Hiring Real Estate and Development Leaders in the Ground Lease and Net Lease Sector
Ground lease and net lease real estate represents one of the most technically specialized corners of the commercial real estate development and investment landscape. The structures are complex, the investor base is distinct, and the executive talent that understands how to originate, underwrite, structure, and manage these transactions has been built through very specific career paths that do not overlap cleanly with conventional development or investment management. As ground lease as a financing tool has expanded beyond its traditional institutional and public sector applications into private development across retail, industrial, multifamily, and mixed-use, the demand for senior leaders with direct experience in these structures has grown faster than the pipeline of qualified candidates.
This post covers the talent landscape for ground lease and net lease development leadership in 2026: who is in the candidate pool, which roles are hardest to fill, where compensation benchmarks, and what organizations in this sector need to understand before they begin a search.
What Makes This Sector’s Hiring Market Distinctive
The Experience Requirement Is Genuinely Narrow
Ground lease and net lease structures require a level of transactional specificity that most commercial real estate executives have not developed. A senior leader in conventional multifamily development or office investment management may have strong general real estate credentials, but the ability to underwrite a ground lease transaction, structure the appropriate lease duration and reversion terms, negotiate the landlord and tenant economics across a multi-decade term, and manage the institutional investor relationships that typically capitalize these structures is not knowledge that transfers easily from adjacent experience. The executives who have it developed that capability at a small number of firms: institutional ground lease platforms, major net lease REITs, university endowment-related development programs, and the transaction teams at large private equity real estate firms that have run ground lease funds.
That concentration means the candidate pool for VP and Director-level ground lease roles is smaller than most organizations expect when they begin a search. It also means that most candidates at this level are not actively looking, are well-compensated where they are, and require a specific kind of approach to engage their interest in a conversation about a new opportunity.
Institutional and Private Sector Searches Have Different Profiles
Ground lease leadership searches fall into two broad categories, and they require meaningfully different candidate profiles. Institutional programs, including university endowments, public pension fund real estate arms, and nonprofit institutional landowners, are looking for leaders who understand the long-duration stewardship of a ground lease portfolio: lease management, reversion planning, relationship management with lessees across multi-decade timelines, and the accounting and valuation complexity that long-term ground lease portfolios generate. Private sector development organizations that use ground lease as a development financing tool are looking for leaders who understand ground lease primarily as a capital stack component and who can originate and structure ground lease financing for specific development programs.
These are related but distinct skill sets, and the candidate who excels in one context does not automatically translate to the other. A search that does not distinguish between these profiles early tends to produce a candidate slate that looks varied on paper but is not well-matched to the actual role requirements.
The Net Lease Development and Acquisition Leadership Market
Net Lease Has Its Own Talent Ecosystem
Net lease real estate, primarily single-tenant retail, industrial, and office assets on absolute net or triple-net leases, operates within a distinct investment community that has its own transaction conventions, investor relationships, and performance metrics. Senior leadership in net lease development and acquisition, including VP and Director-level roles at net lease developers, REITs, and private equity platforms focused on this asset class, requires fluency in cap rate markets, credit tenant analysis, sale-leaseback structures, and the development economics of built-to-suit net lease programs.
The talent pool for this experience is more developed than for ground lease because the net lease sector has been large and active for several decades, but it is still concentrated at a small number of large platforms, and the executives who have built careers within it tend to have strong cross-sector networks that make them selective about what they will consider. Compensation at the VP level in net lease development and acquisitions ranges from $275,000 to $450,000 depending on the platform, geographic market, and whether the role includes carried interest participation in the underlying fund structure. At the Director level, the range is typically $175,000 to $275,000.
The Sale-Leaseback Origination Profile
Within net lease, the sale-leaseback origination function has become a distinct specialty that organizations staffing VP and Director-level roles are increasingly recruiting for separately from conventional acquisition and development leadership. Sale-leaseback origination requires the ability to identify corporate real estate owners who are candidates for sale-leaseback transactions, build relationships with corporate real estate and treasury teams, underwrite the credit and lease economics of the transaction, and structure and close deals that are as much corporate finance as real estate. The executives who are most effective in this role have typically built careers at the intersection of real estate and investment banking, and they are rare enough that most organizations conducting a search for this profile encounter genuine competition from multiple buyers.
What Strong Candidates Look for in This Sector
Platform Quality and Deal Flow
Senior candidates for ground lease and net lease leadership roles evaluate the platform they are joining primarily on the basis of deal flow and platform quality. An executive who has spent a career originating and closing ground lease or net lease transactions is not going to find a role compelling that does not have the capital, the relationships, and the pipeline to support the kind of activity level that defines their professional value. Organizations that are entering the ground lease or net lease space for the first time, or that are rebuilding a team after a strategic pivot, need to be prepared to make a credible case for why the platform represents a genuine opportunity for an executive who has options at established firms.
Autonomy and Deal Participation
Compensation at the senior level in ground lease and net lease is almost always structured with a combination of base salary, annual bonus, and some form of deal participation, either direct carried interest or a transaction bonus tied to deal economics. Executives in this sector expect their compensation to reflect the value of the transactions they originate and close, and offers that are structured entirely as fixed compensation without a variable component tied to deal outcomes are received as below-market regardless of the base salary level. Organizations that have not designed a compensation structure that includes deal participation before they begin a VP-level search in this sector tend to lose their best candidates to firms that have.
Starting a Ground Lease or Net Lease Leadership Search
Given the narrow candidate pool and the specific experience requirements that define success in these roles, ground lease and net lease leadership searches are almost always better executed through a specialized search process than through conventional posting or general executive search. The executives who are qualified for these roles are not responding to job postings; they are being identified, approached, and recruited through relationships and sector-specific sourcing.
Real8 Group works with organizations across the ground lease, net lease, and structured real estate development sectors on VP and Director-level leadership searches. To discuss a current or upcoming search, visit real8group.com/finding-talent, learn about our process at real8group.com/how-we-work, or reach out at real8group.com/contact.
Real8 Group is a specialized executive search firm serving the real estate, construction, engineering, and facilities operations sectors across the U.S.