The Best Jobs in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage (& Why)

Brokerage can be one of the most lucrative career paths within commercial real estate, but there are a lot of different options to choose from within this part of the business.

Each of these will give you different day-to-day experiences, different skill sets, and ultimately different exit opportunities when (and if) you’re ready to move on from brokerage, so deciding on the right path to pursue up front is really important.

So make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into in each part of this industry, this post breaks down three of the most popular career paths in real estate brokerage, and the upsides and downsides of each.

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Path #1: Investment Sales

The first path I want to talk through is probably the most popular among all of these, and this is investment sales.

Investment sales roles will involve you in the marketing of commercial properties for sale, and there are two distinct paths you can follow when going this route.

Pure Sales Role: Brokerage Associate

The first path is going directly into a pure sales role, typically coming with a title like “Brokerage Associate”, where you’ll be paid on commission and your main focus will be on generating new business.

The main positives of these roles are:

• You’ll tend to learn a lot about deal sourcing and sales in a very short period of time
• You have no limit on your earnings from day one on the job
• You’ll typically have a lot more control over your day-to-day schedule than you would have in a more analytical role

The main downsides of these roles are:

• You’ll generally get very little (or no) analytical training
• You’ll often be working only on smaller deals owned by individuals or local operators
• It can often take 18-24 months or more just to make your first meaningful commission check

These types of jobs tend to be a great fit for someone who considers themselves a natural salesperson, someone who has relatively few financial responsibilities, and someone who’s willing to work very hard for very little pay early in their career for big potential rewards later on.

Analytical Role: Investment Sales Analyst

For people who want to work on bigger transactions, want to work with major institutions and private equity firms, and want to learn more about the real estate investment analysis and valuation process, working as an investment sales analyst will be a much better fit.

What you’ll do:

• Work on major purchase and sale transactions
• Dig into the weeds of property underwriting and valuation
• Support producers by creating broker opinion of value presentations and offering memorandums, and providing due diligence support for buyers to get deals done

These roles almost always come along with a base salary, since you’re not directly responsible for generating new business. You’ll also usually receive a pretty sizable bonus on top of that, which can often be 50% to 100% or more of your annual base salary, depending on the production levels of your team.

These jobs also provide some of the best exit opportunities in the industry, whether you want to work for a client or strike out on your own.

However, you’ll typically have to manage very long workweeks, especially in major markets like New York or Los Angeles. You also won’t be directly in control of your income at the start of your career, which can be a big downside for people who thrive in a “pay-for-performance” environment.

Path #2: Debt & Equity Placement

If investment sales isn’t the route you want to take, another option to consider within commercial real estate brokerage is debt & equity placement.

Similar to investment sales roles, entry-level jobs in this part of the industry also break down into deal sourcing and analytical roles, with each of these having very similar pros and cons to investment sales roles.

Pure Deal Sourcing: Junior Loan Officer

Pure deal sourcing positions will typically come with a title like “Junior Loan Officer”, and these jobs are focused almost exclusively on originating new loans, with very little analysis of the real estate involved.

Young professionals who tend to succeed in these jobs are often great natural salespeople, but they also tend to enjoy following the financial markets and take pride in finding the best option for clients when financing their deals.

Again, the main downsides of these jobs are that these roles don’t tend to provide much exposure to the analytics or how commercial real estate is valued by equity investors, which are both things that can make it more difficult to transition into a principal side role or start your own investment firm.

Analytical Role: Debt & Equity Placement Analyst

If you do want to dig more into the analytics, debt and equity placement analyst jobs could be a much better fit. These will often get you involved with bigger deals on behalf of bigger clients, and will also get you involved with the process of raising equity to capitalize individual deals or even entire funds.

These roles are unique because they give you an inside look into the real estate capital markets and what both lenders and equity partners are looking for when making investments in commercial real estate, which can be extremely valuable if you’re planning to raise capital to do your own deals.

Compensation and Stability

These roles also usually come with a salary, and are often only available at some of the biggest brokerage firms in the industry that work with clients raising tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to capitalize transactions. And because of this, pay can also be significant in these roles, with bonus packages that can also come in at 50% to 100% or more of base salary.

If you’re worried about stability, another big benefit of going this route is that properties tend to be financed significantly more frequently than they’re sold. So while a property might only trade hands once every ten years, that same property will likely be financed two or more times during that same period, which tends to create smaller peaks and valleys in income than you might see when working in investment sales.

Path #3: Leasing Brokerage

The last part of brokerage I want to talk about is very different from both investment sales and debt and equity placement, and this is leasing brokerage.

Leasing brokerage involves the process of finding available space for tenants and negotiating leases on behalf of those tenants, or finding tenants on behalf of property owners and negotiating leases on behalf of those owners.

What You’ll Learn

When you’re working in leasing, this can teach you a lot about commercial leasing best practices (that you likely wouldn’t pick up in debt and equity placement or investment sales), and this can also teach you a lot about what tenants are looking for when occupying commercial space.

This can end up being very helpful knowledge if you want to transition into an asset management role in the future (working directly for a property owner), or if you’re planning to make your own investments in commercial properties and plan to manage those deals.

Income Potential

Pay in this part of the industry can also be huge, since leasing commissions are generally based on the total contractual base rent over an entire lease term. This means that if you’re working on a deal where the tenant will pay the property owner $1 million per year over 10 years and your commission is 4%, that’s a $400,000 commission check (that’s almost always paid up-front).

The Downsides

The downside of both of these is that, similar to pure production roles in investment sales and debt and equity placement, you won’t learn much about property valuation and investment analysis. This can leave some pretty big gaps in your skill set, especially if your goal is to go out on your own or transition into acquisitions in the future.

This career path also typically doesn’t come with the option to start out in a salaried analyst role, which means you’ll usually begin your career with either a draw or a pure 100% commission-based compensation package.

With all of that said, if you enjoy building relationships, you see yourself as a natural connector, and you’re not interested in commercial real estate investment analysis, becoming a top leasing broker can be an extremely lucrative career path and can provide a lot of autonomy later in your career.

How To Build The Skills You’ll Need To Break In

If you want to make sure you have the skills you’ll need to land an analyst role at a top commercial real estate brokerage 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.