If he considers the Connercial Real Estate Route - have him look into the Masters of Real Estate program in the Mays Business school.
1.5 years long, affordable, no thesis paper but instead there's a capstone type project and you have a required summer internship in a field of your choice (aka brokerage). Weekly exposure where you can talk to real industry professionals in different careers and areas in CRE.
There's a ton of intangibles he'd learn from the basics of real estate in all aspects - law, math, development, cash flows, excel modeling, the different subtypes of realty, etc. Would also probably eliminate him having to get an MBA unless he wanted to pursue one as an executive after 10-15 years in the field (not really applicable for brokerage IMO).
Plus - the Aggie network with the MRE program is ridiculously strong, notably so in Texas. I'm talking 99.9% job placement rate for all grads in 90 days post grad (most will have their job lined up about halfway thru the final semester). All grads regularly get emails about job openings from basic analysts to directors or more advanced positions. Plus if he decides to pivot away from brokerage, the MRE will allow him to easily go into another sector easily like development.
My personal antidote:
1. Brokerage is a very tough gig to start out in. You eat what you kill. You're gonna be on a draw with very few checks coming in until ~24 months pass and you get some momentum with closings. To put this in perspective - his buddies who graduate and go into CRE banking will be making $65k+ salary plus a 10-20% bonus while he's stretching by on a $35K draw that gets paid back as you close deals. If he finds some good mentors that bring him along, that helps enough that he'll start getting frequent and bigger commission checks. I'm talking like "hey I leased that industrial building to Amazon 10 years ago and got paid then, and they renewed the lease for another 10 years and I just randomly got the commission check in my mailbox" but this times 3x.
2. Brokerage is a huge space. It's not always feast or famine, but cyclical and there's years you literally CRUSH it and then other years where it's a desert. Also, you can be a broker in industrial, office, retail, multifamily, data centers, land, medical office, etc. most brokers will specialize and be experts on 1 type - aka industrial or office - I'd hate to be an office broker right now…
3. There's also mortgage brokers for debt or producers for equity that put together the capital stack of a deal. These roles may involve a little bit more financial math and nuances with underwriting or technical stuff from raising funds. But they are gonna be a little bit more open - aka a mortgage banker at CBRE probably does a bit of multifamily and some mixed use retail or whatever their clients need help financing.
4. I'm a pretty extroverted guy, but fairly risk adverse. I had a chance to go brokerage in my first years out of the MRE program but ended up going the mortgage banking analyst route focused on multifamily instead because student loans on a draw pay structure was gonna be tough. Higher floor but not as high ceiling and a bit more stable. But I still got to shoot the sh*t like brokers do in a Customer facing role with clients. It's paid off for me as I'm pretty lethal cause I can talk the talk, but with a huge depth of understanding the financing side. Yet - somehow I still ended up in "brokerage"…
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