My Internship Over the Summer: Final Draft

My Commercial Real Estate Internship

Real Estate Debt Originations Intern

The Company

Over the summer, I had an internship at a real estate debt financing company in Los Angeles. In essence,  the company makes loans to real estate investors, and I worked on the team that helped find and execute the deals. That group is called the originations team, and a few of the team’s responsibilities are as follows:

• Bring in deals by establishing connections with brokers and other industry decision-makers. 
• Perform due diligence on a prospective investment (analyzing or assessing the risk). 
• Present the analysis of the deal to an investment committee before closing.

Debt originations

The debt side of the real estate business is all about assessing the risk of an asset and determining if it fits the company’s desired risk level before investing. It’s like assessing how likely it is that you’ll get your money back when you lend it to a friend. If the friend has a job, has paid you back before, and has a lot of money, the loan isn’t very risky. But, if he’s unemployed, doesn’t have much money in the bank, or has forgotten to pay you back in the past, there’s a greater chance you will never see that money again. Put simply, my job is to determine if real estate owners will be able to pay us back with the property’s income. 

Summer Analyst/Intern

As a summer analyst, the company expected me to learn as much as possible while helping the team in different ways. My role required me to be a technician, salesman, and swiss-army knife. I had to be a technician by efficiently and effectively consolidating raw data, emails, appraisals, and financial models. The company also expected me to be a salesman by collecting information on a new deal and presenting it in an organized and easily digestible way. Lastly, I had to be a swiss-army knife, always willing to help and take on random tasks. 

Technician

For an originations analyst, a big part of the position is dealing with information efficiently. Senior team members send 10-15 new deals daily. You have to know where all the info belongs like it’s the back of your hand. Just like a computer technician knows which wire goes to what port, you must know where documents go and where to find certain metrics in the documents. The faster you are at surface-level analysis of deals, the more effective you are as an intern. 

Salesman

I would relate another responsibility of an intern to the role of a salesman. While interns aren’t trying to sell anything, they need to collect and present relevant information to a specific audience. In my case, the relevant information was anything that could affect the valuation of a property. That could be economic trends in the region, proximity to amenities, or even any criminal activity in the area. I would then present the property to a committee of people that would ultimately decide whether to invest or not. 

Unlike a salesman, however, I wasn’t incentivized only to highlight the upsides of the property. When bringing a deal to the investment committee, it’s important to emphasize both the strengths and weaknesses of a deal so that the company can make an informed decision. 

Swiss-army knife

The last role of an intern is to be a Swiss army knife. You must be willing and able to attempt any task someone might give you. 

For example, one day, someone from the asset management team approached me to help them with a data management task. The asset management team does something very different from my team; they monitor the condition and performance of issued loans. The team is like a parole officer, giving guidelines and working with troubled borrowers to get back on track. I helped that team create a master excel file for the company’s appraised properties. You don’t need to have any specialized knowledge of real estate in an intern position, but you have to be willing to apply what you know to tackle unfamiliar problems thrown at you. 

Readability

Grade 8

Good

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