I’m Joe Stampone. I work at Atlas Real Estate Partners (‘AREP’), a private real estate investment firm focused on value-add and ground-up multifamily investments. ASotREG is a place where I share my thoughts on real estate, careers, technology, entrepreneurship, passive investing, and anything else that piques my interest.
How I Stay on Top of the Market
While my days are often filled with meetings, calls, and emails, I think it’s important to carve out an hour or so each day to stay atop the market. This is just as much a part of my job as is my daily responsibilities. It’s from these articles, interviews, and research that I get my inspiration and form my market opinions. Readers often ask me how I stay on top of the market -here goes: Real Estate Market News (Daily Check) National Real Estate Investor Online Globe Street Commercial Observer CoStar News Multihousing News Online Multifamily Executive Magazine Bloomberg (Real Estate)...
Content Discovery: Value Hound – A Community of Real Estate Value Investors
I’m back from my two week European vacation and I have lots of great content lined up for the next few months. I’ve found that it’s extremely important for me to shut down the engines every once in a while, as challenging as that may be. I always return full of inspiration and enthusiasm. I like to think that I’m pretty in-tuned to the various sources of real estate news/information that’s available online, however once in a while I discover a source that I didn’t know existed. A well-respected colleague of mine recently introduced me to ValueHound, a site dedicated exclusively to...
Floored: The Future of Real Estate Marketing and Leasing
A few weeks ago I got to swing by the headquarters of Floored, a company that creates fully interactive models of real space. While there, I demo'd some of the new technology they’re working on including user-controlled virtual tours. I was blown away. As I sat in their Soho office, I was able to virtually navigate the top floor of the 1 World Trade Center in high-def quality. There's no question that this is the future of real estate leasing and marketing (along with many other applications), and it's not far from being mainstream. I was so impressed with their work that asked Floored...
Real Estate Professionals are above all else Entrepreneurs
I actually wrote this post a few months ago, but was hesitant to publish it. After giving it some deeper thought, I believe this to be true. In my first blog post ever, I said “real estate is a great business and career because of the people.” Working in the business for the last 3 years, I’ve been able to witness this firsthand and can confirm this to be true. Specifically, what’s really unique about real estate professionals is that almost all of us have an unrelenting desire to run our own deals one day. Real estate professionals don’t get into the business because they want to be...
Challenges of Transitioning from a Real Estate Operator to an Allocator
I always tell people that there is no linear career path in real estate. While this is undoubtedly true, there's an art to transitioning from one sector to another sector of the real estate business. I had a call a few months back with a young real estate professional who was looking to move from an owner/operator in a secondary city to a big PE fund in a primary market. This is a difficult move, and I was impressed with his approach. When he emailed me a few weeks back saying he had successfully landed a new job with a blue chip PE fund, I wasn't surprised. I asked him to share his...
Real Estate – It’s About Story Telling and Brands
Earlier this week, the Atlas team met with Ben Miller(ise), the co-founder of Fundrise and Popularise. Although I’ve known this for a while, meeting Ben in person showed me first-hand that he’s a real estate thought-leader. He continues to innovate through his crowdfunding and crowdsourcing platforms. Crowdfunding for real estate is set to explode now that the SEC finally lifted the General Solicitation Ban as they were asked to do by Congress in Title II of the JOBS Act. What this means for real estate is that groups raising capital can now advertise the fact that they’re doing so....
Valuate – Commercial Real Estate Financial Analysis, Levered
In real estate, we often do things because that’s just the way it’s done. But that doesn’t mean it’s the best or most efficient way to do things. Evolving technology and greater acceptance of tech solutions among the real estate community has created a flurry of new products. One space which hasn’t evolved much over the past few years is asset valuation. I often spend hours in excel just to determine if a deal is worth digging in to. There’s got to be a better way! Bruce Kirsch, the visionary behind REFM, is currently overseeing the alpha release of a new investment analysis software...
Realty Mogul: The Future of Real Estate Investing
This week I had the opportunity to catch up with Jilliene Helman, the visionary behind the real estate crowdfunding site, Realty Mogul. While the sharing economy has exploded for tangible goods, the sharing of capital is a relatively new concept. We’ve seen peer-to-peer lending sites such as Lending Club grow rapidly, however crowdfunding for real estate is just emerging. Although we’re still very early in the game, I believe the time is right to disrupt the real estate investment landscape. Investors are comfortable with the internet, they’re willing to try new things, and companies like...
The Real Value of a Graduate Real Estate Program
When I talk with college students and young real estate professionals, they often ask me about my experience at NYU Schack. They ask me about the professors, the classes, and how the program helped me land a job in real estate. They look at the program as a way to learn the business and jump-start their real estate career. However, they tend to miss what I think is the true value of an advanced degree in real estate. Here's what I see as the 3 most valuable aspects of getting an advanced degree in real estate: 1. You get to explore various aspects of the business that interest you. As a...
A Note to College Seniors: There’s no Wrong Place to Begin a Career in Real Estate
As college seniors approach graduation and prepare for a career in real estate, many are left without job offers. It wasn’t too long ago that I was a college senior and had no clue what I was going to do post-graduation. For much of the senior spring semester I had a laser focus on obtaining a position within real estate finance or development. After countless informational interviews, that’s the only position where I thought I should be. The problem was that by mid-2008, the equity markets were frozen and new development had come to a screeching halt. I graduated with no position and had...
Floored by Real Estate Innovation
Real estate is generally considered a late adopting business full of dinosaurs who don’t embrace new technologies. While widely true (ok, almost entirely true), it certainly didn’t feel that way at Art Assets event highlighting real estate innovation. The event featured Riggs Kubiak of Honest Buildings, Ben Miller of Fundrise, and David Eisenberg, founder of Floored, a revolutionary 3D mapping program. While Ben and Riggs are real estate practitioners who saw inefficiency in the business and set out to improve it, David is a non-real estate guy who’s shaking up the business. Jason...
Career Advice from 3 College Seniors Who’ve Landed Jobs with Top Real Estate Firms
I have a lot of calls with college students looking to break into the real estate business and young professionals looking to grow their careers. The advice I give is typically grounded in personal experience. However, since joining Atlas Real Estate Partners two years ago, I haven’t had any direct exposure to the job market. My knowledge of the current hiring environment is mainly hearsay. So I reached out to three college seniors who've successfully navigated the hiring market and landed jobs with top tier real estate firm and asked them to share their advice. Here’s what they had to...
Career Series – What it’s Like Working in the CMBS Group of a Major Investment Bank
Over the past few weeks I’ve spoken with numerous college seniors looking to break into real estate. Each of them is happy to report that the hiring market is beginning to pick up; they’re seeing more opportunities, getting more interviews, and generally have increased optimism. One sector of the market which has seen a lot of hiring activity is CMBS. It was very timely that Kevin Flammia reached out to me noting that he had just transferred into the CMBS group of a major investment bank. I asked Kevin to share a bit about the process of breaking into CMBS and his experience thus far....
Career Series – Real Estate Investment Banking
I talk to a lot of undergrads who say they want to get into real estate investment banking, but have no idea what it consists of. I tracked down a fellow NYU Schack grad working in real estate investment banking and asked him to share some insight into his day-to-day. Enter Chase: Joe once wrote that a real estate career is not linear and I couldn't agree more. Why I got into Real Estate While pursuing my undergraduate degree in banking and finance, I took a real estate class simply because it happened to fit my schedule. I’ve been hooked ever since. Unlike most things in finance, I found...
What to Expect and How to Prepare for an Interview in Real Estate Private Equity Part II
A few months ago, I published part I of a series of posts that walk through the interview process with real estate private equity firms. Part I covered the first two interviews. In part II, my buddy covers the 3rd and 4th round interviews. Round 3: The Technical Test As discussed in Part I, the beginning rounds of the interview process are intended for the company to get to know your background and most importantly your personality. Since private equity shops run a lean operation, it is essential that your interviewers feel that you fit in well not only with the group, but with the...
Career Series – What it’s Like Working for the Redevelopment Group of a Public REIT
For the next installment of the ASotREG Career Series,my good buddy Justin Chu discusses his unique role within the redevelopment group of a large apartment REIT. What stands out to me about Justin's career is the unique path he's taken; from lending, to investment, now a project manager, and one day an entrepreneur. It goes to show you, there really is no typical career path in real estate. Enter Justin: Happy New Year’s to all the ASotREG readers. I’m happy to be back in the ASotREG universe helping Joe with his latest initiative. We were recently catching up and he mentioned the new...
Career Series – Real Estate Debt: What would you say you do here?
One of my goals for 2013 was to do more career-related posts. So I bugged a bunch of my friends and luckily I was able to coerce a few to put together a “day in the life” post. This first one comes from J.P. Harlow, an associate with a well-respected bank. Enter J.P. Harlow Joe kindly asked me to write about a day in the life of a lender. Doing so however, means I must dispel some preconceived notions of what a lender even does. Truthfully, I thought real estate debt was a boring proposition. I imagined boiler plate systems, little interaction with owners/operators, and a slow paced...
How to Land a Job with a Start-Up Real Estate Firm
Upon completing your education you’ll be faced with a decision; go work for a large institutional-quality firm which demands professionalism and attention to detail, but inherently forces you to specialize; or work for a start-up firm where you’ll be involved in all the decision-making whether for good or bad. Personally I’m attracted to the small company environment where I’m involved in all aspects of the company. My day-to-day responsibilities consist of acquisitions, asset management, property management, marketing, accounting, and investor relations just to name a few. However, these...
You Have to Earn Your Gut
How many times have you heard successful investors say, when you’re in a deal and something goes wrong, trust your gut. I look at a lot of deals. Typically, a deal will come across my desk through a broker or friend and I’ll do a quick back-of-the-envelope analysis. If the deal looks appealing after the BOE, I’ll do a full-fledged model backed by cursory due diligence including market rents, demographics, comparable sales, financing assumptions, and anticipated capex. If the investment returns are strong, I’ll perform comprehensive due diligence and refine my model. For each deal, I do...
How to Prepare for a Career in Real Estate
I’ve had a number of calls recently with undergrads looking to break into the real estate business. Without fail, they ask me what they should be doing to prepare for a career in real estate. Aside from internships and informational interviews of course, here are a few of the things that I think will give you a leg up on the competition. Read The Real Estate Game: The book was recommended to me by a family friend while I was in college. Bill Poorvu teaches the fundamentals of real estate in entertaining fashion, drawing from his 30 years of experience and teaching at HBS. Nearly 10 years...