Real estate is a massive and one of the most critical sectors in the US economy and the world. By investing in it, it becomes a great source of wealth and creates employment opportunities for economic development.
A real estate internship is a great way to enter this area of work. It will give you access to many opportunities while strengthening your foundation and knowledge about the job. You will also gain a unique insight and perspective while honing your analytical skills. It is also a great way to build your resume.
If you are thinking about giving real estate internship jobs a chance, you must read our article. Here, we’ll tell you how to get a real estate internship and inform you of everything you should expect during your training.
What Is a Real Estate Internship Job?
Most people interested in real estate prefer taking long paid courses to know about the sectors. On the other hand, others prefer working with a real estate agent who lives and breathes real estate daily to teach practical skills.
An intern starts at the beginners’ level but can choose specific fields based on their talents and interests. Fortunately, real estate has various choices such as a realtor, luxury, commercial, salesperson, etc.
In fact, an internship is one of the best ways of getting into the real estate industry and securing your future.
Building a Resume for a Real Estate Internship Jobs
Real estate agents put up internship offers on online employment sites or other sites that accept recruitment posts. But before you start applying and sending in your applications, check out the qualifications and skills you need to have in your resume. You can then use websites like https://www.arcresumes.com/ for help with crafting your resume to fit into what is needed as well as showcasing what skills you already have and what you can build on.
Educational Background
You need to have a bachelor’s degree in a related field. You should be aware that a small number of people even apply with a master’s degree so that the competition can be tough at times.
Most of these degrees tend to be in Business, Finance, or Economics. Some even apply with a real estate, political science, accounting, or marketing background, although the latter two are small in number.
Top Skills
Skills are just as necessary as experience and education in your resume. And to catch a top agent’s attention, it is best to master the most relevant skills and improve yourself, which is often known as upskilling. This is often the most prudent way to widen your job opportunities, as upskillling provides training to improve a person’s performance in their current role, as well as seek better roles.
You need to be familiar with real estate properties and know how to do market research and prepare analysis reports. It is essential to be comfortable with data entry and financial states besides knowing how to use PowerPoints.
In the United States, a lot of foreign languages are spoken in real estate. You will find many people speaking Spanish, followed by Mandarin and Chinese. If you have some proficiency in these languages, it will give you an upper hand.
For example, a commercial real estate intern must be enrolled in a relevant degree program, have research and writing skills, and have basic knowledge of commercial real estate. It is preferred that they have finance, business, or real estate background.
The applicants must meet certain GPA requirements and have specific computer skills such as customer relationship management (CRM) or Microsoft Office.
The Duties of a Real Estate Intern
Any real estate internship will have a well-structured program that will include general duties alongside specific but varied intern responsibilities. You will directly train and work closely with an agent.
Check out the following list to see the expected duties of an RE intern.
- Understand the market and research it to help prepare market analyses
- Track records, listings, and real estate statistics to understand trends
- Attend appraisals for hands-on experience in figuring out the values for properties
- CRM maintaining responsibility
- Paying attention to home buyers’ needs and search for properties that fit their criteria
- Assist and prepare for open houses
- Create web content and maintain the website
- Helping in carrying out transaction coordination
- Maintain social media accounts and digital presence of the agent
These are only some of the tasks you will be assigned to. Interns may be called to perform other jobs at any moment, so be prepared to handle anything. That includes performing random errands now and then.
Skills You Will Learn As a Real Estate Intern
Your time doing real estate internships is extremely valuable in building your name and view as a professional. Your ability to learn and adapt these skills can either make or break your career as a real estate agent.
But if you are diligent and taught right, you can get a lot of benefits from real estate internships than you ever could from a real estate school.
Internships can always provide you with hands-on experience with the various costs that are involved when a deal is finalized. For example, most buyers/sellers are unaware of the closing costs, but you should be. You can also read blog posts like https://cowetacountyhomesforsale.com or others similar to this to gain some prior knowledge about the expenses, which you can then practically implement while still in your internship.
Time Management
Most agents live and breathe real estate every day. They have a very hectic schedule, filled with client meetings, showings, research, open houses, etc. And the larger the clientele, the tighter their schedules can be.
As an intern, you need to prioritize the tasks to help the agent go through them without wasting time. You will most likely be scheduling all the meetings, so you need to ensure the agent starts and ends on time and shows up in the right places.
Pretty soon, you will begin internalizing this and will be able to work a tight schedule yourself without breaking a sweat.
Learn to Adapt
Like any other experienced personnel, real estate agents like to follow the rules and methods they are comfortable in. Old-school marketing and new, modern marketing do not match, and most companies are afraid of making changes.
So, as an intern with fresh ideas, you must learn to compromise with the person you are interning for. The interns’ ideas will not always be willingly accepted and may even be shut down without reason.
The same happens with clients. Most clients are adamant about what they want, and you need to adapt to their whims. The tools or work hours you suggest may be discarded, so your practice from pitching your ideas to your previous boss may come in handy here.
Manage Clients
As an intern working in huge companies, you will be exposed to a large clientele and witness experienced folks interacting with them differently. By watching and dealing with these clients by yourself, you will know what to do in the future.
You will learn to judge your clients better and build relationships with them. Very soon, knowing what makes them tick, what features they are willing to compromise and what they are not, what type of spender they are will all be second nature to you.
Some of these people may even decide to associate with you in the future. So, building a direct pipeline with them is very important at this moment. And the internship will give you the perfect opportunity to do so without letting you bear any heavy responsibility.
Learn to Close Deals
Human behaviours can be severely unpredictable, and real estate needs to be proficient in sales to influence these behaviours in their favor. Through this internship, you will get a very close look at what you should do and what you should not do by eyeing how your bosses or clients act, speak or move.
While real estate schools can teach you the main points of negotiation, the situation can be completely different in real life. And if you need practical training, consider approaching skill coaching services. For instance, you can Develop sustainable negotiation skills with Scotwork’s solutions and find success in the real estate industry.
Understanding Contracts
Real estate agents need to go through many contracts that may seem like legal mumbo-jumbo to those with no law background. It is especially true for those who come solely from business or finance backgrounds.
As a real estate intern, you will need to read through many detailed contracts that will help you get the gist of it and figure out any discrepancies or dangerous loopholes of sellers. You can get the most beneficial deals for your clients to sign, who are putting a lot of faith in you with their dream and money.
Most interns must deal with numerous paperwork, which exposes them to a lot of jargon and nurtures their analytical skills to find properties that are the best. This is impossible to achieve if you are a newcomer and are flying solo in the real estate industry.
Paid vs. Unpaid: How Much Salary Should You Expect?
Unpaid labor is synonymous with internships. Unfortunately, some business owners are notorious for exploiting their employees since they do not have to pay any salary.
However, federal guidelines are now in place that a firm must legally comply with for unpaid internships. If they cannot do so, the interns will be considered an employee and must be paid a salary.
All the following guidelines must be applied:
- The firm must create a proper educational environment, providing similar training as a vocational school or academic institution.
- The intern must be directly benefited from the experiences earned. They must not perform routine work regularly or regularly, and the existing staff should not rely upon their work.
- The intern should not be hired as a substitute for a regular employee but as a student working under closed supervision.
- An intern performing administrative or clerical tasks which benefit the employers must abide by the Fair Labor Standards Act’s (FLSA) minimum wage and overtime guidelines.
- The internship should be set for a fixed period with no expectation of a permanent job after the period ends. If there is such an expectation, the FLSA considers the internship a trial period for permanent employment.
- There must be a clear deal between the agents and the intern that they are not entitled to any wages for the work performed.
Usually, rule no. 4 makes it hard for real estate agents to take on unpaid interns as it clashes against their intention of getting external help to perform routine tasks. So, most of them end up taking paid interns rather than having unpaid internships complicating matters.
If you have a bachelor’s degree, you will be paid a minimum wage of $16.35, which could accumulate up to an average salary of $33,436 a year. You may even be able to make over $41,000 per year on average at most.
And if you are somehow stuck in the bottom, you will still be able to make a little under $26,000 each year.
And if you have a master’s degree, the minimum wage per hour increases up to an average of $22.58 an hour.
Real Estate Internship Career Possibilities
Like any other internships, your duties will vary from administrative tasks to taking coffee and lunch orders to answering calls and making appointments. But you will work your way up by taking on responsibilities and giving them your best.
During your internship course, you will gain experience and knowledge to strengthen your resume, giving you an edge over other contenders. You will also grow confident in sales.
For example, someone interested in finance analyst may already have some of the skills of a manager. And this could later help you get the title of a senior property manager. A finance analyst can also become a Regional Property Manager or a Director of Property Manager.
An intern who initially starts as an analyst can become a consultant or manager before taking the roles of Account or Project Manager. They can later earn the job title of Relationship Manager, Portfolio Manager, or Corporate Account Manager, amongst others.
A law clerk would either be a consultant, executive assistant, or adjunct professor and then continue to be a commercial or assistant account manager or Director of Talent Acquisition.
You can also become a Client Relations Manager or an Inside Sales Account Manager, starting as an Account Executive.
A position as an Office Assistant could later lead you to become a Leasing Director, Real Estate Management Specialist, or Commercial Property Manager.
Final Words
There you have it, all the information you need to push yourself to search and apply for that real estate internship. It can do wonders for your career, and now that you know what to do and what to expect, you can prepare yourself to face any curveballs thrown at your face.
It does not matter if you are from a business or a political science background; this internship can be your first step in becoming a real estate mogul.