How to Hire a VP of Acquisitions in Commercial Real Estate
Not all VP of Acquisitions roles are created equal. The candidate who closed a billion dollars at one firm may not close anything at another — not because the talent disappeared, but because the resources, culture, and trajectory under their feet changed. Hiring at this level is less about finding the best acquisitions person and more about finding the right one for your specific platform.
Define the seat before you define the candidate.
The same title means different jobs at different firms. At an institutional REIT, a VP of Acquisitions sources, underwrites, and closes deals against tight strategy rules and a centralized capital allocation process. At a multifamily operator, the same title can mean owning origination across a region with limited deal-team support. At a private fund, it can mean carrying deal-flow responsibility for an entire asset class.
The mistake firms make is opening the search before they have described the actual seat. The job description gets written from a template, the recruiter takes it to market, and a slate of strong-on-paper candidates arrives — none of whom solve the problem the firm actually needs solved. The work starts before the search starts.
Resources, culture, and the future of the firm.
A track record at another firm proves the candidate could do the job there. It does not prove they can do it here. Harvard Business School professor Boris Groysberg spent a decade tracking what happens to high performers when they switch firms. The finding was uncomfortable: performance dropped significantly and stayed lower for years.1 The talent travels. The constellation around them — the team, the platform, the trajectory — does not.
Three things decide whether a strong acquisitions hire produces or stalls inside your firm, and none of them appear on a resume.
- Resources
What support sits behind the seat.
Deal-team headcount, legal, debt, capital pipeline, brand. A candidate from an institutional shop who has never carried a deal without an analyst and a managing director above them will struggle inside a lean operator. The reverse is also true.
- Culture
How decisions actually get made.
Investment committees that run on consensus look nothing like ones run by a single principal. A candidate who thrived negotiating across a long table will work differently in a room of three. Cultural fit is operational fit, not personality.
- Future
Where the firm is going next.
A new asset class, a geographic expansion, a fund vehicle that does not exist yet. The right candidate is built for the firm two years from now, not just the one in front of them today. Hire for the trajectory.
Where strong resumes stall.
The acquisitions hires that fail are rarely failing on talent. They are failing on translation. A few of the patterns we see most often:
Big-platform discipline does not always survive in lean teams. Acquisitions professionals from institutional shops sometimes cannot operate without a deal team, a brand that opens doors, and infrastructure that catches mistakes.
Strong originators in a hot market are not the same as strong originators in a slow one. Track record built on a tailwind does not always translate when the discipline to walk from a deal matters more than the discipline to win one.
Underwriting strength does not always mean negotiating strength. Some candidates can model anything and close nothing. Others win deals across a table that does not pencil cleanly on paper. The role usually needs both.
The conversation matters more than the resume. Two candidates with the same deal volume can be operating in entirely different ways. References tell you what someone did; the right conversation tells you how.
Map the market, not the inbox.
The strongest acquisitions candidates are usually not on the market when you need them. They are billing into a deal at another firm, sitting on carry, watching the cycle from a seat that does not advertise. Reaching them is the work.
Our process anchors on the seat your firm actually needs filled, then maps the market against it. We approach passive candidates directly, reference for how they win (not just that they win), and surface fit to your resources, your culture, and your trajectory before we put anyone in front of you. More detail on the engagement itself lives on How We Engage.
A search we ran for a Pacific Northwest multifamily operator.
A multifamily operator in the Pacific Northwest engaged us to hire an acquisitions leader to drive expansion in adjacent markets. The candidate the firm initially wanted — strong deal volume, recognizable institutional pedigree — was not the candidate who would have thrived inside their actual team structure or strategic horizon. The right hire came from a less obvious profile, with the resources and culture of the platform in mind from the first conversation. That is the difference between filling a seat and protecting the trajectory of the business.
For the broader picture of how 24 Hour Search serves the commercial real estate sector, see Commercial Real Estate.
Sources
- Boris Groysberg, Chasing Stars: The Myth of Talent and the Portability of Performance (Princeton University Press, 2010). press.princeton.edu
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not the title.
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