drill on one of your projects or something that needs weighed in on, you should handle it.
Every shop should run this way. Vacation/PTO banks are the dumbest concept in the world.
It is annoying, but PTO must be paid out if you leave the company so there is a benefit to a bank. I also have friends who have worked in unlimited PTO orgranizations. About half thought it was great and the other half said the company culture was such that nobody ever took vacation for fear of being fired.
Yep. I can't imagine a situation in which a company tells me "sorry, I know you booked an 8 day vacation, but you only have 7 days off" ending well for either me or the company.
IS is totally dependent on deal flow going into new year/out of last year. I've skipped Holidays, I've taken off several weeks. Just depends.
I've never asked for time off once, not in brokerage, REPE or now development. I just take time off whenever I need to and make sure my shit is taken care of while I'm gone / folks are aware in advance and I've never had an issue. And I take a lot of time off lol.
Off topic, but I’ve read a lot of your posts and I’m curious why you left REPE so quick? I feel like you were only there for a year?
I really enjoyed the REPE job (1.5 yrs) and would've preferred to stay longer but an opportunity I couldn't turn down came up. It was a team I interviewed for at the same time as the REPE job but ended runner up...they reached out a year later with another seat.
I found it very challenging to take off time (worry free that is) while in IS. We were super active and every day off, regardless of taking care of things remotely, was lost time. Time off was NOT respected or encouraged at my previous firm. The culture there was questionable, at best, but damn were they hustlers.
Now, in REPE (or IM however you want to coin it), it is the exact opposite. Time off is encouraged. That being said, the expectation is your shit is taken care of and if duty calls you handle it. I'd say that doing a lot while OOO is highly discouraged though.
Interesting. I'm sure that made the transition even better! Were you working in IS at a major shop? Or was it more boutique? Did the whole firm carry this culture, or just your team?
Major shop on a major West coast market. Tough to say, as we were a bit siloed, but from what I've heard most regional offices grinded.
In response to those saying, "well if you're not working on deals it's okay to go on vacation", I can't think of a single major shop in a major market that has sustained periods of languishing deal flow/advisory work (besides downturns). In my experience (and my peer's), there was NEVER a time when we weren't underwriting/advising owners on deals, actively marketing several deals, preparing pitches for several deals, etc. There was rarely downtime. Teams are thin. You are an integral member of each and every assignment for better or worse. Yes, it's great for learning but certainly not the type of career many in this business pictured. I butted heads with and eventually left due to the work/life balance.
I understands this comes off as bragging like "oh man my team was so active and amazing I'm the shit" but I promise that isn't what I'm going for. Just trying to make it clear that IS at a major shop in a tier 1 market will require significant life sacrifices if you want to be good.
In brokerage it just depends on if you're working on deals or not. On the buy side if you're getting a hard time about taking time off you're with an unusual employer.
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