Acquisitions interview prep.

Sounds like an SVP origination who has sourced and closed land + entitled-deal acquisitions across at least two product types, presented at IC under capital-partner pressure, and watched merchant deals exit.

What interviewers look for

  • Can the candidate actually SOURCE deals, broker relationships, off-market angles, programmatic JVs with landowners, distressed seller signals, or only react to teasers in the inbox?
  • Do they understand land basis as the deal-defining variable? You make money on the basis, not on the exit cap.
  • Can they defend untrended yield-on-cost vs the market exit cap rate, the development spread, and articulate when the spread is too thin to develop into?
  • Do they grasp entitlements optionality value, that a partially entitled site is worth a step-up over raw dirt because risk has been priced out?
  • Can they read the capital partner, what an LP equity check requires, what a construction lender sizes to, what an agency take-out needs, and structure the deal to fit?
  • Do they have a real sector and submarket view, supply pipeline, comp set, tenant demand drivers, or do they parrot broker narratives?
  • Can they kill a deal? IC respects candidates who say no for the right reasons more than candidates who chase every opportunity.

Behavioural questions to expect

  1. Walk me through your CV.

    What it tests: Story coherence and conviction. Whether the candidate has a deliberate path into developer acquisitions or backed into it. Interviewers screen out candidates whose narrative sounds reactive, 'I happened to end up in real estate'.

  2. Walk me through your most impressive deal or underwriting.

    What it tests: Depth of ownership and willingness to take a view on a specific site or asset. Whether the candidate can move from reciting deal facts to articulating a contrarian or nuanced takeaway on the underwriting, and whether they own the SOURCING beat, not just the modelling.

  3. Tell me about a weakness, a failure, or feedback you've received and worked on.

    What it tests: Self-awareness plus the ability to take a real critique without deflecting plus evidence of improvement over time. Cross-role canonical question. Candidates who give fake weaknesses (perfectionist / works-too-hard) downgrade immediately. Acquisitions teams are small, IC-facing, and high-trust; the seat wants people who can absorb pushback on underwriting without going defensive.

  4. Why real estate development, vs acquisitions at a REIT, REPE, brokerage, or banking?

    What it tests: Authentic interest in development as the build side of real estate vs trading existing assets. Whether the candidate has thought specifically about why DEVELOPER acquisitions (sourcing dirt + entitled deals to feed a pipeline) and not REIT or REPE acquisitions (trading stabilised buildings).

  5. Why a developer and not a REIT or REPE fund?

    What it tests: Whether the candidate understands the structural differences between developer acquisitions, REIT acquisitions, and REPE acquisitions, different return targets, different hold horizons, different value-creation source, different capital partner dynamics, different sourcing channels.

  6. Why this firm?

    What it tests: Whether the candidate has done the homework. Interviewers spot a generic 'great platform' answer instantly, they hear it ten times a week.

  7. When you're competing for a site against a leading competitor, what's the pitch to the seller or landowner that makes this firm win?

    What it tests: Whether the candidate understands the this firm's edge from the SELLER and BROKER's perspective, not just from the this firm's marketing, and whether they can think about sourcing as a competitive game.

  8. How does this firm's capital partner base and balance sheet shape the acquisitions pipeline today?

    What it tests: Whether the candidate has researched the this firm's capital position and connected it to sourcing reality. Interviewers want candidates who think like a deal partner, not just a deal junkie, capital availability and partner appetite gate what you can underwrite.

Technical concepts to master

The developer pro-forma, from rent roll to yield-on-cost

Stabilised Year-1 NOI build
Year-1 revenue (rents + other income) less vacancy and credit loss, plus expense reimbursements where applicable, minus operating expenses (property management, R&M, payroll, utilities, taxes, insurance) but BEFORE debt service, capex, and leasing costs.
Total Development Cost (TDC)
Sum of land basis + hard construction costs + soft costs + financing carry during construction + contingency + lease-up reserve, the all-in basis to deliver and stabilise the project.
Untrended and trended yield-on-cost
Untrended YoC = stabilised Year-1 NOI / TDC with no rent growth applied; trended YoC applies rent growth from underwrite year to year of stabilisation. Most institutional LPs underwrite BOTH.
Residual exit value and development spread
Exit cap rate applied to year-of-sale NOI gives terminal value; the development spread (untrended YoC minus exit cap) is the premium the developer earns for development risk.

Capital stack as the acquisitions team sees it

LP equity, institutional capital
Outside equity from institutional investors (pension, sovereign wealth, family office, fund-of-funds); typically 60-90% of the equity stack on a deal-by-deal or programmatic basis.
GP equity and co-invest
Sponsor's own equity contribution alongside LP capital; typically 5-15% of the equity stack as alignment with the LP.
Construction loan
Senior debt funding hard and soft construction costs through completion and lease-up; typically 55-70% LTC; usually floating rate; sized on LTC, DSCR at conversion, and debt yield at stabilisation tests.
Mezzanine and preferred equity
Sub-senior tranches filling the gap between construction loan and common equity; typically 10-15% return target plus sometimes warrants; structurally subordinate to senior, senior to common.

Sourcing channels and basis discipline

Broker-marketed processes
Investment-sales brokers (Cushman & Wakefield, CBRE, JLL, Newmark, Eastdil) run organised marketing processes, best for established product types in liquid markets but compresses basis through competitive bidding.
Off-market and direct landowner relationships
Direct origination, calling owners, building broker relationships at the regional or local level, tracking expiring options or distressed signals, produces lower competition and typically a wider basis discount.
Programmatic JV with landowner or capital partner
Recurring origination structure where the developer partners with a landowner (land contributed at agreed basis, developer takes the entitlements + execution risk) or a capital partner (LP commits to a series of deals fitting agreed criteria).
Basis discipline, what 'making money on the basis' means
The principle that a developer's return is determined more by land basis than by exit cap, if you buy the dirt at a wide basis vs replacement cost, you have margin of safety even if exit cap moves against you.

Practical drills

  • A multifamily development site has a $20M land asking price. Hard + soft + financing + contingency comes to $80M, so TDC is $100M. Stabilised Year-1 NOI is projected at $5.5M. The market exit cap rate for stabilised Class-A multifamily in this submarket is 5.25%. What's the untrended yield-on-cost? What's the development spread? Would you advance the deal? And if the market exit cap moves 50 bps wider during your hold, what's the impact on residual value?
  • A 300-unit Class-A industrial site in a Sun Belt secondary market: $40M land asking, $120/sq ft hard costs on 350K rentable sq ft, 12% soft cost load, 5% contingency, 6% construction interest + reserve. Market rents support $8.50/sq ft NNN at stabilisation. Expense ratio (net of reimbursements) is 12%. Market exit cap for stabilised Class-A industrial in this submarket is 5.50%. Walk through how you'd build the underwrite, decide whether to advance, and structure the capital stack.
  • You're handed a one-page teaser on a 200-unit multifamily development site. The teaser says: land ask $25M, fully entitled, broker estimates $5M NOI at stabilisation, three other Class-A deliveries hitting the submarket within 18 months, current submarket vacancy 8%, exit cap 5.0%. Walk through what would kill the deal for you and what you'd need to see to advance.

Smart-question anchors

  • Sourcing pipeline, broker-led vs off-market vs programmatic JV, with one recent named win
  • Basis discipline and IC kill rate, what walking-away looks like at the this firm and how junior team members get IC-room exposure
  • Underwriting standards, stated minimum untrended YoC, target development spread, project-level IRR threshold, and how those have moved over the last 12-24 months
  • Product and submarket rotation, where the team is leaning in vs exiting, what senior leadership sees in supply pipeline data
  • Capital partner platform, institutional LP relationships, programmatic JV structures, fund vs deal-by-deal posture and how that shapes what the acquisitions team can chase

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