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NEW YORK CITY—So did you already spend that annual bonus or squirrel it away for the vacation you're planning? If you're asking yourself, “What bonus?” you're in the minority. At least that's the upshot of the annual survey conducted by CoreNet Global and FPL Associates, the results of which GlobeSt.com has obtained on an exclusive basis.   

In fact, some 48% of real estate executives not only anticipated getting a bonus, but expected a bigger one than they did the year before. Nearly 300 internal CRE executives within corporate-user organizations were polled for the survey, (which took place prior to the distribution of bonuses). Just more than 25% of the respondents came from the financial services sector, while 12.4% hailed from technology. Other sectors were all in the single digits and ranged from such vertical markets as telecom, government and, yes, real estate.

“If compensation goes up, it means the companies are performing well,” says Atlanta-based Angela Cain, CEO of CoreNet. And if companies are performing well, “it means that they're starting to invest.”

Cain isn't pulling the cork from the champagne bottle quite yet and recognizes that the survey is charting the same slow growth that other surveys and year-end recaps have noted. “No one is saying it will be a dramatic improvement,” Cain states. But she likes the direction.

Indeed, Cain points out that bonuses were based on company performance, at least, so said 53% of the respondents. Some 28% said the perk reflected individual performance; 10% said business-unit performance and only 7% chalked it up to the CRE Department's performance.

When it comes to long-term incentives, they aren't very popular, since only 33% of the reporting organizations claim to have one, but within the organizations that do offer them, they are popular indeed. Of the 67% who do have such perks, 92% of the respondents are eligible.