Hi Everyone,
I read a lot of these forums a couple years back and they helped considerably in terms of realistic expectations about day to day life as an analyst. I was hoping to return the favor by answering a few questions (if anyone has any) about life as an analyst at a buy side real estate firm.
A little background: I work for a privately owned real estate investment and development firm. We have approximately 5.5 billion in assets. Our main asset classes (should be no surprise) are industrial, multi-family, and office (first tier city and suburban).
I've worked here for a year. I'm a part of a team of 4 people who handle analysis and due diligence of every acquisition, refinance and disposition. To give you a sense of our flow in the past 4 months we've closed on approximately 200 million in refinancing, 150 million in acquisitions and 100 million in dispositions. I've been fortunate enough to be in a position where I see a ton of deal flow.
But really I'm hoping I can give back to the community and answer any questions you may have as I know how hard it is do find info on life in real estate when the internet (not just WSO) is filled with 100x more info about IB.
My background is what you would call non-traditional. I came from a non target school and spent two years doing leasing brokerage in NYC at a CBRE/JLL/CW. After about a year doing that I realized leasing brokerage was not for me and focused my efforts over the next year on continuing to do deals as a source of connections. I was lucky enough to apply for a position at my current job where the managing director had a relationship with a real estate family I had done two decent deals with. I used them as a name drop / defacto reference.
Typical background is tough to answer since my department is so small and everyone has been here for so long (besides me).
I would think of it on a curve. My coworkers last job have all been what I would call pretty prestigious (RIETs, large development or AM firms). But their first job(s) in the industry are pretty diverse (small shops, brokerage, RE accounting for big 4 to name a few). I think its much more important to show you know how to "do the dance" and have someone be able to back you up with a potential employer to say "Yeah, we did that deal, it was a bitch and he/she came up with a good work out." I know more people who got PERE jobs connecting with people involved in a deal than applying with a name brand resume. Most PERE firms are not hiring in bulk and firing those that don’t work out. One or two people come on a year even in some of the largest shops so it’s more about finding that connection and having someone back up your deal experience (even if that experience is being a baller at due diligence).
I personally would stay away from the CFA...BTH even the hardest math and finance in PERE (even debt related funds) is not that difficult. But who knows it may help to get a job at a BlackRock if you come from a background where your access to deals is low (RE accounting for example).
1) Generally I'm working on two or three long term projects at a time; long term being things that take 2-3 months beginning to end. For example that would be a refinance package or an acquisition. While working on those I am working on another one or two week long projects. An example of that would be putting together due diligence for a buyer or someone doing our third party reports. At the same time I am then working on anything that pops in my bosses head, i.e. a quick analysis of a purchase or sale or some other random task (in real estate there are a lot of random tasks because every deal is different). For example last week I had to do a parking analysis of an office complex, meaning I had to dig through leases to find out how many parking spaces had been given out in the leases compared to how many parking spaces there were int he development. What did we find? parking was over allocated by 100 spaces...OK that's not that bad, not everyone drives there...The complex was only 70% leased...woops! Talk about a logistical nightmare we wanted nothing to do with.
2) Same region, my firm owns throughout the US but our office is in NYC. I would agree that real estate is is VERY region-centric because of two reasons. One, RE can be valued differently just two blocks away and two, RE is very relationship driven so much so I would say you will want to go to school in the region you want to work in.