Pros
Link Industrial Properties is Blackstone’s US industrial real estate operating platform and it comes with tremendous growth and opportunities. Management is the best in the business and the Accounting Department is the most efficient, reliable, and accurate accounting team I have been associated with in my 15+ year career.
The CAO is extremely bright, driven, and pushes you to do more than your typical “Property Accountant” role. Not only will you learn the nuts and bolts of real estate accounting but you will also learn and be heavily involved in the budgeting, leasing, and forecasting process. You work hand and hand with the Asset Managers, Portfolio Managers and Operations to get a holistic view of the largest real estate private equity company in the US. The CAO values hard work and wants input from the team on efficiencies and best practices.
There is bunch of examples of new staff coming in and being promoted multiple times very quickly. The Senior VP of Accounting started in the AP department. A handful of current Region Controllers started as Jr. Property Accountants. Many of the VP Portfolio Managers started as Lease Admins. With all the current growth happening company the sky really is the limit. Salary and bonuses are always very generous and much better than what you would get at Keystone/Brixmor or other competitors for Property Accountants. If you are willing to work hard and want to learn about real estate this is the place for you.
Cons
When you go from 300 properties / 75 million in square feet to 2500 properties / over 355 million square feet in one year there is going to be some growing pains. Staffing and training will be expedited and at times deadlines and workflow may be stressful but this true for any fast pace Real Estate Company (the difference is no RE company has grown this size this quickly). I am old enough to remember when the RE market turned (2007-2009) and trust me….being at a growing company (even with some growing pains) is 100% better from than having a reduced workload because you are selling or in some cases giving back properties to a bank. The learning and compensation just stop at that point.
