Real Estate Analyst
Last summer I interned for a large real estate private equity company called Colony Capital which was my first time doing real estate. I think it's the most interesting asset class because real estate is unavoidable - we all interact with it daily and rarely question it. As an intern for Colony, which is where I'm going to be working next year, I help current employees with their day-to-day tasks. I work in their credit division, which means I help decide who to loan money out to. The goal of my company is to find good investments and create a solid return since we earn interest on the money lent out.
I have to create models for properties that show whether or not it would be smart to lend someone money. Every week, my team receives close to one hundred applications for loans from notable properties across the country. Some examples of these include apartment buildings in LA, large shopping mall developments in Arizona, or office buildings in New York City. Part of my job is logging these deal opportunities so that my boss can decide which investments to pursue.
I spend most of my time creating "Underwriting Packages". Underwriting is what we do to assess the risk in an investment. If someone buys an office building in New York City for $100, they might use $20 of their own money and borrow $80 from me to finance their project. I have to figure out whether it's worth my time and money to lend them $80, how much I'm going to charge them for the money, and if I think their project will make them money over a 10-year term.
To tell you what I do, I'll share the various assignments I receive every day from my boss.
PowerPoint Slides:
I have to create slideshows that tell the Investment Committee at Colony more about a property and whether or not they should lend someone money. This is the most time-consuming part of the "Underwriting Package", where I have to do research on the property, the area it's in, recent nearby sales, and forecast what the property would be making if we lent this person the money. That's how we know we're going to get our money back.
Excel Models:
I have to play around with numbers on an Excel sheet that prove whether or not the person asking for money will be able to create revenues from their project. I compile a lot of historical data from a property onto an Excel model. Given certain assumptions about the future, I can predict what a property will be returning in the next decade. If the office building costs $100, I hope that it can bring in something like $5 every year from rent. I save all of this information on a model in Excel that helps us decide whether or not to lend someone money.
Chrome:
The rest of my job takes place on the internet. We save all of our work on a site called SharePoint, part of the Microsoft suite, and I have to log new deals into Salesforce so that everyone on my team stays on the same page. Since my job is remote, I keep in contact with my team using Microsoft Teams. It's pretty much the new Zoom that works better with all the other applications we use.
And that sums up what I do at my job. My favorite part of the job is the people I work with; we meet up after work for dinner and drinks even with the pandemic. I'm looking forward to normal social life with them after coronavirus passes by.
Readability Score:
Flesch Reading Ease: 66.4
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 9
Passive Sentences: 0
Hey Baylor. It was interesting to read what you did as a Real Estate Analyst and see how the finance/investing side of the field works. In terms of your writing, it's a positive sign that you have no passive sentences, and your sentences were easy to read. I wish I learned a bit more about your job, but it is understandable because finance isn't easy to explain in plain English. I am also looking forward to this pandemic to end.
ReplyDeleteHi Baylor, I thought this was interesting and easy to follow. I liked how you broke down underwriting packages in really simple terms. It might be helpful to connect your paragraph about underwriting package/your role at the company to the parts about the applications you use.
ReplyDeleteHey! You did a great job at explaining what you do in Plain English. The examples, especially the one about underwriting, were great. Including a narrative example would strengthen the job description. You also could delete the part about your experience in investment banking since it could distract readers from understanding what your current job is. Overall, you did a great job :)
ReplyDeleteBaylor, I really like how you gave a good overview at the start of this piece and then went on to break down specific tasks. This made it really easy to read. Wanting to work in the real estate world, it was interesting to hear about what an analysts does in this industry. I think you did a very good job explaining an analyst job but still keeping it understandable for someone not in the industry.
ReplyDeleteBaylor, I found your article to be very informative about the real estate industry. It has always interested me, but have never learned too much about it. I thought you used Plain English really well to put the article in simple terms. It was really easy to follow and pleasant to read. Great job.
ReplyDelete