Corporate real estate analyst - advice appreciated
I am going to be joining a F500’s corporate real estate division as a finance analyst. I will be supporting the management of their real estate portfolio for a specific geography. I will be involved in their portfolio planning and capital planning.

I was just wondering how much exposure I will have to transactions and modelling, in the interview they made me build a relatively simple real estate model but would be good to hear from someone who has done a similar role.

If you have any other advice that would be appreciated.


Thanks!
[{"id": "h9irsds", "text": "I doubt much if you are on the asset management side. If you are more AM/portfolio management you\u2019ll likely be dealing more with existing assets. \n\nThat being said, you\u2019ll have exposure to disposals of the assets which sit in your portfolio which could be a way in if you wanted to make the move. Feel free to PM", "replies": [{"id": "h9iy2n4", "text": "Thanks what about from an acquisitions perspective I.e when looking to buy/lease a new office.", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "h9jaiss", "text": "You will likely be working on leases, but I doubt there will be a ton of acquisitions.  A lot of F500s lease their space, so the corporate team manages the leases, buildout of space, space planning, space utilization, etc.  It can be cool to work in because you can do things on the corporate side that would never make sense to an investor.  For example, an investor might not expand/renovate a gym if it is competitive with other buildings while a corporate team might build something way bigger/nicer as part of the HR strategy to focus on health/wellness.", "replies": [{"id": "h9jv485", "text": "Thanks that\u2019s helpful. They also made sure I had a good understanding of NPV, IRR and ROI, that\u2019s why I thought would be some modelling/transactions exposure", "replies": [{"id": "h9k0mrg", "text": "You very well might.  It depends what the company does.  Corporate real estate for CVS is different from corporate real estate at Google.  Those concepts can be applied to basically any capital project though, so you need to understand them.", "replies": [{"id": "h9k26ya", "text": "Makes sense. it\u2019s a engineering/consultancy company", "replies": [], "depth": 4}], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "h9k2f78", "text": "Congrats on the position. My advice would be to get settled, get good at what you're asked to do, form good relationships, then ask about what interests you other than what you're doing.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "h9lggvw", "text": "I worked as a financial analyst for a F10 pharmaceutical company in their corporate real estate group but as a contract role from a national real estate company (we basically were their in house advisor). Lots of lease vs buy analyses, market reports where they were active, and the occasional analysis of existing space use and overlap for new company acquisitions or dispositions. Feel free to PM for more info.\n\n&amp;#x200B;\n\nI personally found it pretty dry as much of what we did on the real estate side didn't really matter THAT much to the bottom line. We might provide a method to save $15MM but the value of the product/goods were 100x so at the end of the day the business side definitely came first. Currently in mortgage brokerage for commercial real estate now and I enjoy it much more as the family offices or even just high NW individuals appreciate any savings or efficiency", "replies": [], "depth": 1}]