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What are the exit options for a V10 big law real estate associate? Is it a bad time to go into real estate with the possibility of a recession looming near? Would working at a firm where you can do a lot of distressed entity real estate work during bad economic times sufficiently insulate a young real estate associate from being laid off?

Following.... Particularly interested in thoughts on the outlook for REIT market as well.

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I don't know the answers to your questions, but I know that whoever is going to end up answering them will want to know your answer to the following question first. Do you primarily do dirt work or finance or a mixture of both?

RedPurpleBlue wrote:I don't know the answers to your questions, but I know that whoever is going to end up answering them will want to know your answer to the following question first. Do you primarily do dirt work or finance or a mixture of both?

Finance, only a little bit of development.

Bump

To keep the thread alive, as a midlevel RE finance associate I've seen people go in-house with banks, and in one case a well-known leasing startup.

banking/mortgages are the natural transitions.
IF you can get much further up the chain (partner) you can transition into a REIT - particularly if you an get exposure to securities law.
But those opportunities are few and far between, you're gonna have to be lucky to know the right person at the right time.

How often do real estate finance lawyers go in-house, whether to a bank, fund, or company (I'm guessing not too many companies hire real estate finance people)?

From what I learned in undergrad finance classes, the real estate industry has an incredibly high beta, which in the simplest sense means this industry is incredibly cyclical. A caveat is that REITs have a relatively low beta due to diversification so REITs execution/formation practices could still relatively sound during down times.