The 4-Part Formula To Succeed [Fast] in CRE

For people who want to succeed in commercial real estate as quickly as possible, there’s a pretty predictable formula you can follow to make that happen.

And in this post, we’ll walk through four things you can do to drastically speed up your career progress, and how each of these things can help you make that happen.

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#1: Get to a Big City as Quickly as Possible

In the US, the vast majority of commercial real estate job opportunities are located in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. And out of those three cities, it’s really hard to beat New York if you want to succeed in this industry.

New York is the most active commercial real estate market in the US, and home to some of the biggest capital allocators in the world. With the price of real estate in the city being higher than almost any other major metro, this also produces some of the highest compensation packages throughout the entire industry, and also makes New York a magnet for people coming out of some of the top business schools in the country, including Wharton, Harvard Business School, NYU, and Columbia.

This means that even if you aren’t coming out of one of these programs or working at one of these companies in your first job out of school, it’s extremely likely that you’ll end up building a network of people who are, which can open up a ton of doors for you later on in your career.

Working on big deals alongside some of the smartest and hardest-working people in the industry can put you way ahead of your peers starting out in smaller, less active markets. If you’re up for the longer workweeks and more competitive nature that often come along with being in a major gateway metro, getting to a big city as quickly as you can is one of the best ways to find success early in your career.

#2: Front-Load Career Difficulty

Some of the longest hours in commercial real estate are worked by analysts on top-producing brokerage teams in major gateway markets. In these roles, you’ll often be working a lot harder than your peers in most other parts of the industry.

However, even though this is not an easy task, if you can make it through 3-4 years of this and move into production in your late twenties, this can set you up extremely well for the future. And when you get to this point, you’ll have significantly more autonomy and a much higher earning potential than you would have in almost all other roles at investment, development, or lending firms at this stage of your career.

What I’ve found over time is that the easier a job is on a day-to-day basis, the longer it’s typically going to take you to get where you want to go, and vice versa. This means that, for two 30-year-olds who both started their careers at 22, there can be huge variations in their skills, experience, and network, based almost entirely on the jobs they decided to take on.

This is even applicable in college when you’re deciding to take on the additional workload of a case study competition, deciding to go to a networking event where you don’t know anyone, or deciding to take on a part-time internship on top of a full-time course load.

In most cases, when you’re choosing between two different options, doing the harder thing in your twenties is going to lead to a lot more autonomy, opportunities, and income in your thirties and forties as you progress throughout your career.

#3: Build Equity (But Be Selective)

Real estate is an extremely entrepreneurial industry, with the leaders of small-to-medium-sized firms often heavily compensated based on the performance of the deals they work on. And this can create a lot of opportunities to make great money, without having to take on the risk associated with striking out on your own.

However, one of the biggest catches to this is that at most firms, to actually end up earning this performance-based pay, you need to stay at the company for a predetermined amount of time. And if you decide to go elsewhere before that time is up, you’ll end up losing out on some or all of that money.

Most performance-based pay structures that offer employees equity in deals or a percentage of promoted interest come with anywhere between a ~3-6 year vesting schedule. And this means that if this is something that’s on the table for you and the company you’re considering joining has a reputation of being a difficult place to work, or you think you’ll take another job before that time is up, it’s worth looking for different opportunities that might be a long-term fit.

I’ve personally seen people lose hundreds of thousands of dollars just because they left a few months before a vesting period was up, wiping out years of work with one single decision. Although these structures can sound really good on paper, making sure any equity participation opportunities are combined with a team that you can see yourself growing with will end up saving you a lot of time and money down the line.

#4: Become a Leader

A lot of people coming out of college are reactive by nature, meaning that they join groups that already exist, or follow a leader that’s already in place. However, if you want to progress in this industry as quickly as possible, one of the best ways to do this is to create new groups and become that leader yourself.

This could mean:

• Joining your local NAIOP or ULI chapter and taking on a leadership role within the Young Leaders Group
• Taking on a leadership role within your university’s alumni association or center for real estate
• Creating a small group of ~4-6 of your peers that meet regularly for lunch or drinks and talk through best practices and the deals you’re working on

Taking on a leadership role makes you known among both your peers and more senior industry professionals who are involved with these organizations, and this is one of the best ways to build your network quickly.

Real estate is a relationship business, and the best job opportunities, partnership opportunities, and investment opportunities almost always go to the people who are the most connected within the industry. By raising your hand and volunteering to bring people together, you’ll make it significantly easier to make these connections.

Take The Next Step in Your Real Estate Career

If you want to make sure you have the skills you’ll need to take the first step in this process and land a job at a top real estate firm, make sure to check out our all-in-one membership training platform, Break Into CRE Academy.

A membership to the Academy will give you instant access to over 120 hours of video training on real estate financial modeling and analysis, you’ll get access to hundreds of practice Excel interview exam questions, sample acquisition case studies, and you’ll also get access to the Break Into CRE Analyst Certification Exam, which covers topics like real estate pro forma and development modeling, commercial real estate lease modeling, equity waterfall modeling, and many other real estate financial analysis concepts that will help you prove to employers that you have what it takes to tackle the responsibilities of an analyst or associate at a top real estate firm.