Building a top-tier property career, one degree at a time
Thomas Nader was tossing up his uni options when he fell into a job in real estate sales Originally, he’d been planning to enrol in a business degree, but the property sector quickly piqued his interest. So, he pivoted into the Bachelor of Property Economics at UTS, “what I like to call the business degree of the property industry,” he says.
After finishing his undergrad, Thomas moved from real estate sales into property development with a role at the Ceerose building group. His degree had introduced him to the opportunities of a development career, and he was eager to get started — but after a couple of years in the workforce, he started thinking about opportunities to turbocharge his professional progression.
“I was at Ceerose for about two years, and at the end of that two years, I realised I wanted to understand a bit more about the bigger picture of development, so I thought about extending my studies,” he says.
“Ceerose was really good hands-on experience, but with any company, you only work in the things that company is doing. I wanted to see what else was out there.”
A master’s degree seemed like the obvious next step, but Thomas wanted to expand his learning beyond just property developments. He enrolled in the UTS Master of Property Development and Planning, a dual degree that promised a broad view of the property sector and its multitude of careers.
Taking a holistic view of the property sector
The Master of Property Development was a clear-cut choice — Thomas, who had recently landed an assistant development manager role at Billbergia, still had his sights set on senior development roles.
But the Master of Planning was an extra string to his bow. While planning is its own career path, understanding the complexities of the planning ecosystem is a fundamental part of property development work.
“I wanted to understand how you might take the microeconomic aspect of my job and apply it to understanding state government planning and domestic and international case studies,” Thomas says.
“I spend a lot of my time, even today in my career, talking to town planners, so I thought if I could learn a bit more about what they do, how they do it and why, it would help with my role as a development manager.”
One of the most impactful learning experiences was a combined planning and development subject that took place in Thomas’s final semester. Students chose an urban development site and worked through a simulated planning activity to prepare it for rezoning.
Next, they selected a site within the rezoned space and built a strategy and process to develop it. This included identifying funding streams and key stakeholders and figuring out how to keep everyone happy.
“It really challenged me to think about how you marry all the uses of a development site — commercial, residential, retail — to work with one another,” Thomas says.
“It also gave me a nice taste of what I imagine a lot of the big corporations are doing in partnerships with government and other major stakeholders.”
Unlimited career possibilities
Thomas finished his master’s in 2020, and in the years since, he has worked his up the Billbergia ladder. Now a development manager, he believes the degree will stand him in good stead as he continues building his career — many of the senior leaders he’s met at major property firms have master’s qualifications, often from UTS, under their belts.
But the most significant benefit is likely to be the breadth of knowledge he gained as a result of studying across two different property disciplines. Not only has it prepared Thomas to look at his own work from a more holistic perspective, but it will also keep him primed to go wherever his future interests take him.
“Working at the bigger firms, you can get very good at your special niche, but then it can be hard to sidestep. I think with a master’s like this, you get a nice broad brushstroke of the bigger-picture things you could be working on,” he says.