Two Important Soft Skills for Real Estate Private Equity Analysts

This post analyzes two real estate private equity soft skills. Mastery of these skills can make or break an early career in real estate private equity.

First, you must learn to manage expectations on timing. This means you always give a realistic expectation for completion on any assignment.

Second, you must learn to handle feedback with grace. Read below for specific advice that will guide you to success in your real estate private equity career.

Learn To Manage Expectations On Timing

When you’re a real estate private equity analyst, people mostly ask you to do work. Most analysts don’t demand work from others. As an analyst, it’s important to clearly communicate when you expect to finish your work. When making any estimates on timing, follow this simple rule of thumb.

Real estate private equity analysts should always multiply their expectation of deliverable timing by 1.5x. For example, if you think the project is going to take you one hour, say that it will take an hour and a half. If you think it will take you two days, say it will take you three and a half days.

However, Note The Important Caveats Below:

• All requests are time-sensitive. If you think a project will take you two days and you say three and a half, that includes working late every day and over weekends if necessary. Don’t price early exits or personal downtime into that extended figure.
• Don’t mill about if you owe somebody a deliverable. Coffee breaks and quick walks to lunch are acceptable. But if somebody’s waiting on you to complete an analysis, don’t act like you have all the time in the world.
• If you sense a delay, immediately tell your superior. Delays are annoying, but they happen. When you face a delay, immediately alert your team. Explain exactly why the delay is inevitable, and how you’re going to mitigate the delay. Keep your team on track with proper timing at all times. Yet, never announce a delay that you can fix through hard effort. Only mention delays that are unavoidable, such as a business partner with key information is out on vacation or the website with critical data is offline for maintenance.

Every level of the real estate private equity hierarchy has to manage expectations on timing. At the bottom, analysts are expected to deliver work requests at regular intervals. Upon promotion from analyst, associates no longer just do work asked of them, but also ask other people to do work for them. This creates another layer of complexity where proper management of expectations becomes critical. Learn to manage expectations as an analyst so you become a more effective associate.

Don’t Get Defensive, Receive Feedback With Grace and Appreciation

When your team gives you feedback, your first reaction might be to defend your previous assumptions. Swallow that response and listen to the feedback with earnest ears. This advice is critical for junior analysts and associates who are relatively new to the workforce.

Your reaction to defend yourself comes with good intentions. You want to reassure your team that you are competent, that you didn’t realize some nuanced subject had to be done some other way, etc. However, defending yourself in the face of feedback is a very bad look. Remember, you joined the team because you have faith in the expertise of the fund’s real estate investors. Thus, listen to your superiors who have far more experience.

When receiving feedback, your superiors want to make sure that their advice has fully registered. Thus, listen actively, say yes affirmatively, and take notes. Don’t apologize extensively, but acknowledge your errors. If you learn to take feedback with grace, you have mastered an important real estate private equity skill.

A Good Response at The End of Receiving Feedback Sounds Like This:

“Thank you for pointing out my mistake on X. I made that error because of Y. I know Y is the wrong thing to do because of [reason], and the method Z you taught me is clearly the better option. Now that I am going to do Z instead of Y, X will never happen again. Thanks for showing me the right path, I appreciate your help catching me up to speed.”