Underwriting Associate at Columbia Creek - a U.S.-based privately held real estate investment firm focused on acquiring and repositioning distressed or mismanaged retail assets

About the position

📌 Job Title: Underwriting Associate

Company: Columbia Creek

Location: Remote (U.S. market knowledge required)

Employment Type: Full-Time

🏢 About Columbia Creek

Columbia Creek is a privately held real estate investment firm focused on acquiring and repositioning distressed or mismanaged retail assets throughout the United States. Our specialty is single-floor strip malls and free-standing retail centers — from $3M local properties to $40M redevelopment projects. We operate as a lean, fast-moving team executing high-leverage strategies to unlock value through repositioning and hands-on asset management.

🎯 About the Role
We’re hiring an Underwriting Associate to act as the “first responder” on new property leads. Your job is to quickly (within 1 h) evaluate raw retail opportunities and turn them into investable business cases. You'll assess the potential upside, pressure-test assumptions, and help us make buy decisions — fast.

This is napkin underwriting with real impact: based on your analysis, we decide whether to make an offer. You’ll also support deeper second-round reviews and follow-up diligence for deals we pursue.

🔍 Responsibilities

• Underwrite property leads daily across U.S. markets, with a focus on Washington

• Quickly turn around high-level investment analyses: check zoning, pull lease comps, assess value-add potential

• Build and maintain financial models (cash-flow, sensitivity, DCR, IRR, equity multiple, waterfall)

• Call brokers, qualify leads, and clarify assumptions

• Conduct market and HBU analysis: rent/sales comps, zoning/FAR, demographic trends, parking requirements

• Draft concise IC memos and lender packages that clearly defend the business plan and risk profile

• Support deeper diligence for deals that move to the next phase

🧠 Requirements

• 1–3 years of hands-on underwriting experience (real estate or investment banking) for the U.S. market

• Direct exposure to U.S. retail real estate, especially strip malls or value-add repositioning

• Bachelor's degree in Finance, Real Estate, Economics, Engineering, or a related field

• Proficient in Excel and Google Sheets (including nested formulas, Power Query or VBA a plus)

• Demonstrated ability to model ground-up or heavy-value-add projects (IRR, equity multiple, waterfall).

• Comfortable interpreting zoning codes, reading architectural drawings, and discussing site layout plans

• Clear written and verbal communication; able to distill a 50-tab model into a five-slide pitch.

• Sharp, fast, and organized — you don’t wait for instruction, you take initiative
  
  

⏰ Working Hours

The Managing Partners are based in Seattle (PST), and we need someone who can reliably overlap with our core working hours. Required availability: 8:00 AM – 3:00 PM PST (Monday to Friday). The remaining 2 hours are flexible. We value responsiveness during working sessions and give you autonomy for deep focus the rest of the time.

💼 What We Offer

• Full-time job (8 working hours per day, Monday-Friday). Please note that we will not consider candidates planning to combine several jobs.

• Direct Impact – Your underwriting will directly influence multimillion-dollar investment decisions. You’ll be a key part of a lean, entrepreneurial team—not a cog in a corporate machine.

• Speed & Autonomy – We move fast and value independent thinking.

• Salary will be discussed during the interview. Paid in USD.

• Quick selection process.

🧭 Selection Process

1. Initial Interview with Hire5's Recruiter;

2. Submit a Past Underwriting Sample - you’ll be asked to share a previous underwriting report you personally prepared for a value-add retail acquisition in the U.S.

3. First Interview with the Managing Partners (30 minutes) - a focused conversation to assess alignment and dive deeper into your approach to underwriting and retail assets.

4. Second Interview with the Managing Partners (45 minutes) - a detailed discussion covering your experience, strategic thinking, and expectations.

5. Final Stage: test assignment. You’ll produce a fresh underwriting report on Elliot Plaza — a mismanaged 68 KSF strip mall in Seattle.

Place of work