“I really like real estate and I enjoy developing,” he says. “I think I have a lot to offer the industry. That’s why I’m staying—I really like it. I’ve thought about other things to do and really haven’t come up with anything that I have the passion for.”
Wiley looked into other industries but didn’t get a lot of traction. Even if he had, it’s doubtful he would have found something he liked more than development, his strongest passion. “It’s definitely something that’s in your blood,” he says.
Even without plentiful development opportunities right now, multifamily seems to offer the best future for job seekers. “In this cycle, it’s been, ‘Where do you go?’?” Anand says. “This recession has been so widespread that there’s no real place for anybody to go.”
In fact, Anand says things are already looking up. In the past year, he’s seen a lot of laid-off development professionals find jobs. Chris Lee, president and CEO of CEL, sees brighter days ahead as well. He says only 6 percent of the multifamily firms he has surveyed expect to enact workforce reductions in 2011. That said, property management, leasing representatives, and finance/accounting are the top three areas for hiring opportunities in 2011. But eventually construction will come back into the mix.
“Annual multifamily construction activity is expected to grow from $13.4 billion in 2010 to $29.3 billion in 2015, thus creating incredible employment opportunities,” Lee says.
Nobody expects things to relive the glory days of the mid-2000s anytime soon, however.
“The word is that the apartment market is back, but there are a lot of people who may not ever make it back from the design side and the construction side,” Punda says.
Ultimately, Cretal expects to be back doing what he loves. When he gets there, he won’t take it for granted. “I think going through something like this is a character-building process,” Cretal says. “I get up every day and I understand that tomorrow’s opportunities are not guaranteed to anyone.”
