Theres no statistical evidence for this but, why is real estate second to most other financial services jobs? Most people in business school are primarily looking for IB, consulting, AM or corporate roles. And even on employment reports of many top b-schools, real estate is rarely even listed, although this could be due to it being merged with out categories.
Either way, why is real estate such an unpopular job destination? You dont have to jump ship as often, you make good money with chances at late 6 to 7 figures and work-life balance is better than most alternatives. Like its flat out better than some jobs like accounting for example. Same hours if not better and a higher pay ceiling.
Anyone know why this is?
It’s not that real estate is an “unpopular job”, it’s that the real estate world is an extremely small world with very few players at the high level. Large amounts of capital and large amounts of property in the hands of few. There is also a limited quantity so this also limits the need for the number of people in the industry. It’s an exclusive world where the work life balance is amazing, money is good if not better, and deals are just as intense when compared to IB. You typically won’t see real estate investment companies at job fairs or posting many jobs because most real estate jobs are hiring through networking.
So would you say getting into real estate and successfully climbing to a comp of something like 500k-1MM is harder than say becoming an IB MD or becoming a partner in MBB or Biglaw?
100% firm/shop/bank dependent. I’ve found from various conversations each firm/shop/bank operates differently when you get down into specialty divisions (to keep all things equal in the comparison).
Not only can one do this in real estate, one can do it without dying before reach said title/paygrade
You rarely climb the corporate ladder to $500k-$1MM salaried jobs. In the vast majority of cases, you have to personally produce revenue well in excess of those figures to justify your salary. You're not going to politic your way to many high salaried jobs.
My two cents as a REPE analyst...
REPE is a niche industry that runs lean and doesn't typically hire a ton of students every fall like IB. I got into acquisitions at a REPE firm direct from college, which was unheard of. More firms are hiring out of college but usually aren't at career fairs, advertised on campus, etc. I had to figure out which firms to target in the one large MSA I wanted to live in and work my ass off to network and do it on my own. Eventually had 2 really solid PE offers (institutional groups with AUM of $40B+) and a few investment sales and development offers, but it took work.
In terms of work life balance and pay compared to banking, it's not even close. REPE (or just my firm) is WAY better in terms of hours...70hrs/week on average with typically no weekends for the first two years then can decrease to 50-60 until you're an AVP, usually around year 4. Drops off to 40-50 beyond that.
Salary is better than every one of my banking friends and bonus can be up to 50% for the first two years and 100%+ beyond that, based on personal and fund performance. Tons of upward growth potential on the buy side and the income trajectory is exponential (huge jumps in base YOY, bonus multiples, GP points at VP).
I think the work itself at a lower level is way better too.....closed several deals on my own in my first year and closing a lot of them by myself now.
REPE is a hidden gem that I hope IB hardos keep shitting on while they slave on pitch books for 100 hours a week.
run the world,
Can I pm you? I am going through this exact process right now and have a couple questions on how you formed your pitch/research when networking
Would you mind if I PM you as well? Currently going through/trying to go through a banking to real estate transition myself.
RIP your PM box. Hope you're prepared to get a million messages from people asking you for a how to guide.
do you hold the same opinion now that IB pay has gone up considerably the past 2 years?
You're basically saying RE is so desirable with so few seats that most people don't even bother. Even a kid who went to Harvard and finished top of his GS analyst class needs to settle for Blackstone/KKR/Bridgewater because he needs to pursue realistic dream jobs; who's got time for a pipe dream like becoming a rock star, playing in the NBA or working in real estate right?
Sorry, gotta call bullshit on that. If real estate was as uniquely desirable as you say, it would still appear popular. It would just be like the top PE and HF jobs that are difficult to get. It wouldn't be confused for unpopular, as it is today.
I suspect that reason RE is unpopular is because it might be seen by some as simplistic and/or boring at first glance. Boring is bad because, well, boring. Simplistic is bad because young finance people believe their smarts are what will get them ahead in life, and anything that appears simplistic will also appear to be less of an opportunity to get an edge. This view is probably supported by the fact that real estate, while full of talented people, is also uniquely full of superficial and mediocre people who seem to have more of a relationship/sales skill set than a critical thinking/investor type of skill set.
Again that's just my suspicion looking at RE from the outside. For those who enjoy it, more power to them.
Uniquely full of superficial and mediocre people? High finance in general is literally stereotyped as being full of superficial, backstabbing, and greedy assholes. I am not saying that Real Estate doesn't have those, but to say it is unique is definitely wrong.
Ironic given how shitty investment professionals do at beating a typical 401k account held by a high school graduate.
At the high level, real estate is a mix of relationships and investing. What you also need to consider is how these transactions are funded. I can promise you there is quite a bit of "thinking" going into the +$100M-B deal size. Just like all high finance, once you get to a certain level it is less kicking the tires and more knowing the tire brand from past transactions. If you want to zero in on Blackstone, Blackstone currently has over $230B invested in the RE industry compared to the PE arm spread of $232B. So yes, I think the top of their class GS analyst may consider Blackstone Real Estate. Now this isn't saying that IB and HF are not "desirable". It's really up to the individual to decide what they find desirable and can develop a passion. That is the one thing looking back I wish people had told me. It's about your dreams and life, not about comparing yourself to others. Real estate fit the culture and lifestyle I wanted so that made it desirable to me. These jobs are not easy no matter what industry you go into. If you want to be a high performer and achieve success you have to be ready to spend the time, stay driven, and commit to your job.
Most people I know who are in Real Estate (besides on here) are selling homes at their local realtor shop/group. I know only a handful who are doing the "Real Estate Investment" sector.
That being said, I agree with DealCloser .
I think it's also market specific. Large top 10 MSAs will have big comerical real estate presence.
There's nothing unique about RE finance really..
It's just a different asset class with the same players (i.e. investment sales and acquisitions agents in place of M&A, equity/debt placement agents in place of cap markets, mortgage lenders in place of corporate banks, REPE in place of normal PE and REITs and other asset owners in place of typical asset owners like E&Ps etc).
The difference is.. RE as a private asset class is niche. Most people don't know about RE beyond their local estate agent and people who do tend to come from well off families already involved in RE somehow.
It's not that it's unpopular, just less opportunity, as others have noted. Major bulge bracket banks employ as many junior level employees as huge swathes of the RE industry.
And the following is my opinion, but having worked for several years in IB and now in RE, I think there is a lot of truth to it. First off and less controversially, the guaranteed money is better in banking. If you go in as a junior, you know you're making 75k or whatever, and as long as you're baseline competent, will get a substantial bonus. You also know that if you're good at it, you'll always have an upward trajectory in terms of increasing comp every year. That kind of safety blanket, to know that you'll be pulling in ~$200k+ by age 30, is a major appeal, I would think. This isn't the case in RE, where a lot of times your salary is dependent on how well the firm is doing, and your advancement is very much a function of space opening up above you.
Second, I think there is a "keeping up with the Joneses" attitude in banking, which makes the conspicuous consumption (and the associated salary) more obvious and more glitzy. You have a whole bunch of other VPs/MDs whatever that you're working alongside and competing with to a certain extent. Also having that peer group in place means there is just more opportunity to discuss comp and obviously more interest in competing to make more and be better than your pal in the office over. I feel like by nature of being much, much smaller, you are much less likely to have intra-company competition since you have fewer peers at your pay grade.
It also doesn't hurt that you have plenty of movies/books/other media about how much money bankers make, enough to have it be in the cultural consciousness, and almost none about real estate folks except maybe Million Dollar Listing.
Average comp is lower than those other fields.
Things move slower than those other fields.
People are still traumatized by 2008.
When you take into account that people in non-capital markets IB and law work 80 hours and consultants are travelling 60% of their life so it's normal they earn more to offset their awful work-life balance.
RE I'd say is more comparable to something like industry law jobs, corporate finance, accounting or corporate banking to which RE makes similar if not more than most.
Producer and underwriter are traveling 60% of their jobs too
Most RE jobs will be compensated more than Corp Fin, Accounting, and corporate banking jobs in my experience. Especially as a career progresses or so I'm led to believe.
I work in acquisitions and to most of my friends (who also graduated Finance/Accounting) think I sell houses or am a property manager. Love hearing that.
I don’t know, but let’s keep it as is. I don’t need to fight any more people than I already am for that one Analyst position posted every week.
Risk. People associate real estate with risk which is ironic. Millenials saw their parents lose huge savings in GFC which was a real estate driven event. Pay is not publicized to the degree that it is in Corp fin /IB / MBB / BigLaw roles, nor are big pay days guaranteed. The lack of transparency into the compensation picture IMO deters many folks right off the bat, in addition to the fact that recruiting at these firms is largely a black box. In b school, how enticing is it to go after a career path that doesn’t really come on campus to recruit, has a mystery salary, and will likely not employ you until after all your friends have secured their jobs that they’ll most likely be looking to leave 2 years out of school while you’re just settling into yours? The road less traveled is named that for a reason, and herd mentality in MBA programs unfortunately drives people to make decisions that don’t always benefit their true passions / goals in life. Fortunately for those of us who don’t care what others think, there’s real estate. I think if the career was associated with more stability, and folks knew just much money could be made, they might think twice. Working 55-60 hour weeks and being able to clear 7 figures in a year isn’t for the faint of heart.
100% this. Though I'm not sure why you say the "risk" part is ironic, since that is what RE folks are being compensated for. Your carry is far more risky than a discretionary bonus. If you are a producer at an IB position, you have a rough idea of how your bonus will track your revenue. And if you don't get paid, someone else will be happy to take on your clients and pay you that number. So yes, risk, but not the same kind of risk, since you're only risking an opportunity cost and not putting up actual guarantees or exposing yourself to capital calls.
Long story short I agreed entirely, but it seems to me there is real risk in real estate, and not to the same degree in IB.
Buy side gigs will always encounter more risk than sell side in my opinion. Investing by nature equates to the risk/reward continuum so I agree with your point. Much of what we do though is really risk mitigation—to the point that contingency funds can and should salvage a good return in the event the business plan doesn’t go perfectly. I should have been more clear—perception of real estate risk for the majority may be having multiple houses foreclosed on during the GFC, while not considering what leverage even means or how to be sensible about capitalizing deals. The most extreme scenario related to RE that could have played out did, and so that’s the image engrained in a lot of folks minds. On a risk adjusted basis though, I would absolutely put money into value add and multifamily development deals vs. the stock market right now, which to me brings a ton of volatility in the near term.
I think the lack of structured recruiting plays a huge role. I love RE, but it's not practical to wait around for something to possibly open up at a development or REPE shop when I know that IBs are hiring - it's a huge risk to pass on those opportunities. There's a definite value in the surety of the IB process that RE just doesn't have. IMO, the second big factor is the optionality that comes with IB. For kids who aren't sure they want to be in RE (of which there are a lot because few schools have RE programs at the UG level), they know they can lateral to just about anything in finance if they're top bucket performers at a reputable IB - the same can't be said about RE.
I think the comp difference is overblown. The guys I know who got REPE or development jobs out of UG were making $75-$85k/yr, which is certainly better than making $120-$140k/yr working 90 hours/wk in IB. Personally, I love RE but wasn't in a position to pass on a good IB offer in the hopes that something would open up at a REPE or development shop that I had a foot in the door at. I know of some REPEs that are planning to move their timelines up to mirror IB recruiting so that they can compete for the same kids, and I hope that more firms start doing the same.
Most probably look to IB, consulting, AM or corporate roles because those roles are more widespread and can cover different assets and there are more exit opps while they figure out what they want to do long-term. Many hop out to something with a better work-life balance because of how much time is spent just working. Real Estate is one asset and is a small world. Most firms only have one office. There generally aren't multiple offices with the exception of select brokerage shops and large megafunds. And because most are small many don't have any need for traditional recruiting methods at the junior level, if they even like to add junior people. Deals may appear small, but splits can be great since shops are quite lean.
Another thing to point out is most don't know about these jobs in finance or how to explain what an IB, PE or AM firm does. And getting into RE is already very specific. Have you tried explaining to friends and family outside the industry what you do? I have. Most think I just work in a cube all day doing accounting or paper work. When I correct them or explain it, it's only a confusing look to explain why my company might work with a Life-Co to originate a commercial property loan.
So don't worry about it being "unpopular" you know more about the end result than others do.
RE firms can be small. It doesn’t take a ton of people to manage a large amount of assets, where as a bank might have several different divisions ie brokerage and wealth advisory, lending, etc.
Even the large companies are unknown to a large portion of the population. Think of CBRE, Cushman, Crowe vs. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, etc.
Mostly because it pays less than true private equity, it’s more simple, less challenging. So it makes sense if you think about it
Edit: someone just went through this thread and monkey shat every single one of my comments here. What a waste of silver bananas lol
There is no question that real estate development (perhaps not private equity, I have no experience there) is far more challenging than "true" private equity.
This is you:
“I won’t comment on REPE because I have no experience there. But I can say with 100% certainty RE development is more challenging than corporate private equity... although I have no experience in corporate private equity”
Hmmm
Bull Shit - Take the most well known PE shop: Blackstone. You think the RE guys are pulling in less than the corp guys? Go back to school
You get paid in a PE shop due to the size of your fund, not the industry. If your fund is 5bn and you take in 2% management and carry it will all depend on performance of the fund, not the sector.
Less REPE jobs out there because it's more niche. You won't convert easily into a regular PE job because your skills are not as comparable and not as technical. Those are valid negative on REPE, but if you know that's what you want to do you don't really care whether a regular PE shop will take you.
Lmao this is beyond idiotic. Obviously if you take the best player in the REPE space, yes, they will get paid just as much as the best players for the corporate PE space.
However, if you go anywhere beyond the top 25 REPE shops, it's almost guaranteed that the corp PE guys are pulling more at the same level. The vast majority will work in the MM, where the corp PE guy will destroy the REPE guy in comp. So yes, corp PE is far, far superior from a comp perspective
Well Blackstone pays less than axonic capital
To be blunt, real estate takes a special tolerance and ability to work with idiots. I have no idea how guys in the business deal with that level of horseshit on a daily basis.
Real estate is highly fractured, for example an acquisitions role in a REPE shop, a REIT, a traditioanl firm, an RE asset management firm, and a dev firm might have incredibly large amounts of overlap or can be doing completely different things. You then have further bifurcation among the different types of assets. It is entirely common for someone to start in single tenant retail and never leave that asset class for the span of their entire career. People think bankers or corp lawyers have highly specialized skills but they look incredibly broad in comparison to people in RE.
This is an oddly aggressive thread for a simple question.
Why do so few go into real estate? Because they don't know about it and because there aren't as many jobs.
Amen. These 20 year old kids will one day realize their itch for prestige and getting"complex" job is silly. We're all crunching fake shit numbers on a goddamn screen, not saving lives here. You want a complex job, go operate on dead brains or make rockets for crying out loud.
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I enjoyed reading the comments above though hah! Quite entertaining for our RE forum...
In case any are curious, RE is the second most popular forum on WSO (behind IB)
can someone from the industry insert a joke here as to why
Cause all the cool kids played with legos and the lames played with an abacus.
This is honestly probably one of the most up-to-date outlets for RE talk. Most other forums are about flipping houses or something.
Look at my post count...
Fuck yeah
I like the RE threads the best, generally they generate the best back and forth discussion. Of course, this thread doubled as a comparing careers thread, and that's always a recipe for trouble.
It's been said already, but I'll aggregate:
1) There are fewer jobs that offer prestigious pay for 20-something year olds when compared to PE, IB, Consulting, Tech.
2) Exit opps are better from the aforementioned track. For example, it's way more challenging to get into H/S/W out of real estate compared to the typical track for individuals high in intellect and trait conscientiousness whose parents have been railroading them their entire lives. Another example: you're not likely to transition from RE into a cool VC role.
3) It's easier to lateral into real estate later in your career after working the typical I-banking stint. You'll see lots of these profiles in their late 20's / early 30's in NYC PERE and development after they jumped ship.
4) It's true that you have to have a high tolerance for working with idiots. It's unreal how uneducated the majority of the real estate world is. It's usually a lot more fun to work with smart and creative people versus type-A uneducated asshats.
5) There's a lot of risk and you don't get compensated well until you're at the top. Outside of a sales position, the road to a 300k per year salary is a lot more challenging in real estate than in the other fields. That's not saying it's easy in the other fields, it's just EXTREMELY rare to be paid in the 300k/yr base range in real estate. Price's law in respect to real estate compensation is undeniable.
6) Unless you work for Blackstone or a comparable firm, everyone you meet thinks you're a realtor or a home flipper. :(
Interesting. I've found the opposite to be the case. Yes, there are plenty of idiots in real estate, as anywhere else, but they seem to get sifted out pretty quickly, or rather, never really rise to a position of decision making responsibility. Whereas I know tons of IB folks who just keep plugging away in a mediocre fashion, and 30 years later make MD.
This is definitely true, and 100% why RE isn't more popular. You don't see a ton of 30 year olds making bank the way you might become a VP if you stay on that consistent track in the finance world.
That being said, once you get to the more senior levels and get even a little bit of carry, it seems to me that the balance tips the other way and you start seeing RE folks getting compensated better (with a much better lifestyle to boot) than their IB/HF/PE counterparts. Not at the principal level, but like 35-45 year old folks sourcing deals.
A note on the idiot thing, I think many people here are doing the same thing they say others do and are lumping in home realtors and the handyman that fixes your sink. Both are technically in the real estate industry.
Why do you depict it as so difficult to get good pay early in your career? You can start in REIB at a BB then move to BX, CG or Starwood ...?
Comp is fundamnetally structured different. One of the prime reasons less people go into RE is that pay is lower at the start but on an attrition adjusted basis is signficantly higher later in your career. In banking you might have an MD making 10MM a year but that MD might have risen out of 100 analysts. in RE you might have 5 partners making 4MM on a deal. Of those 5 partners they started as a group of 12 analysts.
Im in CRE.. oddly enough I've only ever been in real estate from the leasing side during college to the financing side now. I don't think anyone I graduated with ended up in RE, which is fine by me.
The work life balance is truly unbeatable. No one bothers you before 8am and if the money isn't out the door by 5:30pm, it becomes tomorrow's problem.
Though I have always thought about how firms like Bozzuto and such operate and what their culture is like. Or even an insurance company who has hands in RE as equity partners.. I wonder how fair it is there.
Bozzuto has a development company, GC, and property management company. I imagine each component is very different.
Thanks for explanation guys
1) Real estate is the most valuable asset class in America, by far. There are a ridiculous number of people in real estate. Way more than other financial services positions.
2) Why do people out of an MBA or undergrad business not look to real estate more? Real estate generally pays like shit. You make real money as an entrepreneur, not as an employee. IB/PE, in contrast, allows you to make a lot of money as an employee.
Speaking for development only here...Smaller field and base pay + bonus ceiling is lower. But doing your thing should be the goal anyways as that's where the big money is.
I guess to a certain extent, the fact that there is a pretty varied, unscripted road map to 'doing your own thing' may deter some people. You gotta find a way do find deals at a good price, raise capital, PM/ manage the projects, etc. It's not rocket science but need to be willing to suffer through a bit of brain damage and deal with high level of uncertainty.
My school had a RE Major and we put on a big conference in the Mid-Atlantic once a year for RE professionals.
They never really marketed the program well. And one thing i picked up from speaking with people in the field is that it is EXTREMELY network driven. Since i didnt have the network to get in with a good company, i decided to pass on it.
Blackstone? REPEs and even hedge funds with positions in property that exist would be highly sought after jobs. But pay is simply lower elsewhere in the property industry. Although, partners at commercial real estate agencies could pull 7 figures easily
It is a factor of career stage trajectory. If you have 100 IB analysts and 15 RE analysts on an attrition adjusted scale the RE analysts will make more at the top than the IB analysts. This is considering those who stay in the industry their entire career. You might have 1 MD out of that 100 analysts and they might make 10MM a year. Of the 15 RE analysts you might have 4 or 5 that make it to partner level and are making on average 4 to 5 million per deal, doing 3 or 4 deals per year.
I think there is definitely easier places to get to MD levels than at an investment bank with a similar pay package, and REIT/REPE would definitely be one. And if there is a property bull market throughout your career, this will have an enormous impact on wealth from RSUs, bonuses etc. And REITs, private equity and hedge funds are all one the same, get good returns and raise money. As private equity gets crowded out, and hedge funds become more restricted by institutional investors on short-selling / concentrated positions / leverage etc, returns in the area will likely go down. If the property market performs well, then all that AUM will just shift to whatever is hot.
But this is the same for anything. If you can raise money, persuade people and do a good job, you will be well compensated anywhere. If you can raise the capital required for a big mining project, not too different to an investment fund really, the investment vehicle is just an ordinary company. Or even in healthcare and being able to recruit top PhD students and raise capital.
Whenever the industry is bad, senior management and associates will be culled, in different places, the ratio of such is different. The biggest skill is in looking at what stage the industry cycle is at.
And people who have done very well, have been there at the right time, by luck, not through this industry analysis.
John Bogle and his timing into the mutual fund industry, George Soros into global macro, David Rubenstein & The Carlyle Group, beginning because there were few telecom / aerospace PE shops.
I think there is a tendency for people who are a cut below the typical type A finance person to go into real estate.
As I did with all the other people who made this stupid comment, I'm having a hearty laugh about this comment. Finance folks are the most self-congratulatory and un-self aware people out there. "Type A" folks don't go into finance. They go into more entrepreneurial fields where they get compensated for risk. Finance, especially in it's early stages when you're down the totem pole, is most focused on people who put a high premium on both being able to boast about an above average income while also avoiding risk.
Yes, some folks end up starting their own firm, or end up putting their own capital into a HF or PE shop, but those are the tiny minority of all the people who start on Wall Street.
But muh IQ points
When I tell people I work in COMMERCIAL real estate, they still assume I sell houses. So I think many are just very uneducated on what the real estate industry has to offer beyond residential.
However, I am glad CRE is the path less traveled because I got into a top boutique brokerage in my area, work on a top team, am involved in every process of every deal, and get paid a lot more than many of my peers 1 year out of undergrad. Also, had a sub 3.0 gpa lmao
It definitely is a high risk-high reward career and not for the faint of heart though.
I don’t really want to answer this question but I will throw this out here:
I think we all need to realize that we’re presuming institutional sales is the topic of discussion and not grandpa’s warehouse on the market cause he died and you got your RE license cause you couldn’t keep a desk job...
Institutional sales is to IB, as the private equity groups are to the REPE groups. There are no buy side reps, unless you are incompetent and can’t source deals for your firm which is headquartered in a basement next to Denny’s. You’ll end up having your dad’s stepbrother trying to bring you deals with a buy side fee...rookie shit and hard to legally get.
Barriers to entry on non-institutional grade assets are non-existent...anyone can have, or get passed down. You just need some Ben franklins.
Let that sink in and let’s get back to this dogfight! I need something to entertain me while Argus is loading...
Let me try to summarise my observations from my time across two BB RE groups (think top 3 US IBs by revenue, PE loan origination and RE principal investing) as well as one of the largest REPE shops around (>50bn AuM). I am based in Europe so not all of the below may be true for the US.
2a. It is worth spending a bit of time in the industry just for the broker meetings. It feels like sitting in a room with sexist dinosaurs in 2006. They spend the first few minutes of a meeting discussing their watches, their competitors' trophy wives, the receptionist's outfit or their French riviera holidays. Tech bros are vanilla at best vs these boys.
2b. It is (often) untrue that models aren't complex and underwriting isn't as challenging as for corporate PE. While modelling a single, standing office building is easy, modelling a minority acquisition, an NPL portfolio or a hotel management company is pretty much equivalent to corporate or special sits modelling. We often make much more granular assumptions than corporate PE shops and run a lot of scenarios because we have lease-level information and our top line is determined by fewer variables (we actually understand our product, you could argue that's not the case for investors in e.g. Semiconductors). You can even run Monte Carlo simulations on your inputs (almost nobody does that though), there is a lot of academic literature on that. The above is however only true for large shops that aren't afraid of more exotic deals. Your learning curve is fairly flat if you specialise in office or multifamily asset deals early on. Having said all this, if you really wanted to capitalise on your advanced monkey brain, you should join a HFT shop after your Math PhD, not the private buy side, where you are at least as incentivised to deploy capital as you are to engineer returns.
3a. Partners in the business get carry, in some shops even juniors get carry. I wouldn't be worried about your millions in RE vs other asset classes as long as your fund's hold period isn't 10Y+ (as may be the case for some Infra shops). Two caveats: IRRs are sub 20 and RE isn't exactly acyclical.
There are simply fewer large PE shops in RE vs corporate and only large shops go through standard recruitment schemes, making it a less obvious/visible choice for students that want to do 'Finance', as they tend to consider themselves future masters of the universe - they just don't want to be seen as doing something 'easy'
RE isn't tech. You won't finance the next moon landing but do the same thing RE people have always done. Buy, fix, sell. And maybe build.
In Europe, the only people considered morally inferior to investment bankers by the general public are probably real estate investors (to varying degrees across jurisdictions). Most of your returns are driven by rent increases, and there is a strong sentiment against rent increases and large private landlords in many markets, as many people suffered after '08 (think mass evictions or RE developers going bust and disappearing with your deposit). No matter how much complexity you put into a deal and how great your model, you will still have to admit at the Christmas dinner table that you are making 3-4x the median national wage with 1 year of work experience because you increase rents (unless obviously you are a 'sustainable multifamily developer' helping to reduce supply shortage in the affordable PRS segment)
Sorry about the numbering/formatting, am on mobile and don't seem to be able to get this right from the phone.
I don't think the WSO message board supports 2a and 2b type formatting. Great post though. SB
I can only speak for myself, but I found real estate to be incredibly boring, and couldn't wait to get out. I was at a real estate PE fund that was the most successful in Asia, so it wasn't that the money wasn't right. But at the end of the day, I just couldn't stand looking at buildings all day. I contrast this to some of the PE work I've gotten to do in healthcare and tech, and those are just much more dynamic industries. A PE fund in real estate is obviously looking to maximize returns and minimize risk, which to us usually meant buying value-added / core-plus buildings in up-and-coming countries. That way we were buying assets that didn't have too much hair on them (not too many issues) and yet had a decent shot at upside if we really understood our city macroeconomics correctly. It's tough compare that to getting to invest in exciting new technologies. But that's a personal preference. I'm certain I'm far worse off financially for making the choice to leave REPE. My younger brother is in REPE in the US, and he's doing just fine.
The short answer is that the industry isn't generous with its pay. The only way you make real money is via entrepreneurship, which many people just aren't interested in. Relative to other high paying industries, real estate has trouble attracting Ivy League (and also Stanford, MIT, etc.) educated talent.
Why risk becoming a real estate entrepreneur when you can make $300 - 500K+ in the many relatively safe and stable corporate jobs (IB, consulting, tech, medicine, law, etc.)?
Making a $300K-$500K salary is not exactly a simple matter, either. It's not like they're a dime a dozen out there.
You're also still working for someone else.
And finally, the reason you risk it is so you can make far more than a couple hundred grand a year.
If this person doesn't understand the concept that increased risk brings increased reward, I don't think you're going to be able to educate him/her.
This is an attitude that is insanely prevalent on these boards (which should know a lot better) - that huge money should be available without taking commensurate risk, There is absolutely nothing wrong with aspiring to make half a million dollars a year in a safe corporate job; that's already doing better than 99% of your peers. But you don't get to be Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, or in this context a Gerald Hines, without either one in a billion luck or risking yourself/your capital. Even if it isn't enunciated, you can sense the entitlement that being in finance or real estate and then working and waiting patiently means ending up with 9 digit net worth that the majority of posters here seem to have.
I actually see record numbers of people trying to get into real estate now because "this time it is different" and "the party will never end". The party will end, and there will be pain in real estate again, but real estate remains a rare space where an investor can actually obtain a predictable 8%+ free cash flow yield with minimal downside and low to moderate upside investing in an inflation hedged tangible asset.
This opinion is biased due to location, but the amount of energy finance bros trying to get into real estate in Texas is staggering because energy is struggling immensely due to pricing outside of certain arenas like fracking services in the Permian Basin.
I would love to get an update on some of the people you knew who were trying to break into real estate a year or two ago!
I can only speak for multifamily. But in multifamily a very large portion of the firms are family based. Either the small local builder that got bigger then he ever dreamed, or uhnw families looking to place their money. Hence the whole industry is much less " official" . And you will find that a lot of firms hardly have a website. They are not big on a loud profile just on loads of money.
It's because real estate (brokerage aside) is an industry which accurately values risk and reward. Developers and/or funds don't need to go crowing about every tiny success, because the very fact that they're still a going concern is proof positive that they're doing a good job. If you're a sell side banker, then yeah, you talk up every incremental move on the league table because that's all you have - you have nothing to offer that a competitor doesn't, no knowledge or expertise that isn't almost exactly matched by every colleague at every financial institution.
People in real estate actually take risk, and as a result are more focused on mitigating that rather than spending their time and effort crowing about their latest deal
CooL!
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