I need experience...

[Ryan McElroy]

My ultimate goal is to develop massive condominiums or apartment complexes for profit and investment purposes. I dont have much experience in development yet, just some entry level knowledge as a commercial real estate agent. My question is...

What job would give me the most/best exposure to real estate development so i can educate myself while earning a living? (im currently 25 yo)

Should i work for a developer as an acquisitions and development associate, work as a lender for a bank so i'm exposed to many deals, go back to school and get an MBA with a focus in real estate, work as a property manager learning how to manage a property...

I need the education so i feel confident and safe injecting my own money into multimillion dollar projects

[Scott Choppin]

@Ryan McElroy

As a developer in training, you want a job that exposes you to the maximum amount of the development cycle with the maximum possible learning velocity (time and speed). You will need to learn all of these components of a development deal: land acquisition, site selection and sourcing, zoning and entitlements, architectural design management, deal underwriting, financing, construction, leasing, property management, and sale or asset management. 

I would suggest working for companies that already develop the types of projects that you are ambitious to build in the future. For example, I come from a family of real estate developers, but I was ambitious to learn rapidly and work for others in the MF development domain, so I obtained my first job (asst. project manager) for a division of KB Home (Kaufman and Broad Multi-Housing) that developed in-house apartment projects. I started as a rookie APM, and left there as a seasoned senior project manager running the entire project myself from finding the land to putting the project into long term asset management phase. This gave me the exposure to all aspects of a development deal on multiple larger ground up development deals.

Your likely job title will be: assistant project manager, analyst, development associate. Whatever it is, you will be working for a more seasoned project manager or senior project manager. Know this: that person is worth their weight in gold, and can be the primary person that you run things past or ask questions as you move through your day. My best days, were when I would be tasked with managing a project (or part of it) and could at the end of the day ask a TON of questions about how to do it, what happened, what went wrong, what could be done better, and what could be done better than anyone else. I used to carpool home with a very seasoned PM, and we would be in the car together for 1-2 hours each day, and that poor guy got squeezed dry like a sponge by me for knowledge and information. He and I sill laugh about it today, but damn that was the best learning I ever did. 

One caveat, it will take some time. I spent over 5 years working for others, before deciding it was time to go out and form my own company. One other caveat, different than the advice above, I would NOT work for a company in a construction role. You want to focus on a job that is directly related to development. Nothing against construction roles, they are necessary, and you will be exposed to construction as a development PM, but you don't want to spend 3 years in a construction role, then try to move to development. Plus, if you need to move companies, the new company will see you as a construction guy. That's why you will need to work for a larger company, they have jobs that are specifically related to development. An alternative could be that you intern for a small company, with the express purpose of gaining development experience, or at least that's how you should communicate it to them. You may have to work for free or at low cost to the small company, as they will be very sensitive to cash flow and costs.

The development business is one of the most complicated businesses that I know of combined with risk in land markets, underwriting, financing, and construction. While each component part is not overly hard to understand, there's a ton of steps, and each step has risk embedded in it AND you are dealing with people all along the way: brokers, land sellers, planners, politicians, bankers, construction folks, renters, property managers, and buyers. So your ability to both understand the process better than anyone else AND to convince other people to go your way, agree to allow you to do your project, or support your project with investment, is of paramount importance. 

If you want to see the process in action, see my thread about a real world example from our development portfolio.

I am an offer of help, feel free to reach out if needed with questions.

Thanks

Scott