My Internship at a Real Estate Company: Commercial & Residential Property

Introduction

I partook my internship at a real estate company that dealt with commercial and residential properties. The company majorly performs both the commercial and residential real estate which makes the major departments of the firm. The company is a small-sized real estate company located at New York and has about 25 employees working in the two departments of commercial and residential. The commercial real estate roles of the firm dealt with non-residential property which encompassed office buildings, shopping centers, parameters, industrial production buildings, and unoccupied lands that could be developed among others. Most of the roles involved assisting and coordination with clients in selling and leasing commercial properties. The residential real estate entailed construction and reselling of homes for occupation or non-business activities. The major projects of the residential property included homes, condominiums, multifamily, terraced houses, townhouses, duplex houses, and apartments. The major roles in this department entail appraising properties, constructional development of new homes, marketing homes and payment terms, and finding a new client for the constructed homes. The company could find an investor for investing in the construction of new homes and finding clients and renting on their behalf. The firm also invested in constructing a new homes and selling for itself. The construction of personal homes had fixed-rate or variable mortgages which the home construction clients could pay long termly or short-term.

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The major dealing of the company was finding property for sale then making contract deals to find clients for buying or leasing. The broker or the wholesaling entailed looking for property for sale, signing a contract with the seller, and finding clients for leasing the property to pay rentals which will be divided to the owner of the property and the firm as per the contact. The firm also had the role of maintaining the property on behalf of the owner of the property. Moreover, the company participated in looking for investors to purchase property, then managing the selling and the leasing of the property on behalf of the investors. The company dealt in rental properties where it could buy properties and rent out to clients. This was done on both the residential and commercial sectors making most of the roles of the employees to be dealing with clients. It also deals in fix-and-flips where it could buy properties at low cost, renovate, and sell it out a certain profit. Moreover, the two departments dealt in the sales and marketing of the residential and the commercial properties.

Role in the Internship

As the commercial property coordinator and associate, I had the role of providing administrative and communication support to the agents and the brokerage team. Thus, I was supposed to work with my supervisor and the agents and brokerage team to gain knowledge and expertise in the property coordinating and the associate role and still get to know how the brokerage is performed. The internship majorly entailed assisting in leasing, brokerage, management, maintenance, and the development of the both commercial and residential property. I was given the role of creating and updating marketing, social media platforms, websites, and advertisements daily. I enjoyed carrying out this task which I require an hour of my daily work allocations since it was easy to do and required no much expertise or knowledge. Also, I had the role overseeing the communication on maintenance and leasing of commercial properties. I had to ensure that all tenants are managed through ensuring that all the rents were collected and maintenance needed for timely provided. Moreover, I was part of the team that negotiated new lease contracts which made me gain expertise in negotiating strategies and skills. I was also part of the team that was also required to carry out monthly monitoring of the property to ensure that all the properties were in good condition and note the areas that require maintenance. I will therefore apply the gained skills and experience in my future career growth.

Self-Evaluation

My supervisor helped me in creating a weekly performance appraisal which he used to monitor my performance. After every week he could identify the areas that worked competently and the ones that I underperformed. I then used the feedback to improve on the areas that I poorly performed. The end of week 5, my performance was recommendable as I had eliminated all the negative reviews and feedbacks. Within the first two weeks, I had gained enhanced by negotiations, analytical, communications, interpersonal and interrelation skills since they were the most needed skills for the internship experience (Skills you need, n.d.). My last work experience gave me insight of the needed organizational communication and relations. My entry into the organization was easier since I had excellent interrelations skill which made me to easily interact with other workers and get to know of all the activities of the firm in a short period. I partook both passive and active measure to learn what my supervisor and other employees were doing through actively getting involved in their duties. This was the most effective approach that allowed me to learn fast and blend with the other staff well. I learnt that I had an extrovert personality supported my interactions with other employees which enhanced my interrelations and communication skills.

I applied the communication Accommodation theory to adjust to the communication and interrelation style of the organization. I applied convergence principle of the theory to match the staff communication styles and avoid falling into conflicts (Communication Studies, n.d.). I was cautious not to hurt or fall into conflicts with the staff through cautiously learning the personalities of the staff and how they react to situations or comments. This approach made me complete my internship without affecting the interrelation with my supervisor and staff. My supervisor was friendly and supportive, ready to assist me in learning, and selflessly guided me in my duties and tasks. His character and personality helped me in significantly learning optimally. I appreciate having to be allocated a supervisor who creates an easy communication environment without creating the boss-employee communication gap. This enabled me to easily make enquires to him without making him feel I was disturbing him. His dedication to training me through assigning me tasks, monitoring the progress, and giving full attention enabled me to reap the most from my internship experience.

I consider my interrelation and communication with my supervisor and client to be healthy and efficient since I never fell into any misunderstanding with anyone (Lammers & Barbour, 2006). Being cautious in the new work environment cleared any misunderstanding or wrong deed that I could have partaken which is wrong to the staff and the organizational rules. During the first day of the internship, my supervisor explained to me the organizational policies, rules, procedures, and guidelines. This made me adopt behaviors and action that was in line with the policies of the organization. In the entire internship experience, I never got to partake any action or ask that was not in line with the outlined procedures. I think that being careful and cautious because of the new environment and the first exposure to the real-life estate industry made me have the needed performance expectation and never wrong anyone

During the first weeks of my internship, I struggled to complete my tasks on time since I did not have the expertise in how to carry out the tasks. For efficient completion of a certain property contract, the team members were allocated some tasks to carry out to complete the project within the client's timeline. One time I did not accomplish the task on time while another time I did messy work due to running out of time. This made the project not to be finished in the required time, disappointed the client, and more time was utilized to rectify the project. However, I was able to counter these drawbacks after gaining expertise and experience. Also, I was expected to be at work by 8.00 am each day and I did not manage to arrive on time daily since I arrived past the set time. I felt that the time was early since I struggle to prepare my family and siblings to school and still manage to be on time at work. Moreover, I encountered some cloud and application systems that I had never used before. However, I was able to gain knowledge on how to use them through direct participation of the tasks that was instructed by my supervisor to partake. The classwork projects and software learned in class equipped had equipped me with relevant and advanced knowledge that was in the market. However, the different advanced technological posed difficult to be conversant with their use.

My major contribution to the organization dealt with conducting market research and find prospective clients and send them proposals emails. This role enabled me to have the expertise of fishing potential clients and building contact with them and convincing them to attain successful client winning. During my entire internship, I was able to win 12 clients. It was a great achievement that built my experience and my career path knowhow. I developed marketing and sales advertise which helped me on to get successfully get my first client. After obtaining the first client, I was mentored on how to build a strong relationship experience by my supervisor. I loved the task of monitoring rentals since it gave me a chance to work outside the workplace. This equipped with the knowhow of carrying out commercial and residential monitoring routines. I was able to note what is highly checked in the routines and the factors to consider to attain an efficient running commercial property business. I learnt to adopt a language and tone that was direct, clear and convincing to win more clients and market the firms' roles in writing emails, proposals, and contract. My supervisor emphasized on having clarity of everything that I wrote or said to ensure that I do not create misunderstanding or leave the clients to ask what the message could have meant. I perceive that this helped my role of winning new clients and supported the teamwork performance. I applied my concepts of effective business writing learned in academic work to write official and competent emails, proposals and responded to client's inquiries.

At first, I used to overwork myself by accepting all the task requests to avoid disappointing staff members. However, it made me deliver poor work, strain myself, and did not meet the deadline of most tasks. To counter late deliveries, I ensured that I did not leave the workplace with any pending work tasks. During the internship period, I had no classwork or any other job that was taking at that time. Thus, I was able to easily manage my time and attain a work-home lifestyle balance. I was not catch up with numerous tasks since I created a daily plan of what I was required to partake and politely declined any external tasks that would compromise my time and make me deliver poorly performed tasks or past timelines. I created excellent relation with the team who I could easily seek assistance from and enquires on areas that I felt that I was uncertain on how to partake them. This ensured that I did not work on tasks wrongly or with poor competence. The workplace culture supports a positive relationship which allowed to easily enhance my interaction and relationship with the workers.

I also got to learn the organizational culture in the first few days. This adjustment to the organizational culture and work...