Pros
Great corporate benefits, good salary
Cons
The Real Estate Advisory Group (REAG) is essentially an appraisal firm that works with a wide variety of property owners (REITs, PE Firms, Developers, etc). So, if you aspire to be a commercial appraiser, this is a great place to be. However, if you want to get into PE or Development, I think you might have a hard time switching after 2 years at DP. Yes the pay is decent and I think people are worth what they get paid to DP, but the skills you gain as an appraisal analyst aren't quite at the level a PE firm will want if they want to hire someone with 2-years of acquisitions and/or asset management experience. You'll most likely have to take a cut in pay to leave if you leave after getting promoted to Senior. You will do two things at the DP REAG, Appraisals and Purchase Price Allocations(ASC 805/PPA) which is essentially an appraisal for a RE transaction. There is very little/no "consulting" that goes on (1 project in over 3 years). At the Analyst and Senior Associate level, you are expected to put in crazy hours sometimes to get projects done on time (work until midnight or later for a handful of weeks and weekends a year and until 7PM most of the other time. There are a few weeks that are a bit slower). Although there are a few managers who help with the grunt work when things get busy, most sit back and act like they are above the grunt work and are essentially just there to sign reports and review analysis. Bonuses are very low for the amount of extra work people put in. Some analysts after working almost a full year will get $1,200, while others might get $5,000 (on a good year you may get $10k)... this all depends on how much is in the bonus pool (how profitable the REAG was at the end of the year). Bonuses are paid March 1st-ish every year. This past year, management said if you billed a certain number of hours to a client in November/December, that you would get a better bonus. Bonuses came around and they were way worse than they ever have been all across the board. The billable hour's system is broken here. They demand you bill at least 40 hours a week to a client, but at the same time the budgets for the projects are so small you can never do it under budget, and they ask you to back off hours from projects if you go over budget on them, which reduces your utilization (billed hours/40 hours). I can't count how many events/dinners/activities I had to cancel with family and friends due to last-minute revisions/updates to appraisals. There are some great people at DP and I am grateful for the experiences I gained, but ultimately, I wasn't happy there. There is so much turnover there and for good reason--people get burnt out and realize quickly that this is not the career path they want. Like I said earlier though, if you love doing appraisal work, this is a dream job!