Interview Prep: Real Estate for the Near Future

STOP!  Before you enter an interview room this fall prepared to say “I want to do real estate because I liked my property class,” come down from the clouds. 

While you were in school:  This is not 2007. The Real Estate market has been roiled by the collapse of subprime mortgages.  Lenders are no longer making low-doc or no-doc Liar Loans with Irrational Exuberance.  Borrowers with good credit are having trouble getting financing. The Developers you might have wanted to work for are not necessarily building new developments.  Some cities have double-digit vacancies in commercial real estate.  These are troubled times.

Still interested?  Create your own Plan A and Plan B.

Plan A.   You want to be able to intelligently discuss trends and troubles.  There should be no “deer-in-the-headlight” conversations in your interviews because you will have done extensive research on the business. You have the rest of the summer to talk to realtors, brokers, bankers, and real estate lawyers, and to read the Wall Street Journal and the local regular and business newspapers in the city in which you hope to practice so that you know the state of the marketplace.

Sound like a star in the interview. If real estate in your target city is troubled, find out if the employers that you are meeting are going after work in the industry. (For example, Ballard Spahr has formed a Distressed Real Estate Team).  When asked about your interest, explain that you know that real estate is in trouble, and that you took time during the summer to explore the issues by talking to realtors, bankers, brokers and others in the industry.  If the firm is hiring in that group, you are ready to roll up your sleeves and go to work during troubled times so that you can be prepared to continue to work in the good times. 

Plan B.  If the firm isn’t hiring for Real Estate, you will use your real estate research to show your initiative by explaining that you are ready to apply that same energy to work in any business group. People will be impressed by your willingness to explore a practice on your own time and on your own dime. You will also have created an opportunity to show your flexibility -- an ideal characteristic in troubled economic times.

Susan Gainen, University of Minnesota Law School