Real estate investment advisors help clients choose properties and projects to invest in. This is how to run advisors, analysts and client service teams when trust and clear disclosure matter more than a closed sale.
Not sure what you need? Tell us about your business in six short steps and we will come to the first meeting prepared.
Share your requirementsA real estate investment advisory firm helps individuals, families and companies decide where to put money in property, such as residential projects, commercial units, land or pooled opportunities. Advisors meet clients, understand goals and risk appetite, and recommend options. Analysts study projects, developers, locations and papers before recommending, and client service staff handle follow-ups, documents and updates. Revenue may come from advisory fees, referral payments from developers or both, which creates a conflict that staff must handle carefully. Clients are anxious about large sums, so a poor outcome damages trust fast. The work calls for caution, plain explanation and honest records. Turnover of advisors is risky because clients follow trusted faces. For the wider sector, read HR for construction and real estate.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in real estate investment advisors. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
A developer's payment makes one project look better than it is, and clients feel misled later.
A trusted advisor who leaves can move a client's money with them, leaving the firm exposed.
A sales deadline presses analysts to clear a project without checking papers, approvals and developer history.
Advisors who oversell returns win clients now and lose them when results disappoint.
Analysts do the checks, yet clients and bosses see only the advisor's name.
After an investment, updates, documents and queries fall to a client service desk with no record of what was promised.
Advisors are judged on amounts invested, so cautious advice that reduces sales is penalised.
Client finances sit on advisors' phones and personal email, outside any firm control.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Policies, Compliance and Governance; Compensation, Payroll and Benefits; Retention and Attrition Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for construction and real estate, not in general.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a real estate investment advisors business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
All fees and referral payments are declared to clients and recorded, and advisors sign a yearly declaration.
All fees and referral payments are declared to clients and recorded, and advisors sign a yearly declaration. Introduce it in onboarding.
Analysts can stop a recommendation until key checks are complete, with a record of what was checked.
Analysts can stop a recommendation until key checks are complete, with a record of what was checked.
A base, a client-satisfaction element and a modest success share, avoiding pay tied only to amounts invested.
A base, a client-satisfaction element and a modest success share, avoiding pay tied only to amounts invested. See compensation benchmarking.
A controlled system for client profiles, advice given and promises made, with a second advisor named for each client.
A controlled system for client profiles, advice given and promises made, with a second advisor named for each client. Use employee records for staff data.
Name analysts in internal reviews and give them a path to advisory roles.
Name analysts in internal reviews and give them a path to advisory roles. See performance steps.
A guide to explaining risk, returns and uncertainty plainly, used in training and review.
A guide to explaining risk, returns and uncertainty plainly, used in training and review.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Incentive plans that reward sound advice and client satisfaction, not volume alone.
Disclosure, conflict and confidentiality standards taught from the start.
Reviews that value diligence, honest risk talk and client outcomes.
Written policies on conflicts, data and gifts that advisors can follow.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in construction and real estate, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Site engineers, supervisors, crews and sales teams leave for different reasons. How to ask what shaped their decision and act on it between projects.
8 min readRead article
How an India head can sort a global parent's HR policies into apply, adapt or replace, write an India addendum with advisers, and keep headquarters on side.
7 min readRead article
Simple variable pay structures for product and engineering teams: four options, why individual metrics backfire, a build plan and a one page outline to adapt.
6 min readRead article
What really keeps mobile app and web developers in a small firm: stay conversations, growth paths, fair release rules and a risk sheet an owner can use this month.
6 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Declare them to clients, record them and avoid pay that rewards a single project. Ask a qualified professional what disclosure the law requires.
Assign a second advisor to each client, record advice in a firm system and agree handover rules. Ask a qualified professional what restrictions are fair.
Give analysts the right to hold a recommendation until checks are done, and log what was checked.
Combine a fair base, client satisfaction and a modest success share, reviewed yearly.
Credit their work, widen their client exposure and provide a path to advisory roles.
A conflict declaration, an incentive structure, staff records and an onboarding plan. Regulatory questions go to a qualified professional.
All 109 business types in construction and real estate · Find another business type
See all HR topics for construction and real estate, or another industry.
Tell us what is slowing your team down. We’ll help you find a practical way forward, starting with a conversation.
