Janice Lin didn't always envision a career in real estate even though she was exposed early to the industry by her parents, two doctors who were active property investors.
Still, when it was time for a job, commercial property is precisely where the managing director and Canadian head of real estate for Blackstone ended up early on, first as a real estate investment banking analyst at Deutsche Bank and later as a senior associate in equity research at Green Street.
"What I took away besides learning all the nuts and bolts of valuing companies was that looking from the outside in, you can see the discrepancies between companies," said Lin, who was hired by Blackstone to oversee its new Toronto office in May. As an analyst, "you see companies using data well, firing on all cylinders and succeeding to push portfolios and companies where there are opportunities to improve," Lin said.
New York City-based Blackstone, the world’s largest commercial real estate owner, has a global real estate portfolio valued at 577 billion U.S. dollars with 54 real estate companies in the group. The company has 14 billion Canadian dollars in assets in Canada, including its majority-owned Pure Industrial.
Lin looks at Blackstone's portfolio of companies, similar to an equity research analyst, and "sees how are they functioning and what they are doing well," she said.
Lin's time as an analyst was in the early 2000s when the economy was coming out of a recession. "It was fun to watch the build-up [of real estate] from the outside of equity research, and then there was 2007 to 2009," she said.
Asset management became more important during the Great Recession. "Asset management is the unsung real estate hero," said Lin, adding buying and selling real estate often gets more attention.
The executive laughs that real estate wasn't a "cool major" when she started. "Now it's one of the largest majors at my undergrad," she said. "We've been in a bull market for almost a decade."
Lin described her parents as "small-time real estate investors" when she was growing up, but she never got the property bug from them.
"Like many immigrant families, real estate was just where you put money," said Lin, adding her parents were doctors, but they managed their property themselves.
She didn't find her way back to real estate until she landed as an analyst, but that training, where she was critically watching companies from the outside, helped her when she was a chief investment officer later in her career.
"Sitting on the other side of the table lends a certain empathy because everybody has a tough job, and you are all trying to figure out how best to do it," said Lin. "What's great is understanding if a management team and a company have the willingness and the intestinal fortitude to think about how else can this be done better. Blackstone has storied unparalleled resources, but it's not just capital, it's a tremendous amount of talent in every asset class you can think of."
R É S U M É
Janice Lin | managing director, head of real estate in Canada for Blackstone
Hometown: Irvine, California
Current city: Toronto, Ontario
Years in industry: 21
Education: Bachelor's in economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania; MBA from Harvard Business School
Hobbies: "On hiatus until my third child can drive."
Advice to those starting out in the industry: "Be curious and take every opportunity you can — it’s offered because someone or something believes you can do it."
Everyone in commercial real estate had to start somewhere. First Job explores where careers began.