More portable for secondary markets - Finance or Real Estate?
Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2017 10:26 pm
Say you want to go to a non-coastal secondary city from NYC biglaw. What's the better practice area?
There's a lot more to it than your question that you're not specifying.
What secondary city are you looking for?
Is the finance work you'd do in NYC representing agents/arrangers/other lenders, or sponsors/borrowers? Unless you're looking at Charlotte, NC or something, you're not going to see a ton of lender-side work outside major metropolitan areas, and it's not like a ton of small companies need someone for repeat bank financings.
Is "finance" syndicated lending or securities offerings as well, including high-yield or convertible bonds? If you're getting some securities experience, too, that's a good thing for portability.
Is the real estate work you'd do focused on real estate PE, RE financing, or dirt?
It's hard to know, but I'd honestly pick whichever you like better/lets you work with better people, and when the time comes to move away from NYC you'll just have to pitch yourself and your experience as hard as you can. It'll be harder to find a clean transition from a finance job and RE to a slightly lesser extent, which I think you've realized, but you can always pitch your deal experience at something that's not 1:1 to what you were doing before. I would say that the more generalist you can keep your practice (a wider variety of finance, or a fuller spectrum of RE deals) the more successful you'll probably be... don't become the go-to guy for some niche financing model.