What Are the Best Exit Opportunities from CRE Capital Markets/IB?

Question

I’m about to join the Capital Markets/Investment Banking division as an Analyst at a large commercial real estate services firm (think JLL/CBRE). My background is mainly commercial due diligence across multiple industries from strategy consulting, with just under two years of experience (ex MBB).

I took this role before fully thinking through the long term exits (and without a RE background), and I’m now trying to get a clearer picture of what career paths typically stem from CRE Capital Markets/IB.

A few questions I’d love input on:

What are the top exit opportunities from CRE Capital Markets? (e.g. REPE?)
How realistic is it to pivot from CRE Capital Markets into generalist PE (non real estate), or is that uncommon without a banking background?
For non investing paths, do people commonly move into corporate strategy and corp dev (either at RE companies or outside real estate)?

Answer 1

Joining as an Analyst leaves you ample opps to leave (e.g. shortly before/after your promotion to Associate).

The role might narrow you to RE roles afterwards, however, this strongly depends on how you approach your career going forward. From my view, joining the RE teams of Investment Banks is possible, same goes for joining RE and Infra focused PE funds (size depending on your type of deals).

I recommend networking / connecting to i) finance headhunters, ii) (junior) investment professionals at potential PE funds, iii) (junior) bankers at respective banks early on to get their view on a potential move (no need to be shy about this - get input early so you have time to adjust your efforts).