Best CRE brokerage firms
What is the general consensus on brokerage firms that pay the most / prestige? Would be interesting to hear everyone’s opinion. Comp figures also appreciated. Not tied to any role as well.
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I’ll let others chime in but imo there’s two ways your brand and “prestige” can be viewed in brokerage. At a JLL, you will either go to a client or recruit through traditional ways. If you’re on a top team in nyc then your clients might hit you up. Probably not in a secondary market from top players. Traditionally, even if you’re in a good team, you’re still gonna be seen as a JLL guy. Look at people who left the JLL office to go to clients in LA, usually to smaller more regional shops. Eastdil is better for brand and “prestige” because it doesn’t matter what office, you’ll still be seen as an Eastdil guy which has a good rep. So from traditional recruiting ways you’ll probably have an easier time getting top shops reaching out. I never worked at Eastil but worked at JLL/CBRE. Could be wrong. This was purely based on the perspective of going to principal side after, if you want to be in brokerage 100% then find the high producing team with room for you to grow into an institutional seat.
My rankings for “prestige” (none are actually prestigious lol it’s real estate)
8.3/10 Eastdil
7/10 JLL
4.8/10 CBRE
(Nothing else is worth it’s salt from a strong brand perspective)
My ranking for pay in this market
Eastdil (80k base and 40k bonus of IB hours so you’re getting pimped out for wack comp basically)
CBRE/Berkadia/Newmark (prob pay same)
JLL (60k-70k base and deal tips) you’ll make dogwater here in this market
**note: this is my opinion and would love to hear other people’s thoughts as well. From any of these places you can prob out recruit most if you know how to sell your story and talk to HH’s. (Most people suck at recruiting)
Idk if you’d have insight into this but how do these rankings hold up in DFW?
Tbh man none of it matters if you know what you want to do. If you want to do acquisitions and use this as a pivot, go work at Eastdil. If you don’t, JLL might be a good move for Dallas. None of these shops are super competitive to get into if you care enough to network imo because I’ve done it and see the people on the inside. Even if you start at Berkadia you could get into JLL easily with that experience for example you don’t need much. But if you want to know for sure, linkedin search people in the DFW area who used to work at JLL, Eastdil, etc. wherever they exited to will likely be your potential exit opps as well if you don’t want to stay. I felt pimped out working in brokerage so just have a good reason why you want to do it, a lot of people throwing around iffy info on the sub. Even the guys in the real estate game aren’t the most keen on best career moves since it’s not an industry that is as clean cut and polished regarding that stuff like banking or PE, etc
Imagine trying to source deals, just to find that someone contacted them already (regardless of success) and you are not allowed to. Welcome to all of the firms you mention.
Can you explain what you mean, want to make sure I’m understanding you correctly
This, particularly the "JLL is more prestigious than CBRE" take, does not track at all with my experience.
No one at CBRE secretly pines to work for JLL, and on the other hand, no one at JLL secretly pines to work for CBRE either.
Beyond all of that, it varies wildly by market.
Market/Team are gonna be more important than anything. But I'd go with a national brand, CW, CBRE, JLL, etc. Eastdil obviously outranks anyone else but it's hard to compare. Be in a good market with a team that has a good reputation and you should be good.
Team is the most important thing. There are several teams at CBRE/JLL with large deal flow that regularly - and successfully - compete with Eastdil for the largest deals in the industry. It would be fair to say that exit ops on these teams are comparable to those of the Eastdil counterpart teams. Base comp would be lower than ES on these teams, but bonus could make all-in comparable in a better market.
Thoughts on colliers in a major market on a top team that is active?
Super market specific and asset class specific.
But I'd say
CBRE/JLL/Eastdil
CW
Colliers/Newmark
Berkadia/Northmarq/Transwestern
Avison/Lee/NAI/Savills/Kidder Matthews/Cresa
M&M
Matthews
Remax, Coldwell Banker etc
Surprised to see Colliers/Newmark so low, what are you thoughts on them in the NYC area? Seems Newmark has brought over many top brokers from CW/Eastdil and Colliers seems to be building their capital markets team which is working on bigger deals.
In my experience there is not firms that are ranked, but rather the specific teams at the firms. Obviously Eastdil, Newmark, JLL, CB, etc. all have good brand names, but with top teams moving from firm to firm over the years some gained top brokers while others have lost them.
Definitely second this, it's about being on active teams. Just fyi for anyone looking for hand holding and a mentor on some teams, that is not the case. Worked at a less known firm and boss was MIA literally half the time I was there and was less than helpful, never put me on assignments and only looked to take for his benefit. That could be the case in many of these top markets for RE.
By brand name/prestige, are we talking about it in the eyes of other people in CRE? Because outside of CRE people, 99% of people don't know what JLL or Eastdil are. I would wager that if you walked up to random people on the street in an average town and asked them to name 3 CRE companies they would probably struggle and then spit out a residential real estate company like Coldwell Banker. So in my opinion, no CRE company really has any significant brand name recognition/prestige to the general public since CRE isn't D2C (compared to banking for example, which people interact with on a daily basis - Bank of America, Chase, Citi, etc.)
As for CRE people, anyone working in CRE is going to be familiar with all the national brokerages. But CRE people realize that these brokerages are just teams and there are good and bad teams at each brokerage. It's also all relationship based. So clients will keep their broker that they've worked with for 15 years regardless of the brokerage that they're currently with...Although JLL is trying to flip this so the brokerage is #1 and the broker is #2 - but that's not how humans operate. People build relationships with other people, not companies. So since brokerage is relationship-based, the broker/team is what matters most and the company second.
That's a long-winded way to say that people in CRE care more about the team/broker than the brokerage, so the "prestige" is more so with the team/broker rather than the company.
Pretty wild easdtil has had the same analyst pay for like 7 years...
The others haven't improved much either but the comp is not bad overall.
Saw some JLL guys making 75ish base in a major market with extra comp coming it at another 25 or so based on deal volume in capital markets.
Definitely some good reps and exits leadings to some development and investments roles after a year or two.
I've said it a hundred times when this question is asked every year and I'll say it again - in brokerage what matters is the TEAM not the company. Plenty of big name shops have meh teams, and then there are smaller shops that have all star teams that manage to steal assignments away from the big shops. It's still more than likely, especially today, that most of the top team work for one of the major shops (as they all get bought out and passed around every few years from one shop to another), but this is more so to say that just because X team is at JLL doesn't mean its a good one. Follow the transaction volume / deal track record on the sell side, always. Work for the best possible team you can with your experience/profile and the rest will fall into place.
It's brokerage... what prestige could we possibly be talking about? If prestige is important, then steer clear of brokerage and go do something more important or that has more integrity, like panhandling on the subway.
Starting to get the impression that you may not like brokers....
I second all of the comments about this being team/market specific over one specific company. I work at one of the big brokerages and would sooner work with some of our competitors than 50% of the teams here.
Can be a little challenging to sus out active teams, but you can search on costar for deal makers who have done XYZ deals equaling XYZ value or square footage in the last few years. Also, if you go to the RE section of crains, look at the deals making headline news, and you will quickly notice the same brokers mentioned over and over on the biggest deals.
I’d ignore costar power broker awards, as the most eager/egotistical brokers always submit their deals, but the best brokers don’t usually bother.
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