Welcome to the first edition of Off Market, Endeavor’s newsletter on real estate executive talent. Some issues will track where senior leaders are moving and why. Others, like this one, will dig into what actually predicts whether a hire works out.
We see a version of the same story constantly from our clients and network: a Senior Acquisitions Candidate with an impressive resume, hired from a larger, better-known platform, gone in under 18 months. The deal flow never materialized, and the fund lost two years of deployment momentum on a vehicle that needed to be mostly invested.
The question we hear most often: “What did we do wrong?”
Usually, it wasn’t one thing. It was several things in combination. After nearly a decade placing senior acquisitions talent across real estate PE, REITs, and owner-operators, we can tell you the failure patterns are remarkably consistent. So are the predictors of success.
TL;DR
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Roughly 40% of externally hired senior executives fail within 18 months, a figure that has held steady across studies from Heidrick & Struggles, the Corporate Executive Board, and others. Senior real estate acquisitions hires are directionally consistent with that number.
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The all-in cost of a failed executive hire runs 200–400% of annual salary by SHRM’s estimate, and research cited by Gartner and Harvard Business Review puts the ceiling at 10x or more once delayed initiatives and lost productivity are counted. For a REPE acquisitions employee, we typically see a $1M–$3M cost once missed deployment, team disruption, and LP confidence are factored in.
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Most failures are not about competence. They come down to three specific mismatches: asset class, capital structure, and the platform’s operating mode.
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The single most predictive question in any search is has the candidate already executed your exact strategy at a similar fund size? Not a similar role. Same strategy, same scale.
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The hiring channel matters more than most firms think. At the VP - CIO level, the candidates worth hiring are passive and relationship-driven and rarely surface through job postings or internal recruiting.
The Failure Pattern Almost Nobody Names
The most expensive mistake we see is hiring a strong acquisitions executive into the wrong context.
Strong is the key word. These are not bad hires on paper. They have the deal sheets, the pedigree, the references. The problem is that what made them successful at their last firm doesn’t translate, and nobody in the process noticed because the resume looked right.
Leadership IQ’s widely cited research found that 89% of hiring failures are driven by attitudinal and fit factors rather than technical skill. In real estate acquisitions, “fit” almost always reduces to three things:
Asset class fit. An office specialist and an industrial specialist look similar in a search process. They underwrite differently, source differently, and their broker relationships are entirely different sets of people. Hiring across asset classes at this level and expecting a 12-month ramp assumes that pattern recognition transfers. It rarely does at the velocity senior roles require.
Capital structure fit. Core-plus and opportunistic are not the same business. Someone who spent eight years sourcing stabilized assets for a core fund will struggle inside an opportunistic platform that needs them to underwrite distress and live with hair on a deal. The reverse is also true: opportunistic operators dropped into core-plus mandates often find the work uninteresting and leave within a year.
Operating mode fit. Executive search research, including Stanton Chase’s work on PE leadership, consistently finds that candidates from large institutional environments struggle in lean platforms that expect them to source, underwrite, and execute without a support stack. The question isn’t whether they can do the work. It’s whether they can do it without the infrastructure they’re used to.
There’s a fourth pattern specific to acquisitions: the deal hunter vs. deal quarterback mismatch. Some are sourcing engines who keep the top of the funnel full. Others are execution specialists who take a deal already in the door and quarterback it through underwriting, IC, and close. Both are valuable. They are not the same person, and hiring one into the other’s seat almost always ends inside 18 months.
What a Failed Hire Actually Costs
The recruiting fee is the cheapest part of getting this wrong.
SHRM puts the cost of a failed executive hire at 200–400% of annual salary once search fees, severance, onboarding, and team disruption are included. Research cited by Gartner and Harvard Business Review goes further, estimating that the all-in cost can reach 10 to 15 times salary once delayed initiatives and lost productivity are counted.
For a real estate PE platform, those benchmarks understate it. When an acquisitions hire doesn’t work out, you lose 12 to 24 months of deal flow they were supposed to generate. You lose the deals they sourced that nobody else can close because the relationships were theirs. And, you lose the LP confidence that comes with a stable senior team, which matters disproportionately for emerging managers mid-deployment.
The stakes are rising. US private equity dry powder sat near a record $1.1 trillion at the end of 2025, with a growing share of aging capital that needs to be deployed. At a firm with a fund clock running, every stalled acquisitions seat is real money on the table. A senior-level mis-hire at a mid-cap REPE platform can easily run up a $1M–$3M cost in cash comp, replacement search fees, and deals that never got underwritten. None of it shows up on a P&L. Every senior partner we work with feels it anyway.
What Actually Predicts a Successful Hire
Two things matter more than anything else.
The candidate has already executed your exact strategy at a similar fund size. Not a similar role at a much bigger firm. Not the same asset class at a different point in the capital stack. The actual strategy, at roughly your scale. This is the highest-correlation predictor we’ve seen across nearly a decade of placements, and it matches how industry leaders now define senior roles: people who have already delivered results in similar situations.
The selection process tests the things that matter. Practitioner research compiled by Adsum Insights shows that structured assessment and transition support can cut executive failure rates from the 40%+ baseline to roughly 10–15%. In acquisitions, the version that works is a live underwriting exercise on a deal that approximates your actual pipeline, as well as structured behavioral interviews on the specific failure modes of your strategy with capital calls under stress, broken deals, or broker relationships that went sideways.
A few other things move the needle:
Real deal references, not professional references. The most useful reference call on a senior acquisitions candidate is to a broker who worked the other side of their deals or an asset manager who inherited what they bought. Those calls reveal patterns HR-style references never surface.
Ask about sourced deals specifically. “What did you source, lead, and close from the top of the funnel?” is a different question than “What deals did you work on?” At the senior level, the distinction matters, and a lot of resumes blur it.
The hiring channel matters. The candidates worth hiring above the analyst level are passive, relationship-mediated, and wary of broadcasting that they’re exploring. Job postings almost never reach them. This is why retained search and specialist boutiques consistently outperform internal recruiting and contingent processes for senior roles.
What the Market Looks Like Right Now
The hiring environment is bifurcated, and it should shape how firms approach senior searches.
Private real estate fundraising rose in 2025 for the first time since 2021, reaching $172 billion globally per With Intelligence, with nearly 90% of capital going into opportunistic, value-add, and debt strategies. Those are exactly the strategies where senior acquisitions talent is hardest to replace and mis-hires are most expensive. Meanwhile, cross-border capital into US commercial real estate stayed flat even as the broader transaction market recovered, keeping competition uneven across traditional markets.
The practical effect: a selective war for experienced sector specialists in industrial, data centers, and niche residential, alongside an oversupply of senior talent in office and non-core retail. Compensation reflects it. The latest PERE/Sousou Partners compensation study describes a clear bifurcation: strong pay growth for some acquisitions professionals and a “brutal” year for others.
For platforms hiring now, this means two things. You have leverage on candidates coming out of underperforming strategies if you can offer a credible path on a working one. And if you’re competing for specialists in the hot niches, you need a tighter, faster, more relationship-driven process because the candidates worth hiring are getting called by four other firms in the same week.
The Things Worth Holding On To
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The biggest predictor of a successful senior-level acquisitions hire is not the resume. It’s whether they’ve already executed your specific strategy at roughly your scale. Hire the pattern, not the brand.
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A failed senior hire in real estate PE is almost always a multi-million-dollar loss once deployment and team disruption are counted. That’s the right frame for deciding how much process to put into the front end of the search.
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The candidates worth hiring at the senior level are passive and relationship-driven. The hiring channel matters as much as the candidate evaluation.
The senior partners who get this right treat every senior acquisitions hire like a deal. They underwrite the candidate the way they’d underwrite an asset. They reference the way they’d reference a sponsor. And they run a process that respects the cost of getting it wrong.
If you’re thinking about a senior acquisitions hire in the next 12 months, the earlier we start the conversation, the better the shortlist looks when it’s time to move.