Career progression isn’t always the straight path we envision it to be. Until a real estate practitioner has tested his mettle or proven her worth, there seems to be a fault in the road, and catching the eye of a highly placed mentor is no sure thing. Erik Dowling, president of the New York chapter of Young Real Estate Professionals, says the five-year-old group can build some bridges. Boasting something on the order of 3,500 members locally and roughly 20,000 nationally, YREP caters to the real estate fledgling (regardless of age; don’t let the name fool you). It’s not only a networking thing either. Dowling, who’s also assistant VP at Greenwich, CT-based development firm Antares, says the group also caters to the cash-strapped self-starter as well, and dues can be either nominal or non-existent, depending on the chapter (corporate sponsors, he says, provide the cover charge). Here’s the mission, as Dowling explained in a recent exclusive interview:

Dowling: The primary mission is to provide a venue, a means for young professionals in all aspects of the field to meet and network. The primary purpose is to help people’s careers grow, to help them find their first jobs or new jobs. For people who are satisfied with their existing careers, the networking helps them do deals and gain access to companies that are in complementary business lines. Primarily, we target people who are in post-graduate work all the way up to the VP level, at which point we find they tend not to need our services anymore.

GlobeSt.com: Wouldn’t it serve them better to access more mainstream associations?

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