Just as property investments have continued to increase, the cost of acquiring and retaining talent has skyrocketed. Kent Elliott, a RETS founding principal, notes that it has resulted in sticker shock for some companies. In one instance, a West Coast firm seeking an asset manager expected to pay a salary in line with its current employees, but discovered that competitive salaries had grown by $30,000 to $40,000 beyond that level. “They had to bring in someone at a much higher compensation – and of course that created its own problem.” Kent says, “Ultimately, they gave raises to all their star performers.”
Several factors driving the remarkable increases:
• Low unemployment at all positions in the commercial real estate field. A or B players are fully employed and bring bargaining strength to the table.
• Less new talent is entering the commercial real estate industry.
• Interim or temporary positions are slow to fill because most CRE professionals are employed; often the temporary staff are booked 30 to 60 days ahead.
• The current, most active positions are in Asset Management, Construction/Project Management, Financial Analysis and, of course, the field property level positions.