Senior Associate, Director

Position Senior Associate / Director – Americas Real Assets Research
Company CONFIDENTIAL
Location New York EASTERN US
Reporting Relationship Head of Americas Real Assets Research

Company Background/Culture

Our client’s professionals in 200 offices provide exceptional outcomes for clients by combining local market insight, broad services, specialized expertise and premier technology tools and resources.

The Opportunity

We are recruiting a full-time Senior Associate / Director to join our Americas Real Assets Research Team. The team plays a key role in formulating the Global investment strategy and portfolio construction decisions.

The successful candidate will report to the Head of Americas Real Assets research and will principally be involved in the forecasting of the US Office and Life Sciences property market in support of the firm’s investments in the sector. While the primary focus will be on the for-rent Office sector, coverage responsibilities will also include the Life Sciences segment.
The candidate will also collaborate with the wider team both in the Americas and globally, and will stay on top of demographic, legislative and economic changes that affect the supply/demand balance in the sector.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the production of Office forecasts at the MSA level on a semi-annual basis, analyzing the impact of macroeconomic, demographic and capital market trends for US and Canadian markets. Responsible for rent growth, vacancy and cap rate figures.
• Contribute to the formulation of the “house view” /market outlook for the Americas and provide preferred investment strategies within the sector.
• Consider the investment characteristics and performance of real assets within the wider context of other asset classes (multifamily, industrial, retail and other).
• Provide context for the investment recommendations within the firm’s proprietary risk framework.
• Coherently communicate key messages to fund managers and investors – via both oral presentations (in-person and online) and written outputs.
• Contribute to the direction and content of research white papers; may include preparation of papers and articles for presentation at industry conferences.
• Write and edit research sections for client / fund reports.
• Ensure the Research team and other key stakeholders are kept up to date with industry trends.

Professional Experience/Qualifications

• Inquisitive and analytical by nature; not afraid to ask questions.
• Proactive with a “can-do” attitude and desire to continually grow one’s skillset.
• Flexible and able to work both independently and collaboratively across teams.
• Receptive to feedback.
• Not afraid to immerse oneself in large data sets and academic research.
• Ability to prioritize and co-ordinate tasks, ensuring multiple/competing deadlines are met.
• Comfortable engaging with senior business leaders including portfolio and acquisition team members as well as external clients.
• Ability to think both at a strategic level and offer insights at asset level.

Skills Required – Must Haves
• Strong background in statistics or econometrics; knowledge of ARIMA, VECM and VAR modelling. Proficient in use of statistical software (EViews) or other (R, Stata).
• 5 – 10 years of experience Commercial Real Estate as an analyst of capital/investment markets and real estate with explicit background in forecasting.
• Excellent command of verbal and written English; must be comfortable writing asset-level investment recommendations and sector-level white papers with little to no supervision.
• Strong analytical skills and comfortable seeking out new data sources.
• Robust understanding of economic data and drivers and NIPA accounts.
• Proficient in Excel, PowerPoint and Word.

Optional but preferred:
• Prior use of Moody’s, Oxford Economics, NCREIF, MSCI, CoStar, REIS, RealPage, Yardi, RCA or other third-party data vendors.
• Data visualization, web scraping, GIS skills and coding (Visual Basic, Python) a plus.

Education
• Undergraduate or graduate degree in Economics, Finance, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering, or Operations Research.