Brokerage or institutional Internship?

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on what I should do for my third-year summer internship. I've completed three internships in Accounting, Leasing, and now Asset Management, all with medium to large-size developers. I want to really take my experience to the next level and set myself up to work at a brokerage or large institution after graduating.

I've heard that brokerage internships can be quite bland and involve minimal work, but they offer the advantage of extensive networking opportunities. On the institutional side, I feel like I would gain more technical knowledge, but it seems more like back-office work.

What do you think would be the best path for growth in the early stages of my career?

Brokerage or Institution

Brokerage
38% (3 votes)
institution
63% (5 votes)
Total votes: 8
Region
3 Comments
 
Most Helpful

Well if you have the choice, I'd go institution. Because you can always switch to being a broker / broker analyst. 

That being said, if the institution's role is not exactly aligning up your interests, for example say it is an accounting job, than I'd go brokerage route as better deal experience.

PropMetrica | Multifamily underwriting template
 

And for internships, your role will most likely be the same. You're going to be doing market research, collecting comps, formatting a lot of summary tables. 

It is really the same thing at that level, the only difference is in (i) brokerage - your clients are the owners/buyers and (ii) institutional - your clients are the large investors such as pension funds. 

PropMetrica | Multifamily underwriting template

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